INDEX

S. No Topic Page No.

Week 1
1 Introduction to the course 1
2 A historical overview of Ecology 29
3 Ecology & Evolution 62
Week 2
4 The levels of organisation 92
5 Species abundance and composition: Biodiversity 130
6 Biodiversity-II 166
7 Positive Interactions 197
Week 3
8 Negative Interactions 229
9 Study of Behaviour and Behavioral Ecology 261
Week 4
10 Food chains, Food webs and trophic levels 305
11 Primary Production 349
12 Nutrient Cycles 389
Week 5
13 Population parameters and demographic techniques 422
14 Population growth and regulation 476
15 Population studies and applications 529
Week 6
16 Community nature and parameters 563
17 Community changes and ecological succession 599
18 Community organisation 635
Week 7
19 Biography: Analysis of geographic distributions 671
20 Why are things where they are? 703
21 Some push and pull factors in greater detail 740
Week 8
22 Threats to species 776
23 In-situ conservation 827
24 Ex-situ conservation 884
 Week 9
25 ntroduction and impacts 955
26 Human population growth and food requirements 992
27 Sustainable development 1025
Week 10
28 Oil spills 1066
29 Plastic and biodiversity 1112
30 Impacts of climate change 1155
Week 11
31 Optimum yield problem 1201
32 Biological control 1240
33 Ecotoxicology and pollution management, Restoration ecology 1283
Week 12
34 Revision 1324
35 Revision 1416
36 Revision 1468
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 01
Introduction to the Course

Namaste, and welcome to this course on Wildlife Ecology. I am Dr Ankur Awadhiya.

I am an officer in the Indian forest service of the Madya Pradesh Cadre. This course
is
going to have 12 modules, with 3 lectures in each module, we begin with the first
module, that is the Introduction to the course.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:35)

This module will be having 3 lectures. First is introduction to the course; second is a
historical overview of ecology and third is ecology and evolution.

1
(Refer Slide Time: 00:47)

Let us begin this course with a story. This story concerns a girl who lives in a village. Let
us call this girl as Miss “X” and she is living in a village. This village is a very beautiful
village. It is surrounded by some beautiful hills. It has a river that passes through it. It
has some trees around, some grasslands, some fields and this girl is fond of looking at
nature.

She is very fond of looking at different kinds of birds that are found in this village. There
are some flying birds, there are some water birds, there are some ground birds, there are
some parakeets that live on the trees and so on. But, this village also has a lot of
infestation of mosquitoes and mosquitoes result in malaria, which is a major issue in this
village. So, one day the government decides to take a plane full of insecticides to this
village and spray this village with the insecticides to kill off the mosquitoes. A very fine
idea; a number of people would say so, the chemical that is being sprayed here is an
insecticide, it only kills insects, that’s what the company claims.

So, the village is sprayed with insecticides, and lo and behold the girl finds that after a
short while all her beautiful birds that were there in the village die. This story might
appear hypothetical, but we are observing such instances in a number of places around
the world. We have seen situations in which the spray of DDT has resulted in the death
of birds. Now, if you spray DDT at a very low concentration to kill mosquitoes, you do
not require a very huge amount of DDT. So, you spray this insecticide at a very low

2
concentration. Still a number of birds die and when their bodies are autopsied, it is found
that they have a very huge concentration of DDT that is found inside their bodies.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:57)

Let us look at another story. This is a paper which says that high levels of PCBs in
breast milk of Inuit Women from Arctic Quebec.

PCBs are polychlorinated biphenyls. These are chemicals that are added to a number of
plastics, Inuit women refers to women who have an eskimo lifestyle. Quebec is a place
in Canada.

So, there are eskimo women who are living in the arctic region of Canada. When their
breast milk was analyzed, it was found that it had a very high concentration of
polychlorinated biphenyl. Now, the question arises that arctic is a very serene place. We
do not go there and dump these chemicals in the arctic, but still, in the human population
there, we observe that there is a very huge concentration of a number of chemicals; a
number of which are toxic to the newborn babies. Some people have even argued that the
most toxic food that a human being can eat is the breast milk of an Eskimo woman that is
living in the arctic regions.

How do these chemicals reach there? and is it important for us? Well, it is important
because, if you have chemicals in the breast milk, invariably they are going to reach
another human, and in this case, the body of a human baby.

3
(Refer Slide Time: 04:21)

In certain instances, this may even result in very tragic consequences. For instance, there
was a case in which an infant was killed because it was breast-fed by its mother and the
mother of the baby was on some drugs. She was taking drugs and the baby died because
the baby was getting a very high concentration of the drugs. Now questions such as these
are arising everywhere; they are arising anywhere and everywhere on this planet.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:55)

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And ecology deals with a number of these questions. So, if you look at the word roots,
Ecology comes from the Greek words or Oikos and logos. Oikos means a household ;
household where people live.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:11)

When we say ecology; Oikos is home and logos is study. Now we can see eco as a word
root also in things such as economics, in which “eco”, or “oikos” is home and “nomy” is
to count.

Now, ecology is the study of home; it could be my home, it could be your home, it could
be somebody else’s home or it could be the home of other animals, it could be the home
of tiger, it could be the home of elephant, it could be a marine home and so, on.

Because of these word roots, we can have a number of different kinds of ecologies. For
instance, when we are looking at the population of humans, we can have a subject of
human ecology. If you are looking at different population, we can have population
ecology. If we are looking at marine environment, we can have marine ecology; because
the marine environment is also a home to a number of animals; we can have forest
ecology or we can even have lacustrine ecology, which is a lake ecology. In all of these
what we are doing is, we are studying the home of some organisms or some groups of
organisms. That is why it is called ecology.

5
(Refer Slide Time: 06:47)

Ecology is the study of life at home; at the home of you, me or some other organism. So,
if you have to define ecology; ecology can be defined as the scientific study of
interactions among organisms and their environment.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:59)

Essentially, lets say we have a forest and we have some animals here in the forest. Let us
say that we have an elephant in the forest. This elephant would be deriving its nutrients
from these trees, or maybe from the grasses below. So, they also act as food; when this
animal is living in the forest there might also be some other animals in this forest. So, let

6
us have another animal. Let us say that this animal is a sambar; and this sambar also eats
this grass. So, we could have competition between both of these animals. The animal,
elephant, is interacting with the trees. it is interacting with the sambar, it is interacting
with the number of other organisms and it is also dependent on the environment that is
here.

For instance, it would depend on the amount of sunlight that is there. If it is very hot or if
it is very cold, then probably this animal might not be able to live in that area, probably
this animal might have to migrate from this area. Or for instance, if we have a river that
is passing through this area and if this river dries out, this animal is now not getting
enough water so, it might have to move out. Ecology is the study of all of these. Ecology
is the scientific study of interactions among organisms and their environment. In this
system we have the organisms, we have the environment and we are studying all of these
interactions.

Another definition could be that, ecology is the scientific study of interactions that
determines the distribution and abundance of organisms. What we are looking here is the
distribution of animals or organisms and the abundance of organisms.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:09)

Now let’s take another example; suppose we have this mountain and in this mountain, at
this level, we have an average temperature of say around 20 degree celsius and as we
move up the temperature reduces.

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In this region, we have around 15, 10, 5, 0 and this area has an annual average
temperature of minus 5 degree celsius. Now, the organisms that are found in this zone,
let us call it zone 1, will be very different from the organisms that are found in zone 2
and extremely different from the organisms that are found in zones 3, 4, 5 and 6. Now, if
you look at the definition again, Ecology is the scientific study of the interactions that
determine the distribution and abundance of organisms.

Now, what we will be asking here in the case of ecology is: What organisms are found in
one zone? What organisms are found in the other zones? and so on. And if they are
different, why are they different? Is it because of the temperature? Is it because of wind?
Is it because of less amount of sunshine that this region gets? or Is it because of less
amount of moisture or differences in moisture that are there in different areas? So, what
are these factors that are determining the distribution of these organisms? and secondly,
what are the factors that are determining the abundance of these organisms?

(Refer Slide Time: 10:49)

When we say abundance, what we are referring to is that, if we take any of these
parameters; let us say temperature, and we look at the number of organisms per square
kilometer, that is, the number of organisms of species “x” per square kilometer. Now,
what we will observe is that there would be a set of temperature in which these
organisms find it very easy or very congenial to survive. For instance, in the case of us

8
human beings, if our surrounding temperature is around 25 degree celsius, we will feel
extremely comfortable. So, this is the most comfortable zone.

But, if we increase this temperature from 25 degree celsius to say 40 degree celsius, a
large number of us might not be able to feel very comfortable. So, there would be some
people who would find it comfortable, but there would be a very huge number of people
who would find it relatively uncomfortable. Less number of organisms would be found
in this region. Let us increase the average temperature to say 60 degree celsius and
probably one or none of us human beings would be found in that region, in that
temperature range.

Now, similarly if we reduce the temperature to say 10 degree celsius, you would find that
less number of people are able to do to find this temperature to be congenial. If you
reduce it to even less to say zero degree celsius probably very few of us would be able to
live there. So, we can now draw a curve that is something like this (refer slide). Now,
this curve is telling us the abundance of human beings that would be found at different
temperatures. So, there is this zone we are arbitrarily dividing the curve into 3 regions.

So, in this zone we will have less number of animals; in this zone we will be having
more number of animals; in this zone will be having less number of animals; and in these
zones will probably be having zero number of animals. Now, similarly for every
organism, so for elephant there would be a certain range of temperature in which it will
find congenial to survive. For the case of tigers, there would be a very different range of
temperatures. For polar bears it will be a very different zone. So, in the case of polar
bears we could even have a situation in which we have a maximum, somewhere here.
Polar bears would probably prefer to live somewhere say around 1 or 2 degrees average
temperature or maybe even lesser.

When we look at ecology, what we are asking are the interactions that are determining
the distribution and abundance of organisms. So, distribution refers to what are the areas
in which these organisms are able to live and abundance refers to what are their numbers.
Now, these are physical factors, but we could also have a number of biological factors.

