History, Humans & the Price of Expansion
Tuesday Week 8

Announcements:

• News Item: Annie Henderson

• Mid-term grades posted - for most current grades, check Moodle

• Advising week begins Mon. after spring break - sign up to meet with your advisor!!!  Watch for emails from your advisor!!  Please let me know if you're not sure how to do this... 

• Happy Spring Break!  Be safe - have fun

Review:

What are the dangers of small population size?

• Get a new bag of M&M's... & also a copy of the "Extinction Vortex" hand-out for each group member

• Count - & note - your starting colors, then start eating them (but don't look!  eat at random!);

• How do the color distributions compare at 20 M&M's?

• At 10 M&M's?

• Has there been a loss of colors?  What could this represent in an actual population of organisms?

• Relate what you observed to the extinction vortex diagram & fill in the blanks...

Question of the Day: How long have humans been impacting biodiversity?

Objectives:

• Know the main ways that humans impact/decrease biodiversity

  • "Centinelan" extinctions

• Be able to explain when humans first started to impact diversity of other life forms

• Recognize specific examples of extinctions linked to human expansion during pre-history

  •  Polynesia

  • e.g. Hawaii

  • N. (& S.) America

  • New Zealand

  • Australia

• Extinctions - "rifle shot" vs. "holocaust"

  • Return to moral question; spotted owl example

Powerpoint Slides for this topic

Question 1:

What evidence is there for human-caused extinctions in pre-history?

Example: North America, mega-fauna extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene

The Species:

     Woolly Mammoth

Giant Ground Sloth

Visit these websites for further insight into the theories used to explain N. American mega-fauna extinctions -

 http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/larson/lp_extinction.html  (animated maps & introduction to 3 main arguments)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/stoneage/megafauna.html   (summary of 3 main arguments)

 Question 1: Explanation

What evidence is there for human-caused extinctions in pre-history?           

 Question 2:

What are the main mechanisms for human-caused extinctions?

Question 3:

Should we use heroic efforts to save rare species?

"rifle shot" vs. "holocaust" extinctions

Spotted Owl example