Wildlife Ecology Take Home Test

December 1, 2009

A fundamental challenge in wildlife ecology is estimating an animal’s home range and the resources upon which they depend. The quantity and quality of resources within this range determine the animal’s ability to find food, shelter, and ultimately reproduce. To explore these concepts we (by we I mean you) are going to turn the tables on ourselves (by ourselves I mean you).

  1. Estimate your yearly home range (I’ll demonstrate this in class and can help you with this)
  2. Use a typical week to estimate your average yearly food consumption in the following categories: Meat, Produce (not corn or soy), Corn, Soy, Sugar, Dairy, Eggs, Others as needed.
  3. To the best of your ability determine where this food comes from and how many acres of land it requires to produce enough to support you for a year. NOTE: You won’t be able to find this for everything so focus on trying to figure out the amount of acreage needed for you and then some likely places in the world it came from.
  4. Recalculate your “actual” home range to include the new information
  5. Compare your yearly ‘activity’ home range to the one that more accurately represents your true ‘footprint’.

TURN IN:

  1. A map with both estimated home ranges.
  2. A table with the major food groups, estimated yearly consumption, locations and acreage to support you for a year and source of the information.

Food Group / Yearly Intake / Location(s) / Acreage / Sources
  1. A 750-1000 word formal write up addressing the following:
  2. Describe your ‘activity’ home range—where is it? How large is it? What are the major land use patterns (est % urban, Ag, forest, etc.)
  3. Describe the basic patterns in the table of your food intake—how much of the various groups, where they come from and how much acreage is used.
  4. Compare the similarities and differences between your activity home range and your footprint home range. What is the estimated difference in area? How much of your diet comes from within your main home range? Approximately how much of your food could possibly come from within your home range (based on land use there).
  5. Evaluate this from a wildlife ecology perspective:
  6. How does the amount of area you reside in to compare to the amount of area you require?
  7. Assume everyone inside your range of residence used the same amount of land, how many people could it support? What is the approximate population in your residence range?
  8. Is the population in your residence range living at, above, or below its habitat carrying capacity?

Some resources to get you started.

DUE: Monday December 14, 2009