For instance, in a forest in which you have ample number of prey animals. So, if you
have a forest in which you have a substantial population of chital or sambar, you would
find tigers that are living in that area. But if you have another forest in which we have

9
very less number of chitals and sambars, then probably tigers will not survive in that area
because they are not getting enough food. So, you can even have a number of biological
factors; or for instance, if you have a forest in which you have a very huge density of
tigers, then probably leopards will not be able to live in that area, because they cannot
compete with tigers. Leopards would be found in an area where you do not have a very
substantial number of tigers. So, you can have physical factors that determine
distribution and abundance or you can have biological factors that determine the
distribution and abundance.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:15)

Now, let us recount some of the physical factors. Physical could be things like
temperature or rainfall, or humidity, or wind speed, or the depth of soil that is found in
that area or the amount of sunshine that the area gets, or in the case of marine
environments we could even have things like the amount of salinity, that is there in a
particular segment of water or things such as the amount of sediment load that is there in
water or in the case of rivers we could even have things such as the speed of water.

So, for instance in the case of a river, the central region that has greater speeds would be
used by certain organisms and the surrounding regions that have lesser speeds would be
utilized by some other organisms. These are all different physical factors that would
determine the distribution and abundance of different organisms and ecology would ask

10
the question, what are these interactions that are driving the abundance and distribution
of these animals? Now, let us look at some biological factors or the biotic factors.

(Refer Slide Time: 16:49)

Biotic factors could include things such as food. Food could include things like the
amount of grass or vegetation that you have or the amount of prey that you have in this
area. It would also be another biotic factor that would determine distribution, and
abundance would be the presence or absence of predators in the area. So, if an area is
having a very huge population of tigers, then probably chital and sambar would not
prefer to live in that area, because they will get eaten if they live there; or you can also
have things such as parasites or you can have things like diseases.

So, a number of these factors play a role in determining the abundance and distribution
of the annuals and ecology is the scientific study of all these different factors and their
interactions that are determining the distribution and abundance of organisms. So, what
do we actually study in ecology? So, this was the theoretical basis, but what do we
actually look at in ecology.

11
(Refer Slide Time: 18:07)

Well, we look at habitats. Habitat is the home of an animal; the natural home, or the
abode of the animal. So, for instance this is the Indian wild ass and this lives in these
sorts of habitats. So, we have this Indian wild ass sanctuary in Gujarat and as you can see
this is a very plain topography area. It hardly has any vegetation in most of the areas.
There are some hills that have slight amount of vegetation, then this is a very dry area; it
has a lot of saline soil.

So, ecology would go out and study what are the kinds of habitats that are there in
different areas and how are these different habitats determining whether this organism is
able to survive in that area or not. So, for instance we find Indian wild ass only in
Gujarat, we do not find it in, say, West Bengal, because the habitats that are provided or
that are available in West Bengal are very different from the habitats that are available in
Gujarat. And similarly, we have the royal bengal tiger that is found in West Bengal, but
it is not found in Gujarat. So, ecology would go out and ask the question what are the
different kinds of habitats that the organisms get in different areas?

12
(Refer Slide Time: 19:21)

Then it would go out and ask, what is the amount of biodiversity that we have? For
instance in the previous image, we saw that we have this Indian wild ass and there are
hardly any other animals that are seen here and also the kind of grasses that we have, all
the kinds of vegetation that we have here is very different from say something that we
will find in Bharathpur.

Now, Bharathpur is a bird sanctuary and in this area, we will find a number of birds and
this area is regularly inundated with water. So, in this area we will be having a number of
water birds, we will be having ground dwelling birds, we will be having a number of
birds that live on these trees, even the vegetation in this area will be very different,
because this area has ample amount of water.

So, the kinds of trees that will live here will be very different from what we are finding
there in Gujarat. So, the next question that ecology would try to study is the level of
biodiversity that we have; what are the different kinds of species that are found in each
area? what is their abundance and distribution? For instance if we look at this area, do we
have, say 1000 birds of this species and say only 10 birds of some other species or do we
have equal number of birds of all of these different species. So, that is also another topic
that is studied in ecology.

13
(Refer Slide Time: 20:49)

Next, we look at population interactions. Population is a group of animals that are living
together and they belong to the same species. So, for instance, in this image we can see a
troop of macaques. We have these macaques. And if you look at these two animals, the
first animal is grooming the second animal. What are the kinds of population
interactions? How do they behave together? Why do they behave in this manner? For
instance, What is the profit or loss, or the gain or loss that is being provided to this
animal by grooming the other animal? ; because in the first instance it might seem that
this is an act of altruism; this animal is only grooming this animal and not getting
anything in return.

Now, such a system might not work in practice. In any case, this animal should give
something back to the animal that was grooming it. So, how do these interactions work
in these populations how is this animal able to give back to the first animal, are the kinds
of things that we will study in ecology.

14
(Refer Slide Time: 21:59)

Next, we look at community interactions. Now community is a group of organisms that

belong to different species and they are living together. So, for instance in this image
from Kaziranga, we can see we have a buffalo, we have some scavengers in the form of
vultures and then we have a number of different trees here of different species.

Now, community interaction means, what are the kinds of interactions that are being held
between say this buffalo and the scavengers or between the buffalo and the trees and so
on. For instance, in a number of trees, we have a phenomena that is known as zoophily.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:41)

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Now in zoophily. “zoo” is animal and “philly” is love. Now zoophily is a situation in
which you have a tree and this tree bears fruits and then these fruits are eaten up by a
bird and when this bird eats up this fruit, it gets nutrients; but at the same time the seeds
also get inside the bird.

So, now the seeds of the tree are inside this bird and then this bird moves to some other
location. Let us say there is an electricity line, and this bird goes there and then it
defecates these seeds out here. When it defecates, you have all these seeds that have
fallen onto the ground and then after a while after the next rains, we will have some
small plants of this tree that grow up in this area.

In this case this tree is using the bird as a vehicle to transport its feeds. So, “zoo” is
animal, so it is using this animal which is the bird to transport its seeds. So, again in this
case we can see that there is a one to one interaction or a give and take relationship
between both of these organisms. The tree is giving food to the bird and the bird is
giving a transport mechanism to the tree.

So, here we have organisms that belong to two different species and they are interacting
in a way that is mutually beneficial to both of these. Similarly in this situation, if we have
the buffalo, is it helping the trees? or is it harming the trees? or some other vegetation.
Similarly, if you look at these vultures, are they helping the system? Or are they
harming the system? and how are they doing that? These are the kinds of interactions
that we observe in a community and this is also a topic of study in ecology.

16
(Refer Slide Time: 25:07)

Now, ecology also looks at the impacts or the effects of different changes that are
happening on our earth. For instance, this is an image again from Gujarat and here we
can observe a number of goats and as you can observe, here we have these sand dunes
and we also have very scanty vegetation.

Now, if you have vegetation somewhere, the roots of the plants are able to bind the soil
or are able to bind the sand in this region. Now, if you have goats and if you have a large
number of goats that are growing there and eating away these plants, what will happen in
a short while is that, after these plants get removed the sand will be able to move freely.

Because it is now unbound, you will have a situation in which the amount of erosion
would increase in the system, or for instance earlier this area was having some vegetation
and so, we had a situation in which this area is a semi-arid area. But once you have
removed all of these plants, you do not have any further seeds that remain in this area,
this area will become completely barren. It will become a complete desert.

So, things such as these; things such as desertification that have been brought about by
some human activities are also topics that we study in ecology. Effects of changes; these
are also topics that we study in ecology, but how do we study them?

17
(Refer Slide Time: 26:41)

There are three approaches to ecology. The first approach is called the theoretical
approach. In the theoretical approach, we use equations and models in an ab-initio
manner to understand what is going on in the system.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:59)

For instance, to give an example, you have a predator and you have a prey population.
Now, if the number of prey increases, then we will observe that the number of predators
would also increase because they are getting more amount of food, and because they are
getting more amount of food they will be able to devote more resources to reproduction.

18
So, an increase in the prey population would increase the predator population. But, if you
have more number of predators, because of this increase, it would provide a negative
feedback. So, a negative feedback to the prey population will be seen, because you have
more number of predators.

These predators would be again preying upon the prey population and would reduce their
numbers. So, this would reduce it down. Now if this number reduces, if the number of
prey animals reduce, that would again go back and reduce the population of the predators
and when that number reduces that would again give a feedback that would increase the
prey population.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:17)

To put it in other words, if you have more prey that would give you more predators.
Now, if you have more predators that will result in more number of prey animals being
eaten up, which would result in less prey. Now, if you have less prey, you will have less
amount of food that is available to the predators. That would result in less number of
predators, because less number of prey population is able to support a lesser number of
predator population. Now, if you have less number of predators, the prey would be able
to increase. So, then we would be having more number of preys. Now this is something
that we can understand intuitively.

19
Now, if you go to the theoretical approach, it would begin with such a framework and
would then go on and define different equations and different models through which we
can understand the system.

For instance, if you have prey population that is represented by “p” and predator
population that is represented by “P”, theoretical approach would ask that, if you have
this prey population, it would be a function of the predator population and the existing
prey population, and what would be the equation through which we can model this
system. We will have an example. This system is governed by what we call as the Zotka-
Volterra equations and we will have a greater look at this system in more detail in one of
the later lectures.

Now, the second approach to ecology is the laboratory approach. Laboratory approach
uses the scientific method of formulating hypotheses and testing them through
experiments.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:21)

To give an example; suppose we have this area. Suppose this is a pond. In this pond we
are having very less amount of algae. Now the question that we could ask here is, What
are the factors that are limiting the algae population in this pond? Here again we are
looking at the abundance and distribution of an organism, in this case, the organism is
algae. Now we are asking the question, What are the limiting factors in this pond because
of which the population is less?

20
What we can do in this case is that we can divide this pond into different regions; we can
set up curtains. Once we have set up these curtains we have these different regions 1, 2,
3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15.

