please what i sent you
Discussion Post for Unit 2 (corresponding with units prior to Exam 2) Initial post due: October 7 Response post due: October 14 This discussion post has two parts. First is your response to the questions about an animal you picked. Second is your response to another student’s thread. If you have any questions, please contact me or our TA, Jack. This discussion post will have a total of 7 points, one for answering each question adequately, and one for citation count and format. Partial credit may be given for each question. Overall, this exercise accounts for ~3.33% of your overall grade. Try and choose animals that may not be the most popular or that you are unfamiliar with to minimize students choosing the same species. Your discussion post: Pick an animal from anywhere in the world and look up its geographic distribution. You can do this in publications or other online resources. A quality resource for looking at broad-scale geographic ranges can be found at https://www.iucnredlist.org/ by searching for the species of interest and clicking on its page. Please answer the following questions in paragraph form with a minimum of 100 words. You will need to include at least two citations (APA format). You may use Wikipedia as a starting point for finding more information, but you may not use it as one of your references. 1. Name the animal including its scientific name, and if it has one, its common name, and describe its geographic distribution (continent, country, island, mainland, biome, etc.). 2. What does this species eat for energy and nutrition? 3. In the context of the BAM diagram, what “A” factors may be limiting this species geographic distribution? You may base your answer from thinking about its geographic distribution, the basic biology of the organism, or potentially other factors. 4. In the context of the BAM diagram, does the species diet (from question #2) limit its distribution? This may be based off how narrow or broad the food source(s) may be both in geography and diversity (e.g., one or > 50 food sources?). 5. Based on your answers to questions 3 and 4, what would be more limiting to the broad-scale geographic distribution of the species: “A” or “B”? Why? Your response to another student’s post: Respond to another student’s post that has no responses. If all posts have responses, find one with only one response. Respond to that post with an answer to the following question. Your response should be a minimum of 25 words. First, look up the geographic distribution of that species prior to answering the question. 1. In the context of the BAM diagram, what would be one hypothesis for the “M” portion of this species geographic distribution? Justify your answer. Example Discussion Post: The Brown Creeper (Certhia americana) is a small songbird that occurs in North and Central America. It has several subspecies that live in temperate and subtropical forests from Alaska south to Nicaragua (Manthey et al., 2011). This species “creeps” up trees and probes the bark for invertebrates that constitute the majority of its diet (Poulin et al., 2013). Because this species only inhabits temperate and subtropical forests, one potential abiotic condition impacting its geographic distribution may include a minimum amount of rainfall because this species does not occur in drier areas of North America. Because the Brown Creeper eats any invertebrates it finds, it is unlikely that its diet impacts its geographic distribution; there are likely invertebrates to eat in nearly every biome. Rather, I would argue that the occurrence of trees / forests may impose a biotic limitation on this species geographic distribution. Based on these factors, I would hypothesize that the Brown Creeper is most limited in its geographic distribution by biotic interactions, as it appears that it requires, or at least strongly prefers, geographic areas that have forest stands. References: Manthey, J.D., Klicka, J., & Spellman, G.M. (2011). Cryptic diversity in a widespread North American songbird: phylogeography of the Brown Creeper (Certhia americana). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 58, 502–512. Poulin, J.-F., D'Astous, É., Villard, M.-A., Hejl, S.J., Newlon, K.R., McFadzen, M.E., Young, J.S., & Ghalambor, C.K. (2013). Brown Creeper (Certhia americana), version 2.0. In The Birds of North America (P. G. Rodewald, editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York, USA. Example Discussion Response Post: My hypothesis for the Brown Creeper’s “M” is North and Central America. Based on the species’ geographic distribution, it apparently cannot live in tropical forests, restricting it from reaching southern South American temperate or coniferous forest. Additionally, several forest biomes in Europe, Asia, and potentially southern Africa may be appropriate for the Brown Creeper, but it is not found in these regions. Based on these points, I believe the historically accessible area for the Brown Creeper includes only the Americas and is southernmost limited somewhere in Central America.