Ornithology ECOL 484/58 Spring 2007

Final Exam review

Format: The exam is worth 200 points and will be similar in format to the previous two exams—a mix of short-, medium-, and long-answer questions. I will allocate roughly 40% of the points to material covered since the last exam, and the rest to synthesis and review of topics covered in the first 2/3 of the course. You will be asked to draw connections between material covered in different parts of the course. There will only be one essay question but in addition, there will be a few paragraph-length questions which may take the form of simplified versions of possible essay questions. Please review our comments on your essays from previous exams. If you are unsure of how to appropriately structure an essay, please come to see one of us. Here is a list (slightly expanded from last time) of studying tactics: • Write out the questions from each lecture’s handout onto flashcards. Write the slide number from the appropriate lecture on the back. Challenge yourself +/or a friend to answer each of those questions. If you have trouble, go back to the slides and your class notes for the answer. This is probably the single best thing you can do to study! • There will be at least one question that requires you to apply your powers of scientific reasoning. Be sure to review the material on the scientific method, comparative analyses, etc. • Make SURE you read and review assigned textbook readings. There will be questions that rely on these readings. • Understand the meaning and relevance of every word highlighted in bright blue on lecture slides. Be prepared to write out definitions of each. If you are unsure of the meanings of words, please come to see one of us. • Review the names and accomplishments of the selections of major figures in contemporary ornithology I highlighted during the lectures. • For each and every lecture slide ask yourself the question—what is the main take- home message here? Why was this information presented (at all? in this juncture of the lecture/course?) This is like the reverse of the first suggestion—going from the slide to the question instead of the other way around. • Make a table of contents for your lecture notes (this REALLY helped me summarize my courses at the end of a semester) • Hold a study sessions with friends: quiz each other on the relationship between concepts and examples. For instance, one person has to explain a particular concept and the other has to give an example that demonstrates the concept. • If you missed handouts, download the complete document of topics covered in this course (link on the exam webpage). If you find you cannot answer the questions in handouts after reviewing notes, readings, and slides, please come to see one of us. Good luck, everyone!

Ornithology ECOL 484/58 Spring 2007

Potential long-answer questions focusing on last 1/3 of course:

1. Many ornithologists believe that competition is the driving force that structures bird communities. Explain what kinds of evidence—both ecological and evolutionary— supports this idea.

2. In the tropical forest fragments experiment in Brazil, we see an incredibly tight relationship between the numbers of species found in a plot and the area of that plot. Discuss the implications of this relationship in the context of avian conservation. How would it alter how you would design protected areas given the opportunity?

3. Contrast the concepts of “communities” and guilds. Give examples from your own experiences birding in this class to illustrate groups of species that exemplify the differences between these concepts.

4. What are the ecological and evolutionary costs and benefits of dietary specialization? What components of an optimal foraging model would probably change if you went from modeling the foraging behavior of an extreme generalist to an extreme specialist?

5. It is ten years in the future and you are working on a migratory bird species that overwinters in Southern Mexico and N. Central America. Breeding populations in your area have been declining slowly but steadily for the past few decades. The birds are not rare yet, but you are worried. a) Outline what basic information you might want to collect on this species to determine the most effective course of conservation action. b) Describe how your strategies aimed at breeding-ground and wintering-ground actions might differ due to the cultural, economic, and political differences between the countries this bird migrates between.

6. Habitat choice in birds is thought to infer some adaptive benefit. Yet that benefit (the ultimate cause of the choice of habitats) may be hard to directly assess. Identify 3 of the potential proximate cues a bird can use to assess habitat and explain how each of these relates to one or more ultimate factors.

Potential long-answer questions synthesizing from across the course material:

7. Optimal Foraging Theory and the Ideal Free Distribution are important sets of ecological theories. Both sets of theories can be described as “optimality” theories. Explain what is being optimized in each. What underlying assumptions are common to both OFT and IFD?

8. Birds vary tremendously in their diet choices: from extreme dietary specialization to very generalist diets. Using examples from either lecture or class readings, identify some of the costs of dietary specialization. Give examples of tradeoffs related to a) bill morphology, b) digestive morphology, and c) competitive abilities in a community context. What are the likely consequences of increasing dietary specialization for population densities and ability to withstand habitat loss or disturbance? Ornithology ECOL 484/58 Spring 2007

9. Mate choice in birds often leads to extravagant male ornaments such as the tail of a peacock. However, many male birds display alternative only bright color patches or differ from females only in body size or vocal performances. Drawing from your knowledge of the physics and costs of flight, discuss how the evolution of male ornaments might be constrained by other elements of the ecology of a bird. Explain what kinds of lifestyles would be conducive to the evolution of elaborate traits and why they may be less likely to evolve in birds differing along at least 3 different ecological axes (e.g., life history, mating system, migratory behavior, latitude, nesting biology, habitat, body size, etc.).

10. In one of the student presentations, we saw that the frequency of vocalizations among species of dove was related to altitude. At low elevations, doves vocalize over a greater range of frequencies than at high elevations. You conduct a field study with quail and find a similar pattern. Formulate 3 alternative hypotheses to explain this pattern invoking a) Bergman’s rule and allometry, b) phylogenetic inertia, and c) habitat structure. Formulate 1 testable prediction that if true would eliminate one of these hypotheses and support the third. Explain briefly how you would test your prediction.

11. Variation in body size profoundly influences many other elements of a species’ biology. In both current and past extinction events, larger birds are more susceptible to extinction than smaller birds. Provide three explanations of how a large body size could lead to increased extinction probability. Draw on your knowledge of both avian physiology and ecology in answering this question. Be sure that at least one of your explanations is general to extinctions in the past and not only current extinctions.

12. Understanding the factors that produce patterns of avian diversity is a major goal of avian community ecology. Contrast avian diversity both a) before and after the K-T boundary, and b) between arctic and tropical ecosystems? Explain what each of these two patterns suggests in terms of the factors important in limiting the number of bird species that can exist in a give place at a given time.

13. Consider this simple diagram:

Habitat quality Æ Nutrition Æ Feather structure Æ Reproductive success

Explain the links between each element in this diagram. Note that there is more than 1 right answer here. Just come up with a scenario that is consistent from the beginning to the end of the diagram.

14. Birds can deal with environmental variability in 3 fundamentally different ways. Describe these different strategies and explain which of these is most appropriately applied to migration. In preparation for migration, birds undergo many changes. Give examples of both behavioral and morphological changes that some migrants undergo in preparation for migration. Explain the types of strategies that these changes represent. Consider factors associated with time scale and predictability in answering this part of the question. Ornithology ECOL 484/58 Spring 2007

15. Choose one of the following questions below. For your question formulate a) one hypothesis that explains your pattern at a proximate level, and b) two hypotheses that explain your pattern at an ultimate level. Next, formulate two predictions/tests that could distinguish between your 2 ultimate hypotheses. One should involve experimental manipulation, and the other should be correlative or comparative. i) Why do Lucy’s Warblers nest in tree cavities whereas all other species of warbler in W. North America build open cup nests? ii) Why do many species of hummingbirds and a few other taxa go into torpor during cold weather whereas most other birds do not? iii) Chickadees have been found to be among the most intelligent of birds. Why might this be so? iv) The Elegant Trogon in Arizona is the northernmost representative of a very widespread family of birds. Why don’t trogons live any further north?

16. Many important insights into avian ecology come from studies of island birds. For each of the following, describe an island-island comparison or a mainland—island comparison and briefly explain what we learnt from these comparisons. i) breadth of foraging niches (island-mainland) ii) inter-specific competition and range boundaries (island-island) iii) costs of flight (island-mainland)