Once we have set up these curtains, water cannot move from one of these areas to
another area. All of these zones have now become different from each other. Now, what
we can do is that we have a hypothesis that we have less population of algae here,
because there is less amount of nitrogen that is available to the plants. So, in that case
what we will do is that, in this area we will add nitrogen, maybe there is another
hypothesis that this could be because of less amount of phosphorous that we have in this
area. So, in another area we will add phosphorus; in another area we will add potassium
and so on.

So, we can formulate “n” number of hypotheses and then we can perform this
experiment. We can alter all of these different factors, maybe you could even have a
factor of temperature. Probably the temperature is very less and so, your plants are not
able to grow here. So, probably in this area we will put up a heater and we will heat up
this water or probably temperature is too high.

In another area we could reduce the temperature or in the case of these nutrients, you
could have a sector in which we reduce nitrogen, we reduce phosphorus, we reduce
potassium. In some other areas we add iron, in some other areas we reduce iron. So, we
can perform “n” number of experiments and in all of these experiments, we will keep
certain areas as controls. So, control is a sector in which we are not doing anything.

This is how our system was without doing any of the interventions. In this approach what
we will do is we will formulate hypotheses that, we can have these n number of reasons
because of which we are having less number of or less population of algae in these
waters. We could have a deficiency of certain nutrients. We could have an excess of
some nutrients that are becoming toxic to these plants or maybe we could have less
temperature, higher temperature, less amount of sunshine, more amount of sunshine; we
can formulate a number of hypotheses. Then we can perform experiments to check all of
these. We can alter all of these different variables and then we can check them with the
controls.

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So, probably it turns out that in this experiment, there was an area in which magnesium
was added, magnesium was reduced or say chloride was added or chloride was reduced
and so on. Probably it turns out that in all of these different areas nothing changes, but in
the area with magnesium, we can see more number of plants that have come up. Once
this happens, we will be able to tell that we have a less population of algae in this pond
because of a deficiency of magnesium. So, this would be the laboratory approach. Here,
we are using scientific method of formulating hypotheses. The first step is to formulate
hypothesis; what are the things that could be playing a role in having a reduced
population and then we can test them out using experiments. So, we looked at the
theoretical approach and the laboratory approach.

The third approach is the field approach. Field approach is through observations in the
field. A very good example of the field approach is what we refer to as the Langur Chital
association.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:03)

This association between these two species was figured out in Kanha. What people
observed was that, if you have a big tree and in this tree you have some Langur
population, that is a troop of langurs that are there on the trees; you will also find a
number of Chitals that would come below this tree.

What are the factors that are resulting in this particular distribution of animals that
wherever you get langurs on trees you find chitals coming there? What people did was,

22
they just sat and they observed what are these langurs doing to the Chitals. They
observed that, if you are a langur and you are on top of a tree, you have a very good
vantage location to observe the surroundings. If you have a tiger that comes up here and
if you have these tall grasslands, the chital will not be able to observe the tiger, but a
langur will be able to observe the tiger. Whenever the langur observes the tiger, either it
starts giving out calls (alarm calls) so that other langurs are also alarmed that there is a
predator nearby.

When this happens, if you have a chital that is also nearby, the chital also hears the
alarm. Even though the chital was not able to see a tiger; because it was close to the
langurs, it can make use of that information (alarm calls). So, that is one benefit that is
provided by the langurs to the chitals.

Secondly, whenever the langurs are eating the leaves of the tree, they tend to be
destructive feeders. What they will do is that they will pluck up a leaf and eat up its
petiole and they will throw the rest of the leaves down. Now especially in seasons, where
you have scanty vegetation or you have less number of green grass that is available. So,
say in the summer season you will have this area that has all the dry grasses. Dry grasses
are mostly unpalatable because they have a very high amount of silica content. If the
chital is going to eat up dry grass it is going to injure its mouth. So, it requires green
vegetation. When it comes to the bottom of this tree, langurs that will be plucking a leaf,
eating its petiole will be throwing the rest of the part down.

As a result, chital will automatically get access to this food resource. The chital, unable
to climb up a tree and unable to get those leaves by itself; but by coming in close contact
with the langurs, by just coming where the langurs are eating, it can feed on all the leaves
that are falling from the trees. This is a kind of observation that can only be made in the
field.

Similarly why does langurs tolerate chitals when it is there; because a langur is getting a
viewpoint from here, it is not getting a viewpoint from here (refer slide). Chitals also
have a very good sense of smell, so, probably if you have a tiger here and a langur was
not able to see this tiger and the wind was blowing in this direction. So, chital was able
to get a sense. So, when chital gets a sense of this predator nearby, it will also give out an
alarm call, it would run away and that would alert the langurs. So, essentially this kind of

23
an association in which you have two different organisms that are interacting with each
other or a community interaction can also be studied using the field approach. In the field
approach, we use observations in the field.

So, these are three approaches to ecology and in the rest of the course we will make use
of all of these three different approaches to understand why an organism is somewhere,
why an organism is not from somewhere else and what we can do to help these
organisms or to conserve these organisms. So, these are the three approaches to ecology:
the theoretical approach, the laboratory approach and the field approach.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:29)

Let us now take a look at the outline of the course. We will be having 12 modules in this
course.

The first module is introduction. In introduction to the course, a historical overview of

ecology which will tell us who did what to make the field of ecology, what are the
contributions of different people, different scientists who made ecology the field that
exists today. Next, we will have a look at ecology and evolution. Does ecology drive
evolution? and if yes, how does it do that?

The second module will be about ecological structure. In structure, we will have a look
at the levels of organization. When we say a population of animals or a community of
different organisms, what is an ecosystem and things like that. We look at different

24
levels of organization and how this organization helps the system to survive. Next, we
will have a look at species abundance and distribution or biodiversity and we will look at
it in greater detail in the third lecture.

The third module is ecological interactions. We will have a look at positive interactions
and negative interactions and the study of behaviors and behavioral ecology.

The fourth module is ecological energetics. In this module, we will have a look at food
chains, food webs and tropic levels and we will also understand how and why are the
birds dying because of the insecticides. We will have a look at primary production.
Primary production is how plants make food out of sunlight and we will also have
nutrient cycles, say carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:07)

The fifth module is population ecology. Population is a group of animals belonging to

the same species. A group of chital or a group of sambar; that is a population. If we want
to study a population, we will have to define a number of population parameters. What is
the number of organisms that are living there? what is their sex ratio? how many off-
springs are born to each mother? and so on. We will also have a look at different
demographic techniques to get an idea of these population parameters. Next, we will
have a look at population growth and regulation. For instance, say we wanted to
conserve tigers, how does this tiger population grow? why is it not that we put tigers into
a forest and this population shoots up? what are the factors that regulate its growth? and

25
what are the factors that may even lead to its decline? are things that we will understand
in this lecture. Next we discuss population studies and their applications, which is more
of an applied topic.

The sixth module is about community ecology, community nature and parameters,
community changes and ecological succession. Succession is a process in which the
ecology changes or the ecosystem changes from one state to another state. For instance,
if you have a piece of barren rock; on this rock after a while we might observe that some
algae grow up and when you have some algae on these rocks, after a while they would
start degrading this rock converting it into soil. Once you have the soil there then you
might have some other organisms that come in, say you have grasses that grow on this
rock. Once you have these grasses, they will degrade the rocks even further and make
way to small plants followed by some trees. This is the process of ecological succession.
In the process of ecological succession, every species makes way for the next species till
you reach a climax. So, we will have a look at ecological succession and also community
organization.

The seventh module is about distribution and abundance. We have biogeography, that is
the analysis of geographic distributions. Next, we have ‘Why things where they are’,
what are the factors that regulate this distribution and abundance and we will have a look
at some ‘push and pull factors’ in greater detail.

The eighth module is management of threatened species. What are the different kinds of
threats that are present to different species? There are a number of species that we are
trying to conserve, we have tigers, we have elephants and so on. What are the threats that
are being faced by these species? and what can we do to reduce the impacts of these
threats? We divide it into in-situ conservation and ex-situ conservation.

26
(Refer Slide Time: 44:07)

The 9th module is topics in human ecology. We will have an introductory session
followed by human population growth and food requirements, and sustainable
development.

The 10th module is ecology of change. We will have impacts of climate change, impacts
of plastics, especially on biodiversity, and impacts of oil spills.

The 11th module is applied ecology. We have the optimum yield problem, biological
control and ecotoxicology and pollution management and restoration ecology. And then
we will devote a week to revision of all the topics that we have covered so far.

27
(Refer Slide Time: 44:57)

Now, in this course we will have a continuous assessment. So, the assessment will be in
the form of assignments and in the form of a final exam. Assignments will comprise
multiple choice questions which will be based on the weeks topics and in the final exam
will be having three kinds of questions. So, we will be having final exam in two different
slots; a morning slot and evening slot and we will be having three different kinds of
questions. We will have recall questions; so, recall questions are those questions in
which you have to give an answer based on recall from the lectures. Then we will have
some questions that will come from the assignments, maybe slightly modified, but more
or less based on the assignment and third will be open type questions that will test your
wider understanding of the whole topic. And the final exam will also comprise multiple
choice questions. Now, the final exam will be computer based and will not require you to
write any of the answers.

In this lecture, we had a look at what ecology is; what are the different kinds of topics
that we study in ecology, what is habitat what are the kinds of interactions that we have,
what is a population what is the community and so on. We also had a look at three
different approaches to ecology, we have theoretical approach, we have a laboratory
based approach and we have the field approach, and we make use of all of these
approaches as we move forward in this lecture.

So, thank you for your attention. Jai Hind [FL]

28
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Forest Service, M.P
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture –02
A Historical Overview of Ecology

Namaste, In today’s lecture we will have a look at their Historical Overview of Ecology.
Any discipline of science goes through several stages in which its theories are formed;
those postulates that are not correct, they get overturned and we gather all new forms of
knowledge and we try to put them into a framework. In this lecture, we will have a look
at how ecology has come up through the years. In this particular lecture, we will not only
see who did what, but we will also pay a tribute to all the founders of this particular
subject.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:54)

We begin with Theophrastus. Theophrastus was a Greek scholar who lived from 371 BC
to 287 BC. So, now, you can see that that our subject of ecology, it is not a new subject,
it is as long as 2300 to 2400 years old. Theophrastus was a student of Aristotle. He is
considered the father of Botany and he described interrelationships between animals and
their environments. Now a very basic tenet of ecology is that it tries to understand the
distribution and abundance of different organisms. So, in this case we ask this question

29
that if you have a certain organism in a certain area, why is it found in that area? So, first
try to ask where are different organisms found and then once you know that a certain
organism is found in a particular area, you ask the question why is it found in that area?

