Q Only - Ecological Constraints in Tropics (10/21/15)

Q only - Ecological Constraints in Tropics (10/21/15)

1. Are there any unique characteristics of tropical forests that you do not find anywhere else in the world (provide 2 examples)? What is not a unique characteristic of tropical forests?

2. How do plants keep animals and humans from eating plant tissues? Do humans get any benefits from this plant adaptation? 3. Discuss the reason presented in class for why plants and animals (including humans) need to be highly adaptive to living in the wet tropical forests of the Amazon. Describe one strategy that allows plants or animals to survive or adapt to these circumstances? What factor makes people unable to adapt to the tropical forests?

4. Why did the practice of shifting agriculture develop in wet tropical forests and do you find this being practiced along rivers or away from the flood areas of rivers? Define shifting agriculture and why does it allow people to grow food crops in nutrient poor soils. Speculate why these people do not just grow all their food in the riparian areas?

5. What is the link between cassava or manioc and the diet of indigenous communities living in the American, Asian and African tropics? Can you survive only by eating cassava? How is cassava made into a food source? Discuss the trade-off that local people make when they eat cassava.

6. Why are sloths such a unique animal in the tropics? Why do sloths climb down from the top of the tree? What bizarre habit have researchers caught sloths following and why would they do this?

7. What is the myth related to the pink dolphin in the Brazilian Amazon? Why do you think local people develop a myth like this?

8. Why would you eat a capybara if you lived in the forests of the American tropics? What is a capybara? How do they hunt the capybara in Venezuela? What else can also provide people the protein they need in their diet?

9. Until the last 30 years, western Europeans scientists had many ecological fallacies related to the tropical forests. Provide an example of one of these fallacies. How would you approach indigenous communities if you held this view? In the past, were indigenous people living in the tropical forests nomadic or were they actively implementing land-use practices to increase food production (Hint: DICE)?

10. Why was the first global Debt-for-Nature swap established in Bolivia? Why did the western world industrialized countries develop a program like this? What approach was used by the industrialized countries to get countries like Bolivia to establish these types of programs? What was the impact on indigenous communities when the Beni Biosphere Reserve was established (Provide one example)?