Discussion: Ants Have Big Impact on Environment as Ecosystem Engineers

Name: __________________________

Total: _______/ 30pts

Critical Thinking Essays

Instructions: Using only your own personal observations that you submitted to iNaturalist, think about and answer the following questions. Questions must be answered in a short essay format, using complete sentences. In each answer, discuss at least one specific example from your submitted observations.Citations must be provided when external sources are used. There are a total of 2 multi-part questions.

1. Discuss the following characteristics that your observations may have in common:

1. Are your observations composed of organisms that are rarely observed by the iNaturalist community, or are they frequently observed? You can assess this by viewing the “Total Observations” for the organisms you identified in your observations. Discuss the characteristics of each of your organisms, and why you think they are frequently observed or rarely observed by the iNaturalsit community.
2. Are your observations similar in size, visibility, or behavior? Why would organisms of a certain size, color, or behavior be more likely to be observed?
3. In which habitat were they majority of your observed organisms found? What time of day were most of them found? How do you think habitat and behavior influence an organism’s likelihood of being observed?
4. Discuss the difference between an organism being abundant in nature and being frequently observed on iNaturalist. Is “total observations” on iNaturalist a good measure of species abundance? Why or why not?

1. Considering all of your observations, what ecological roles do your organisms play in Florida habitats?Spend some time researching and understanding the following ecological terms: KeystoneSpecies, EndemicSpecies, InvasiveSpecies, NativeSpecies. All animals have their own role and provide ecological services/benefits to the environment. Use your observations as examples to illustrate your answer. When describing the ecological roles that your observations provide, be sure to discuss the following:

1. List the native status (endemic, native, non-native, invasive, etc.) of each of your observations. Do the non-native or invasive species you identified provide ecological services, and if so, are these services equivalent to the services provided by native species? If you did not observe an organism that is classified as a non-native or invasive species, discuss one that can be found in Florida.
2. The ecological services that keystone species provide is disproportionally large relative to their abundance or biomass. This is because keystone species play a critical role in maintaining the structure of an ecological community, affecting many other organisms in an ecosystem and helping to determine the types and numbers of various other species in the community. Are any of your observations keystone species? If not, provide an example of a keystone species found in Florida. What ecological services do they provide?
3. Take into account any symbiotic relationships (parasitic, mutualistic, etc.) that your observations may form. What does your organism gain or lose in this relationship? If your observation was not able to form this symbiotic relationship, would it still provide the same ecological services? If you did not observe an organism that forms a symbiotic relationship, discuss one that can be found in Florida.

List sources cited here