(Refer Slide Time: 01:57)

So, essentially for instance if you have this forest and in this forest you have, say some
hills here, and you have a certain species of plant that is growing in this area on the top
of this particular hill.

So firstly, you will ask the question, where are different species found in this forest? So,
with that, once you had you have documented things, you find that this particular species
resides on the top of this mountain. Next you ask the question, why is it living in the top
of that mountain? what are the conditions that it gets there, that it is able to survive
there? Probably this particular plant requires a very cold temperature which is not found
in any other place and that is only found on the top of that particular mountain. So, we
will call such factors as pull factors. So, these are the factors that are pulling this plant to
this particular area.

And if we look at the other areas so, probably you will ask the question, why is this plant
is not found here? So, probably, you have a very high temperature in this area which
becomes a push factor. Now while discerning the pull factors and the push factors, you
also understand the requirements of different organisms; you also understand the
interactions that any organism has with members of its own species, with members of

30
other species; the kinds of interactions the organisms have with the environment. What
are the levels of fluctuations in the environment that any organism is able to tolerate or
not tolerate? All of these things when you study them together to understand the
abundance and distribution of different organisms, you are studying ecology. Now
Theophrastus was one of the very first people who described the interrelationships
between animals and their environment; which is why we say that, he was one of the
earliest ecologists.

Now, in those days we did not have a number of theories, we did not have scientific
equipment, we did not have computers to take care of our data. So, how did people
understand or how did people study ecology in those days. Well, most of it was seeing
what is around you and documenting things.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:14)

So, in the case of Theophrastus, he came up with a collection of 10 books and in these
books he classified plants according to their mode of generation, whether they are
coming out of seeds, whether they are coming out of birds (mode of transport of seeds),
whether they are coming out from some other vegetative parts and so on.

He also classified plants on the basis of their localities; what is found in which areas. He
also classified plants on the basis of their sizes and he also classified plants on the basis
of their practical uses such as food, juice, herbs and so on. As you can see here, he was
trying to gather information about as many plants as possible and he was then trying to

31
classify these plants on the basis of their modes of generation, location, size, uses and so
on. This is how ecology worked in the very early days. You tried to gather information;
you try to classify things. Then on the basis of these classifications, he was able to
discuss the importance of climate and soil to plants.

Now, here again when we are talking about this example of this plant that is living in this
area. We are talking about things like climate, because this area is colder, this area is
warmer. So, even today when we are taking these concepts for granted, Theophrastus
was the first person to point out these points; or differences in soil; probably the soil
cover in this area is very less. So, this has, say, a depth of soil, which is say around 5
centimeters; in this area you have a depth of soil which is safe around 1 meter.

Now, if you have a soil that is 1 meter deep. So, it can support a number of different
plants, but the soil that is just 5 centimeters deep it will probably not serve the needs of a
number of plants. So, because you have a very high density of plants that are found here
so, your particular species is getting out-competed. Whereas, in this area, because other
plants are not able to survive, this plant is able to survive because there is hardly any
competition in this area or things like the amount of nutrients that are there in the soil. If
you have a region that is on top of a mountain, whenever there is a rain in this area, the
nutrients that are there in the soil along with the rain, get washed to the bottom areas.
This is the reason why typically we see that the soils in the mountains are not very
nutrient rich, and these are the factors that are governing the distribution and abundance
of different organisms which is the science of ecology. Theophrastus was the first person
to discuss these factors; the importance of climate, the importance of soils to different
plants.

His book is known as ‘Enquiry into Plants and Minor Works on Odours and Weather
Signs’. He was the first person who we are talking about; but in the case of
Theophrastus, it was difficult for him to note all these different plants, it was difficult to
classify these plants because, say, even in the case of India, if I am talking in English, I
will say that this tree is a mango tree, but if I am talking in Hindi I will refer to it as “aam
ka paed”.

32
Now, if you have different names for any particular species, it becomes difficult to
communicate with other people. So, this was a problem that remained for a very long
period of time.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:45)

For instance, in the case of Theophrastus, in his book, if he wrote the name of some
particular plant, and he was a Greek scholar, and if this text was taken to some other area
say, it was taken to Egypt and probably people in Egypt would be using some other
different terms. So, if you have different names for the same species in different areas,
you are not able to collate the information or the findings that are being taken up by
different scholars. So, this problem was sorted out by the next person who is Carolus
Linnaeus.

From around 300 BC, we are jumping to the 18th century. That does not mean that we
did not have any collate in this period, but it is simply that because of want of time, our
list cannot be an all - encompassing list. And so, we are just picking on different people
who in our opinion played a very major role in the science of ecology. Now Carolus
Linnaeus or Carl von Linne, was a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist.

Here again you can see that there is one person who is a botanist, is a zoologist and he is
also a doctor because, he was prescribing medicines, he is a physician, because in those
early days all these sciences had not matured enough in a way that we are seeing them
now. If there is a person who is studying botany, a person who is a botanist, he has got so

33
many things to study because there is so vast amount of information that, probably, the
people were able to devote very less amount of time to other fields. But in these early
days, we had people who had a grip on a number of subjects and so, in most cases we
refer to them as naturalist.

So, a naturalist is a person who is studying nature, a person who is knowing about nature
and a person who is observing nature Now, that nature can be in the form of plants, it can
be in the form of animals, it can be in the form of rocks or soil or anything. So, in these
early people, you will see that they had a command over a number of topics and they
played a very important role in the development of a number of different fields of
science. He lived from 23 May 1707 to 10th of January 1778 and he is called the father
of modern taxonomy. Taxonomy is a process or it is a science in which you name
different taxa. If you are seeing a plant; if there is this mango tree somewhere, what is
the name that you give to this mango tree? and what is the family to which this mango
tree belongs? Essentially in the case of our biological world, we say that we have
different kinds of taxa.

(Refer Slide Time: 11:17)

We start with kingdom. For instance, a mango tree belongs to the plant kingdom; it is a
plant it is not an animal. We have this hierarchy: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family,
genus and species.

34
In the case of mango, he said that mango will be written as Mangifera indica where
mangifera is the genus, indica is the species and it belongs to a family that is known as
the Anacardiaceae family. What he was doing here was that he used these Latin words
for different things. In place of calling it a mango, because different languages that are in
use today, they can change with time. So, for instance in the case of Hindi, it could have
changed from “aamru” to “aam” and probably in some other places in India people
would, in place of calling it “aam” they would call it “aama”. So, in different dialects, in
different languages, the names change and more so, if you are using a language that is
currently in existence.

He made use of all these Latin terminologies and he developed this science of taxonomy
which is a science of naming different species, in different taxa, and he is also called the
father of systematics because, after naming all these different species, you were able to
classify different species. Naming of different species, naming of different taxa and
classifying of all these taxa is the contribution of Carolus Linnaeus.

In the case of classification, this also has a number of other consequences because, once
you have classified a particular species and if you find some other organism or some
other species that is having very close connection, i.e.; it looks similar; probably it has
similar attributes; then probably you will put them together in the same genus. Similarly,
the organisms that are close together in the same genus, they will be put in the same
family.

35
(Refer Slide Time: 13:53)

For example, in case of a dog, we call it a Canis familiaris. It belongs to the Canis genus
and the species is familiaris. In the case of a wolf, you call it Canis lupus. Both of these
belong to the same genera, which is Canis. In this case, it also tells you that, those
organisms that are placed together they probably evolved from a common ancestor
because of which they are having very common properties.

If we look at systematics, we can discern a number of ideas about evolution, and

similarly evolution has been able to refine systematics and taxonomy over the ages.
These are the contributions of Carolus Linnaeus. Once you were able to name each and
every species and each and every taxon, once you were able to classify them together,
then you could observe patterns amongst different organisms, amongst different taxa.

36
(Refer Slide Time: 15:03)

Next, we will have a look at Thomas Robert Malthus and we will devote one complete
lecture to what he said. He was an English cleric and a scholar, who lived from 13th
February 1766 to 23rd of December 1834, and in 1798 he wrote a book, ‘An Essay on
the Principle of Population’, and this person, by writing this book has influenced a
number of studies in population ecology.

Now to put his ideas simply, he said that if you consider any population, it grows via
geometric progression. Basically, from two individuals, you become four individuals;
from four it becomes 8; 8 to 16; 16 to 32. Essentially you are doubling at every point of
time. Let us say that if you have a population that was 1000.

37
(Refer Slide Time: 15:58)

From 1000 it becomes from 2000, from 2000 it becomes 4000, then it becomes 8000,
then it becomes 16000 and so on. Now that is about the population. And in this case, we
are talking about the population of human beings. But then, if you look at the resources
in terms of say agriculture, probably when you had 1000 population; you probably had
1000 bushels of wheat that were being grown. Now agriculture grows via arithmetic
progression; in which case, in the time it became from 1000 people to 2000 people, it
grew from 1000 to 2000 bushels of wheat.

When this population was able to grow from 2000 to 4000, this was a geometric
progression. Now in the case of a geometric progression, you have this situation that an+1
is given by an multiplied by a factor of ‘r’. So, which means that you can get to the next
term of the geometric progression by taking the previous term and multiplying it with a
common factor, in this case we are taking ‘r’ is equal to 2. So, 1000 multiplied by 2 is
2000 , 2000 multiplied by 2 is 4000, 4000 multiplied by 2 is 8000 and so on.

In the case of an arithmetic progression you say that an+1 is equal to an plus common
difference which is ‘d’. So, you add something that is common. So, with 1000, if you add
1000 you get 2000, but then this ‘d’ remains constant. So, then to your 2000 you add
1000 you get 3000, then you get 4000, then you get 5000 and then so on. Now it is very
easy to observe here that in a very short period of time the population would have grown
to such a large extent that the agriculture will not be able to compensate for that amount

38
of growth. So, essentially your population will grow much faster than agriculture will
grow.

So, you will have a dearth of resources and once you have a dearth of resources there
will be intense amount of competition and probably some individuals in the population
will have to die. So, he talked about preventive measures and he also talked about
positive measures through which you can keep your population in check. These were the
very early ideas that influenced a lot of thinking of population ecology.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:55)

He was also the person who played a very important role in a sub-discipline of ecology
which is population ecology.

The next person we will consider is Alexander von Humboldt. He was a Prussian fellow.
Prussian is a person who belongs to the erstwhile empire of Prussia, which is now
Germany. So, he was essentially a German.

He was a polymath. He was a geographer, he was a naturalist, he was an explorer. Again,

we are seeing that he had a command over a number of languages and a number of
fields. And he lived from 14th of September 1769 to 6th of May 1859 and he performed
quantitative work on botanical geography and he is considered the father of
biogeography. He was an explorer, so, he took a contract from the Spanish empire and

39
then he went to South America. In South America he went to Peru, he went to
Venezuela, he went to Cuba and a number of other places.

And when he went to all these areas, he kept a lookout for what different organisms are
found in what different areas. So, in this case you see that there are certain organisms
that are found in the lower slopes of a mountain.

(Refer Slide Time: 20:12)

So, there are certain organisms that are found here, certain others that are found here,
certain others that are found here and so on or probably in the South American continent,
you had certain organisms that were, say found in this area, there were certain organisms
that were found in this other area. So, essentially, he studied the distribution of different
organisms and he looked at it in a quantitative manner. So, he put everything down to
numbers and he is considered the father of this field of biogeography.

40
(Refer Slide Time: 20:50).

Next, we will have a look at Alfred Russel Wallace. He was a British naturalist, an
explorer, a geographer and an anthropologist and a biologist who lived from 1823 to
1913 and his contributions were that he independently conceived the theory of evolution
through natural selection and also worked on biogeography. So, Wallace’s line separates
animals of Asian origin from animals of Australasian origin. His main contribution was
about the theory of evolution. We generally attribute the theory of evolution to another
naturalist, Charles Darwin.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:30)

41
Charles Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist. He lived from 1809 to
1882. He is famous for the theory of evolution and the theory of natural selection.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:46)

So, essentially this was a contribution of both of these naturalists; Charles Darwin and
Alfred Russel Wallace.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:50)

Now, what do you mean by ‘Evolution’?

42
(Refer Slide Time: 21:56)

Evolution refers to changes that happen with time in different species; they may lead to
differences that prop up in a species and they may also lead to the formation of a new
species. So, you can understand evolution very easily if you look at the sub-steps of
evolution.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:16)

So, if you consider any population. Let us consider the population of human beings. In
the population of human beings, you will have different individuals who have different
characteristics.

43
So, there will be somebody who is tall, there will be somebody who is short, there is
somebody who is dark, somebody who is fair, there will be somebody with a black hair,
somebody with a brown hair, somebody with black colored eyes, somebody with blue
colored eyes. So, you see ‘n’ number of variations and these variations are not only in
the external traits, but these variations are also found in a number of internal traits such
as metabolic processes. There are some people who can drink milk very easily; there are
some other people who have a lactose intolerance.

We have variations in a number of these different traits, and similar to human beings we
have variations in all different species. If you take any species and if you consider the
individuals of that species, every individual will have some differences from the other
individuals, maybe less so in the case of homozygotic twins, but more so, in the case of
people who are distant relatives or maybe not related to each other. If you have these
variations, what can be these variations?

Let us say in the case of mosquitoes, you spray insecticides on a population of

mosquitoes. There will be some mosquitoes that will die off preferentially because they
are completely not able to tolerate at the insecticide, but then there will be some
individuals that will be able to tolerate the insecticide and they live. There will be some
mosquitoes that fly very fast or there will be some mosquitoes that are slow in flying.
Now those mosquitoes that are flying very fast are probably using immense amount of
energy and those mosquitoes that slow are probably using less amount of energy. But
then you will find variations everywhere. So, the first tenet in evolution is variation. So,
every species has its individuals and every individual is different from every other
individual.

There are some variations that are there in different populations, but then the second
tenet is about overpopulation. Now in this case, what we are saying is that every
species, the organisms of every species have this innate ability to produce ‘n’ number of
off-springs, may be much greater than what the nature can sustain. So, for instance if you
look at a single female mosquito, it may lay as many as 500 to 1000 eggs.

So, from 2 mosquitoes that are there in the parental generation; a male mosquito and a
female mosquito, you have 1000 individuals in the next population, in the next
generation. So, from 2 to 1000, you have a 500 times excess. If this thing continues for a

44
while in the next generation you again have 500 times excess and you have 500,000
individuals. And then in the next generation you again multiply it by 500 and you have
250 million individuals. What is happening in this case is that if you have two
individuals and suppose nature can support for say 1000 individuals, but then you can
see that in just first generation, second generation and third generation, you have
exceeded the capacity of nature by a very huge amount. So, every species has got this
trait that it can over-populate. Even in the case of human beings, people can produce as
many as 6 or 10 off-springs. So, in just one generation you can increase your population
by as much as 5 folds, 6 folds, or 7 folds. And then in a few generations you will have so
many human beings that you do not have ample resources for them. This brings us to the
3rd point which is the struggle for existence.

Now in the case of these mosquitoes you have these 250 million mosquitoes and the
nature can provide resources for say 1000 mosquitoes, so, what will happen? At every
stage there will be some number of individuals that will die off because those individuals
that are better able to get food, that are better able to find a mate, that are better able to
say fend off from the predators, they will survive and the others will either die of
starvation or maybe they would not find a mate. So, they are not able to pass on their
traits to the next generation or maybe they are killed off by the predators and so on. So,
there is a constant struggle for existence if you see the nature.

And because of this struggle for existence the 4th step is that of the survival of the
fittest or the process of natural selection. So, just because there is a huge struggle for
existence, you have less amount of resources, more number of individuals. So, there will
be some individuals that will be lost and when you have these processes that are going
on for a very long period of time, you will have certain traits that will preferentially start
showing up in this particular population and probably this would even lead to something
that we call as speciation, in which the population becomes so different from the
previous generations that it now becomes a new species in itself.

That is the contribution of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Once you have
this idea, in the case of Carolus Linnaeus, he talked about different individuals, different
organisms; he was able to classify these organisms, but then Charles Darwin and
Wallace were able to show how these new organisms get formed; how these different

45
classes, how these different genera get formed. This was a very big contribution because
it was able to collate all the information that had been given by the previous generations.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:04)

Next, we will have a look at Herbert Spencer. He was an English philosopher, biologist,
anthropologist and a sociologist who lived from 1820 to 1903 and he actually gave this
term ‘survival of the fittest’. He also worked on the ideas of evolution.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:23)

Next, we will have a look at Ernst Haeckel. Ernst Haeckel was a German biologist,
naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologists and artist who lived from

46
1834 to 1919. He made detailed multicolored illustrations of animals and sea creatures.
Here we can see that our quest with naming different things, classifying different things
has continued even till the 20th century because, Ernst Haeckel was also involved in
making a collection of what different organisms are, how do they look and so on and he
also coined the term ecology.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:13)

In the term ‘Ecology’, ‘eco’ is home and ‘logos’ is study. It is the study of the home.
And in the case of Ernst Haeckel he actually called it as Oekology. He was the person
who played an important role not only in making all these different illustrations which
guided the succeeding generations, but he also coined the term ecology.

47
(Refer Slide Time: 30:41)

Next, we look at Vladimir Vernadsky. Vladimir was a Russian scholar, He belonged to

Ukraine and he was a mineralogist and a geochemist. Here was not very much related to
biology, but then because of his command over minerals and over geochemistry he was
able to give vital inputs to the science of ecology. He lived from 1863 to 1945 and in
1926 he wrote the book “the Biosphere”. Now a biosphere refers to that portion of the
earth that is able to support life.

So, on the earth we talk about lithosphere. Lithosphere is the rocky portion; we talk
about atmosphere which is the air that is surrounding us; we talk about the hydrosphere
which is all the water bodies that we have. And there is life on land, there is life in the
air, there is life in the water bodies. So, a combination of all of these that are supporting
life is called the biosphere. Vladimir also played an important role in being one of the
first scientists to recognize that oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the earth’s
atmosphere result from biological processes. And he also gave rise to the biogeochemical
cycles. What do we mean by biogeochemical cycles? If you consider any organism; if
you consider yourself, you are taking in a number of nutrients. So, you are taking
carbohydrates, proteins, fats, different mineral salts and so on. Now how are you getting
all of these? You are getting it from your food, whether you are a vegetarian or a non-
vegetarian, we are consumers, we are not able to produce our own food, we are not able
to perform photosynthesis.

48
We get it from something else. Now that “something else” can be a plant if you are a
vegetarian or that can be an animal if you are a non-vegetarian. Where does that animal
get its food from? Ultimately it will get its food from a plant source. So, plants are
ultimately supporting the whole of the biosphere.

(Refer Slide Time: 33:10)

Now if you consider any plant, while it is growing, it requires water. So, it draws up
water from the soil through its roots; it requires air, especially it requires carbon dioxide
which it takes from the air; it requires energy from the sunlight and it also requires a
number of minerals that it gets from the soil when they are dissolved in water. So,
through the process of transpiration this water is taken up from the soil and then it is
released into the atmosphere; with the water it takes up the mineral salts, it takes carbon
dioxide from the air, it takes energy from the sunlight and then it produces the food.

This food is in the form of carbohydrates, proteins or fats which are then stored in its
body and then from this plant, when a herbivore eats it, it gets into the animal kingdom,
then from one animal it moves to another animal and so on till it reaches the top predator
or the apex predator. When a plant dies, when an animal dies or any of these animals die
or when they are giving out some waste products, say, the animal defecates or the plant
is shedding its leaves. all of these will be then acted upon by the decomposers.

The minerals are also taken up by the plant. So, let us consider any one metal; let us say
the plant took up iron. Now this iron, when the animal ate this plant, the animal got the

49
iron; from this animal it moved to another animal and so on. And when the plant died or
the animal died or with their waste products the decomposers got this iron and then they
were able to break down these organic molecules so that the iron got released into the
environment and it was again able to reach the mineral pool that is there in the soil.

So, in this way we can see that there is a continuous cycle that is going on from the
minerals that are there in the soil, they are taken up through all of the biosphere and then
they are released back into the soil. Similarly, if we look at another element such as
carbon. Now carbon is a component of carbohydrates, it is there in proteins, it is there in
fat, so, it is there in most of the organic molecules that we have.

Where do the plants get carbon from? They take it from the air in the form of carbon
dioxide, then they make food, from there when the animals eat it, the animals are getting
the carbon, from one animal it is moving to another animal which are again getting
carbon. All of these organisms are releasing carbon dioxide through the process of
respiration. So, if there is any animal that is respiring, it is releasing a carbon dioxide and
when these organisms die or when they shed their parts or will they defecate, all of these
come to the decomposers. So these decomposes are also getting carbon and then these
decomposes breakdown this carbon into carbon dioxide and release it into the
atmosphere.

Here we are seeing another cycle which is moving from the atmosphere through the
plants, through animals and then back into the atmosphere. So, these processes are
known as biogeochemical cycles because, they are involving biological beings, the living
beings in the form of plants and animals, they are also involving in the earth. So, which
is why you have the ‘geo’ component and these are chemical cycles because you are
seeing a movement of chemicals through all of these.

So, Vladimir Vernadsky was the first person who was able to recognize that oxygen,
nitrogen, carbon dioxide, every element on the earth; all these chemicals that are there in
the earth are resulting from biological processes and they are a part of biogeochemical
cycles; which was a big contribution.

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(Refer Slide Time: 37:25)

Next, we have a look at Arthur Tansley. Arthur Tansley was an English botanist. He
lived from 1871 to 1955 and he introduced the concept of ecosystem into biology. Till
this point of time, we were only talking about different species; we were talking about
say , plant species or an animal species or we were talking about these groups of
organisms. Now, ecosystem is a combination of different communities together with the
a biotic components that are there in the surroundings.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:05)

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So, essentially if we talk about, say a lake. In this lake you have different organisms; you
may be having some fishes that are there in this water, you may be having some plants
that are growing in the water, you may be having some planktons or some algae that are
growing in this water, maybe some other animals that live in this water, say a frog.

And you also have a number of abiotic components. What are those abiotic components?
Consider the air, if you do not have air then oxygen will not get dissolved into the water,
carbon dioxide will not be released and ultimately all these life forms will die off. So,
you require air for the survival of all these organisms, you require water for the survival
of all of these organisms, you require this soil that is there in the bottom. So, all the
biotic components together with the abiotic components form the ecosystem and whence
you study the ecosystems, you get very different properties from what you can get from a
study of only the biotic components.

Tansley is very important because, he introduced this concept of ecosystem into biology.
The biologists do not have to study just the living forms, but they also have to study the
nonliving portions, the abiotic components and he also played a big role in consolidation
of the science of ecology by founding the British ecological society. It was one of the
very first societies that were formed for the promotion of ecology.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:44)

Next, we will have a look at Charles Sutherland Elton. He was an English zoologist and
animal ecologist. He lived from 1900 to 1991. He was a pioneer of modern population

52
and community ecology and a pioneer of the study of invasive organisms. He is also
known as the father of animal ecology. Now, what do you mean by population ecology?
When we say population ecology, a population is a group of animals that belong to the
same species that are living together in one area. So, let us consider all the monkeys that
are living in a forest. So, they are forming a population. What are the interactions
between the members of a population? How does the population size grow or reduce? Do
these members cooperate with each other or do they fight with each other? Is there a
competition or is there a cooperation? When do we have a competition? When do we
have a cooperation? All these things are studied in population ecology. When we talk
about community ecology, a community is a group of different populations. When we
are talking about a population; a population has only one species whereas a community
has several species.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:04)

When we are talking about community ecology, we ask the question, how do these
different populations, or the members of different populations which belong to different
species interact with each other? For instance, we might ask the question, What are the
relationships of predation in this area? In this forest there are monkeys and probably
there are some mosquitoes; what is the relationship between the monkeys and the
mosquitoes? Probably you can ask the question, what is the relationship between a
monkey and a plant? There is a mango tree that is growing in the forest; Is the monkey
helping the mango tree or is it destroying the mango tree because we may see on the first

53
glance that the monkey is eating up the mangoes and so, the monkey is harming the
plant.

But on the other hand, we will find that by this process of eating of the mango fruit, the
monkey is also transporting the seeds of the mango tree to other areas. So, it is playing
the big role for the mango tree. If it were not for the monkeys, all these mango fruits
would just drop down below the tree.

(Refer Slide Time: 42:33)

And once you have a situation where you have a tree and all the fruits are coming down
here only. So, in this case the seedlings that come out, the seedlings that germinate, they
will not have access to enough resources, because this plant is taking up all of the
sunlight. So, probably all of this area will be dark, it does not have sufficient light for
these seedlings to grow or probably because this tree has a very large network of roots.
So, these seedlings will not be able to compete for water or for minerals. So, because
there are monkeys in this system, they are taking this fruit and they are throwing it
somewhere else. So, probably you have a fruit that is thrown here. So, from this seed you
will get a mango plant that is coming up in this region. Thus, a monkey is playing a very
big role for the mango tree. Such kinds of interactions are studied in the field of
community ecology, and Elton happened to be one of the very first people who studied
these topics, the differences between population ecology and community ecology.

54
He was also one of the pioneers of the study of invasive organisms. What is an invasive
organism? An invasive organism is an organism which, if it enters into a system is able
to out-compete everything else or a number of other native species. For example, lantana
is a shrub like species, that is a woody species that is formed and it is not native to India,
it comes from Africa, but is now invading into all of our forests.

What it does is that, it has a number of flowers, it produces a very large amount of fruits,
those fruits are sweet. It produces very small sized seeds and those seeds are very hardy.
So, those seeds are able to tolerate a very wide range of conditions. You will have birds
that feed on these fruits that has these seeds. They gulp it down into their stomachs and
intestines. Eventually, they will come out along with the bird droppings.

(Refer Slide Time: 44:58)

If you have a forest and you have say a patch of lantana here, you have n number of
fruits and seeds, you will have a bird that will transport these seeds and because these
seeds are very hardy, they will then start growing up in a number of other areas.
Eventually, you will start having these small lantana patches everywhere.

Lantana is so good at getting nutrients from the environment that it is able to out-
compete most of the native species. So, you will have a forest that, after a while, will be
full of lantana. Such species are known as invasive species. Elton was one of the first
people who studied these invasive organisms. He was the pioneer of the study of
invasive organisms.

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(Refer Slide Time: 45:51)

Next, we will look at George Evelyn Hutchinson. He was a British ecologist who lived
from 1903 to 1991 and he gave the theory of interspecific competition and also wrote a
treatise on limnology.

Limnology is the study of lakes. In the case of a lake ecosystem, what is happening; is
what you will be studying in the case of limnology. He is called the father of modern
ecology. He wrote a lot on interspecific competition; Interspecific competition is when
an organism of one species is competing against an organism of another species, for
instance, in a forest you have chitals which are deer species, and you have sambars. The
chitals are also feeding on grasses and sambars are also feeding on grasses and they also
browse a bit.

If you have different species that are feeding on the same resources, there would be some
sort of competition. It is possible that you will have some sort of competition. There are
mechanisms through which organisms tend to come out of this problem of competition
wherein they will go for specific resources. For instance, sambar will prefer to live in
areas that are more hilly, and chital will prefer to live in those areas that have more
grasslands. But then, what are the relationships between these organisms that are using
the same resources? or for instance, there is also a classic case in which you have these
two organisms.

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(Refer Slide Time: 47:26)

Let us say you have this chital and you have the sambar and you also have a tiger in the
system. Now, if a chital is able to increase its population, so, in that case, the tiger will be
getting more food, because a tiger feeds on the chital. So, the tiger population will
increase; Now if the tiger population increases, a tiger also feeds on a sambar, so, if just
the chital population is increasing and the sambar population is not increasing, then
because of the impact of the tiger, you will have a decrease in the sambar population
because more number of tigers will be feeding on more number of sambars.

There are also a number of interactions in which organisms are not interacting directly,
but at the same time they are competing with others, they are giving a negative influence
on other organisms. All such things come under the domain of interspecific competition
and George Evelyn Hutchinson was one of the first people to study these.

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(Refer Slide Time: 48:37)

Next, we will have a look at Lotka. Alfred James Lotka was a US mathematician,
physical, chemist and a statistician. You can see that he was quite away from biology; he
was more inclined towards mathematics and physical sciences. He is known for Lotka-
Volterra equations of predator-prey relationship.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:07)

Together with Vito Volterra, who was an Italian mathematician and physicist who lived
from 1860 to 1940 and both of these people Lotka and Volterra are known for the Lotka

58
Volterra equations of predator-prey relationship. What is this relationship? Let us
consider a system where you have a predator and a prey.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:36)

Let us say, we are only considering two species; one is a chital and the second one is a
tiger. Now if this chital population, increases; so, let us say we have an increase in the
chital population that would result in an increase in the tiger population because now the
tiger has more amount of food and so, it does not have to wander off to larger areas; it
does not have to defend a larger territory, but can reproduce much more easily. But then,
if you have an increase in the tiger population, that would, in effect start predating on the
chitals. So, you started with an increased chital population, but then an increase in the
tiger population will result in a decrease in the chital population. Now, if your chital
population decreases, in that case you will have less amount of food that is available for
the tigers. If you have less amount of food that is available for the tigers, then in effect,
the tiger population will decrease, because they are having less amount of food. If the
tiger population decreases, the chitals now have less amount of predatory pressure. In
that case the chital population will increase further. This is a sort of cyclical relationships
that we observe in nature, that if you have two species that have these relationships of
predator and prey dynamics, the increase in the predator population will depend on its
own population plus it will depend on the population of the prey. Similarly, the increase
or decrease in the population of the prey will not only depend on its own population, but
it will also depend on the population of the predator. Now these dynamics and these

59
equations are known as Lotka-Volterra equations for predator-prey relationship. So, now
we are moving towards the field of mathematical ecology.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:38)

Lastly, we will have a look at Eugene P. Odum. He was an American biologist who lived
from 1913 to 2002 and he is known for the book ‘Fundamentals of Ecology’ that was
published in 1953. He was one of the stalwarts of the field of ecology because he was
able to collate all these different information from different fields and he was able to
bring it out in the form of a book which gives us an access to all of this different
information. The book ‘Fundamentals of ecology’ is one of the very first text books that
was published in the field of ecology and this also cemented the role of ecology as the
science in itself. He also did a lot of research in different ecological phenomena.

We can see that ecology is a very old science. Even people who lived in the pre-christian
era, were also looking at distributions, abundances of different organisms and using the
resources that they had at their disposal. They did not have computers, they did not have
access to all these different theories, but then, because of their inquisitiveness, they
started this field of understanding the abundance and distribution of different organisms,
and with time we have delved more deeper and deeper into the subject. We have started
looking at how members of one population interact with members of the same
population; how do members of one species interact another with other species. We have
moved into mathematical ecology, we have tried to describe different relationships and

60
forms of equations and so on. So, we can see that the science of ecology has its own long
history and now it has come up in the form of a separate field in itself. So, that is all we
have to discuss today.

Thank you for your attention, Jai Hind.

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 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Indian Forest Service, M.P
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 03
Ecology and Evolution

Namaste.

We are the products of Evolution? Life began on this earth roughly four billion years
back. And whatever life forms we observed now, whether it is trees, whether it is birds,
animals, even us, we are all the products of evolution. In this lecture, we are going to
have a look whether ecology has any relation with evolution.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:37)

Let us begin with some key terms. As we saw before, ecology is the scientific study of
interaction among organisms and their environments. And here, we need to emphasize
on the word interactions. We are studying the interactions among the organisms and their
environment, whereas evolution, the process through which we have all been made, it is
the genetic adaptation of organisms to their environment.

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(Refer Slide Time: 01:15)

In this case we need to look into these two terms - genetic adaptation, what is genetics?
what is adaptation? and how are these related to evolution? Now, adaptation is any
alteration in the structure or function of an organism by which the organism becomes
better able to survive and multiply in its environment. Adaptation is any alteration.
Alteration is changes; any change in the structure of an organism or the function of an
organism.

For instance if in place of hands, if I develop wings, so that would be a change in the
structure or for instance a change in the function would be in place of using my hands for
writing, if maybe I start using it for something else. Probably for instance, I develop
some other sense organs on this hand, so that I can smell these objects by touching them,
so that would be a change in the function of an organ.

Any such changes in any organism or any organ of the organism by which the organism
becomes better able to survive, and multiply in its environment. Any changes will not be
adaptation. A change or an alteration is an adaptation only when it permits the organism
to better survive in that environment, better survive and to better multiply in that
environment.

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(Refer Slide Time: 02:39)

For instance, a classical example of adaptation is, a camel living in a desert environment.
In that desert environment, you have mounds and mounds of sand, and there you have a
camel. Now, what are the kinds of adaptations that you will find in this animal? One is
that it has a hump, now why does it have a hump? The hump stores energy in the form of
fats and water; why is that required? Because, when you are living in a desert
environment, you do not have very ready access to water and food.

If you have ever seen a camel drinking, it would drink buckets and buckets of water and
store all of that into its body. And the urine that this animal releases out is a very
concentrated urine, because it is trying to save all of that water inside its body. If it loses
out that water, it would not have access to that water again.

Similarly, if you look at the blood of the animal, it has the characteristic that even if it
has lost quite a lot of water, it will still be able to pump this blood into the body and be
able to bring nutrients to the cells, and take out the waste materials. Similarly, if you look
at the legs, so the legs are padded. Now, why are they padded? Because, if you consider
a leg that is say like this, and a leg that is padded and has a larger surface area.

Now if this area is “a” and this area is capital “A”, we are talking about these areas. And
if the weight of the animal is say “x” kg, so the amount of downwards force, that is being
put on the legs is [“x” multiplied by “g”], where g is the acceleration due to gravity,
approximately 9.8 meter per second square.

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This much amount of force that is acting downwards, is divided in by the four legs. The
pressure that would be exerted by this force that is [x multiplied by g divided by 4] on
each interface between the leg and the sand would be given by [x multiplied by g
divided by 4a] in the first case and [x multiplied by g divided by 4A] in the second case.

In this particular example if A is large, so in that case the pressure would be less. If you
have less amount of pressure, how it helps is that, if you have this sand, and if you have a
pointed leg, it will go inside the sand, whereas, if you have a padded leg, then because
the amount of pressure is less, so the animal will be able to walk on this sand. This is
also another adaptation that is there in the animal.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:51)

Then, if you look at the eyes of the animal, you would observe that the eyes have very
large eyelashes. Now, these eyelashes prevent sand from getting into the eyes of the
animal. If you look at its tongue or even its mouth, it will be very well suited to eat the
kinds of vegetation that are present in the desert environment. These are all different
kinds of adaptations that this animal has and all these adaptations are permitting this
animal to better survive in this environment.

Genetics means relating to genes or heredity. Basically, all of these adaptations, they
should be of such a manner that they get passed on from one organism to its offspring, to
their offspring, and so on; which means that all of these adaptations have to be heritable
adaptations. So, if you have a camel that, for instance, has feet that are even better

65
adapted, then most of its companions. And if this trait is not able to be passed down to its
offspring, it would not be called a genetic adaptation. So, what we want in the case of
evolution is genetic adaptations or inheritable fitness that permit the animal to better
survive and better reproduce.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:23)

We have introduced this term fitness. And fitness refers to the ability of a particular
organism to leave descendants in future generations, relative to other organisms.
Evolution tends to maximize fitness through the process of natural selection. Basically
fitness is the ability of an animal or an organism to leave descendants in the future
generations relative to other organisms; which means that it should be able to leave more
number of descendants as compared to any other organism of the same species that is
there in the environment.

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(Refer Slide Time: 07:57)

For instance you have two individuals, you have this individual A, and this individual B.
And suppose you have individual A that has produced 10 offsprings, individual B has
produced 100 offsprings. And all of these are able to survive to their maturity. So, here
you have 10, and here you have 100. So, in this case we would say that organism B has a
better amount of fitness as compared to organism A, because it left 100 offsprings,
whereas A was only able to leave 10 offsprings.

But, suppose out of these 10 offsprings, 9 were able to survive, and out of these 100
offsprings only 7 were able to survive. Why? Because organism A was able to devote all
its time and attention to all of its 10 offsprings, so that 9 survived. Whereas, B just
produced more number of offsprings, and it did not give it any parental care and so only
7 survived to the next generation.

So, in that case we would say that A is having more amount of fitness as compared to B,
because it left more number of offsprings to the next generation. Why is that important?
It is important because evolution tends to maximize the fitness through the process of
natural selection. What we mean by this is that, evolution prefers better fitness. Why?
Because if organism A has those characteristics which are inheritable, and because of
which it was able to leave more number of offsprings. So, all of these 9 offsprings will
also be getting those characters from A and so all of these 9 or most of these 9 organisms

67
will be able to leave even more number of offsprings in the next generation as compared
to B.

So, in the case of B, out of 100 only 7 survived; out of these, only a very few numbers
would survive. So, after a while we would observe that in this system, we will be having
more number of organism with A kind of characteristics as compared to B kind of
characteristic. So, evolution tends to maximize the fitness that is present.

(Refer Slide Time: 10:23)

Now, what are the characteristics of this fitness? Fitness is environment-specific. We do

not have an absolute value of fitness, it is environment-specific. So, for instance, in the
case of our organisms A and B; in a single environment it is possible. Let us consider an
environment in which there is more amount of predation.

In this environment, if you are able to protect your offsprings, you will be able to have
more number of offsprings in the next generation whereas, if you are not able to protect
your offsprings, most of the offsprings would die off. But, then in an environment in
which you do not have any predation and you have ample resources as compared to the
population; in that case you do not require very much amount of parental care that needs
to be given to the offsprings.

So, in that case this organism B that was able to have more number of offsprings would
be said to be more fit as compared to organism A that only gave 10 individuals, because

68
in the absence of predation, in the absence of diseases, when you have ample amount of
resources available, most of the offsprings are able to survive. So, in such situations just
producing more number of offsprings would give you a bit of amount of fitness. So, in
this example we saw that fitness is environment specific, it depends on how harsh the
environment is.

Secondly, fitness is species-specific. So, we do not compare fitness between two

different species. High reproductive rate alone does not mean higher fitness, but higher
survival of more progeny, does. So, as we saw before, if you have more number of
offspring, it does not mean that you have more amount of fitness. What is important is
how many of those offsprings are able to survive to the next generation.

Then fitness should be measured across several generations; it is a long-term measure.

So, we cannot determine fitness in just one or two generations, it has to be determined
over a long period of time. And it works at the level of complete organism; not on
individual traits such as size or speed.

Essentially if you have two organisms, if one organism is faster than the second
organism, it does not mean that the organism will be more fit, because we will have to
look at all the characteristics that are present in that organism. So, it is possible that the
organism that has speed also has more amount of blood pressure, and so it dies off
quickly as compared to the second organism. In that case, we will say that speed is alone
insufficient to give fitness to the organism. So, all the characteristics of the organism
need to be looked in totality.

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(Refer Slide Time: 13:11)

Next, we said that natural selection is the mechanism through which more fit organisms
are selected. How do we define natural selection? It is the process in nature by which
only those organisms that are best adapted to their environment tend to survive and
transmit their genetic characteristics to the succeeding generations, while those less
adapted tend to be eliminated. Natural selection is the process through which nature is
selecting those organisms that are better fitted to the environment.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:45)

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And there are five stages in natural selection. The first stage is called variation. All
individuals are not identical. They have different characteristics. For instance, if we look
at a class of students; we would find that we have students of different heights or we
have students of different weights or different skin color or different color of the hair or
different eye color. These are all variations that are found in a population. Natural
selection, when it wants to select those organisms that are the best fit; in essence, it also
means that you need to have some variations. If all the organisms are one and the same,
then you cannot select between these two organisms.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:27)

We have variations that are present in organisms, and a classical example is that of
peppered moth.

This is a moth, and it is present in two varieties. One is this dark colored moth, and the
second is this light colored version. These belong to the same species, but they have
different colors.

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(Refer Slide Time: 14:47)

The second step of natural selection is over population. Over population means that
organisms tend to produce excess number of offsprings. So, for example female
mosquitoes may lay 500 to 1000 eggs.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:07)

Now, if you had a situation in which every two organisms after mating, they only
produced two offsprings, which upon mating again produced only two offsprings. In
such a situation, we will observe that the population is not growing, the population is
static; because for every two of organisms in this generation, say G1, you only have two

72
offsprings in the second generation G2. For these two organisms in the second
generation, you only have these two offsprings.

In this case you will have a situation in which, the number of organisms will remain
constant with time, there will not be any change. However, it is observed that if you
provide ample amount of resources to any organism, it tends to overpopulate. So,
overpopulation means that from two organisms in the first generation, the second
generation may be having say 10 organisms.

The first generation had two organisms whereas the second had 10 organisms. So, it was
a multiplication factor of 5. If you do this multiplication factor of 5 again, then in place
of ten, you will be having 50 organisms; next you will be having 250 organisms, and so
you will have a curve that is arising exponentially.

In nature, what we observe is that organisms tend to produce excess offspring. So most
of the organisms tend to go for an exponential curve. But, the problem with that
exponential curve is that you do not have ample resources to accommodate all of these
organisms. So, there will be a struggle for existence. The resources are limited, so, not all
offsprings will be accommodated. And when that is a situation, then you will have some
individuals that will have to be eliminated.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:25)

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We went to Kruger national park in 2018, and they will observe cheetahs that were
hunting. Now, let us have a look at how this hunting happens to understand better, what
is the struggle for existence.

So that is the voice of our tour operator. And we are observing cheetahs that are hunting
impalas. Impalas are deer that are found in South Africa. And as we can observe here,
this cheetah is moving in a stealth pattern; it is moving very slowly; it is moving very
cautiously towards the impalas which are the prey for this animal. And now it has started
running and the prey or the impalas are also running, and there we see another cheetah.

In fact, these cheetahs were hunting in groups. We had four cheetahs in this particular
group. The impalas were also in a group. The cheetahs tried to run after the impalas. But,
even after running and even after spending quite a large amount of energy doing this
stealth operation and running, they were not able to catch any impala. That tells us the
struggle for existence. We have four cheetahs here, but they will not get food every day.
Out of this struggle for existence, if there is; out of these four cheetahs, if there is one
cheetah that is not able to tolerate hunger or falls prey to a disease, because it is not
getting enough amount of food, it will be eliminated from the nature.

Only those that are the best fitted will survive to the next generation, which brings us to
the fourth step of natural selection, which is survival of the fittest. Only those
individuals that are best able to obtain and use resources will survive and reproduce. For
instance, even in the case of these four cheetahs, after hunting a prey, if you figured out
that one of these four were able to get the largest amount of meat and there was another
one that was not able to get enough amount of meat. In that case, you will have the first
cheetah that would be able to survive better as compared to the second cheetah which
does not get enough amount of food. So, survival of the fittest means that only those
individuals that are best even to obtain and use resources will survive and reproduce.

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(Refer Slide Time: 20:15)

So, getting resources is crucial for the survival of an organism. And only when this
organism survives, breeds and produces more number of offsprings, will we say that this
organism is fit, and will be selected in the process of natural selection. The fifth step in
natural selection is changes in the gene pool. Inherited characters increase the frequency
of favorite traits in the population. What is changes in the gene pool? So, we come back
to this example of the peppered moth. We saw before that this peppered moth is present
in two color variations. One is the dark color, and one is the light color.

This example comes from England. And before the industrial revolution, this area was
very pollution free. So, trees had a lot of lichens on their surface, and these whitish color
are the lichens. Lichens provided the bark of the trees, lighter shade. And on this lighter
colored bark, we can observe this insect, but we cannot observe this insect as easily. So,
we also have a lighter colored insect, a lighter colored peppered moth that is there on this
bark, but we are not able to see it very easily.

Now, when industrial revolution came, there was quite a lot of air pollution in that area,
and pollution killed off the lichens. So, if this lichen gets removed from the bark, so the
barks get exposed. And probably you will also find some amount of soot on these barks.
When that happens, this lighter colored version which was earlier very much
camouflaged on the lichens is now clearly visible, whereas this dark colored version,

75
now it becomes camouflaged. So, in this image as well we have two peppered moths,
and we are very easily able to see this peppered moth, but not this peppered moth.

Now, how is that important? That is important, because in these situations when you
have an unpolluted atmosphere, when you have quite a lot of lichens on the trees, these
dark colored individuals are preferentially predated upon. If there is a bird that feeds on
peppered moths, and if it visits this tree, it would be able to observe this peppered moth,
but not this one, so it will eat up this one, and this one will be saved. Whereas, in the
case of a polluted environment, we would observe that this one is very clearly visible,
but this one gets camouflaged, so this will be preferentially eaten.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:55)

When it was observed that across generations with time, what was the proportion of this
dark colored allele, and what was the proportion of the light colored allele in the
population. This is how it went, number or let us say proportion of alleles. So, let us
divide this period into stages. The first stage is, before industrial revolution. The second
one is, during and after industrial revolution. And the third one is, after clean air act was
passed.

In the first period, before industrial revolution, we had a situation like this one. In this
situation, it so happened that most of the dark colored peppered moths were eaten up,
and so their numbers were very less. Most of the peppered moths that you would observe
would be light in color. So, before industrial revolution, you have this dark color variety

76
which is very less, and you have the light colored variety that is very high. Now, during
and after the industrial revolution, the light ones were preferentially eaten up, and the
black ones more spared. So, after a few generations, it so happened that the number of
dark colored moths in the population increased, and the light colors reduced.

Once they had quite a lot of air pollution and had situations of public outcry especially
after the great London smog, they had the passage of a Clean Air Act, through which the
amount of pollution in the air was regulated. Once that happened and, once the air
cleaned up again, the situation again reverted back to this situation. There was less
amount of pollutant, so lichens again came up on the trees, and again we had situations
in which the dark colored moths became preferentially eaten.

In that case, we again got to a situation in which the number of dark colored moths
reduced in proportion, and the number of light colored moths increased in proportion.
What we are observing here is changes in the gene pool. This is a very good example of
how natural selection operates in principle. In this example, we can see that there is
variation in the organism. So, different individuals have got different colors. Now,
peppered moths, like most other organisms also produce a number offsprings. So, there
is overpopulation, there is struggle for resources.

Now, if this was the only tree that was available, and if these two peppered moths were
the only two peppered moths that were available, so this peppered moths would have
resided here, and this peppered moth would have moved to this location in which case
both of these peppered moths would have been spared from predation, and both would
have been able to live equally well.

However, because there is a struggle for resources; because there is a dearth of resources
as compared to the number of organisms that are produced, there was a struggle for
existence. Not every peppered moth could get into a place where it would hide out. So,
there was a struggle for existence.

In this struggle for existence, there was survival of the fittest. So, in the presence of
predation, in this sort of an environment, this one survived better. So, this would be said,
survival of this organism was preferred by natural selection. In this environment, this one
was preferred. So, there was a survival of the fittest. And this also resulted into changes
in the gene pool. Now, here it is important to note that whenever there are these changes

77
in the gene pool, in most of the situations we do not have a situation in which you have
100 percent organisms that are of one variety, and no organism that is there of the second
variety.

Coming back to the drawing board, here we observe that even in the first situation, we
had a very few number of individuals that were dark in color, but they still remained
there in the system. Variation is very crucial for the system to survive, because if so
happened that this number went to 0, so they would not have been any more variation
that was remaining in the system.

And once the system changed, once it moved to a polluted scenario; In such a situation if
you only had the light colored moths, all of those light colored moths would have been
eaten up and so no peppered moths would have existed today. Whereas, nature always
prefers to have these variations, and so, even in these situations we observe that we will
have some number of individuals that still persist in the system even though they are not
the best suited.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:29)

How does this selection occur? We have three different kinds of selections which are
called as directional selections, stabilizing selection, and disruptive selection.

In this example what we are observing is that, here we have the frequency of individuals,
and here we have different colors that are present in the population. Here we have an

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organism that is very light in color, here we have an organism that is very dark in color,
and these are variations in between. Now, suppose the original population was something
like this, so the most preferred or the most fit organism was there in the center.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:13)

Now, in the case of a directional selection, this curve would shift either to the right or to
the left. What we are seeing here is that, here we have the frequencies of individuals, and
here we have the color. Let us call these shades as 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. And the earlier
population was something like this. So, in this case, we had most of the organisms that
had this color of three, so this is the most preferred one.

Now, if the situation changes, and if this curve shifts to the right, so it becomes
something like this. So, in this case, we will have that, the organisms of shade four are
more selected, so this is a directional shift. So, essentially the peak of the curve shifts
from this to this or it can move to the other side as well. So, this is a directional selection.

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(Refer Slide Time: 30:25)

The second selection is called a disruptive selection. In the case of a disruptive selection,
we have a situation in which these organisms are selected, the middle ones are not
selected, and then the larger ones are selected. In this situation we have that the light
ones are preferred, and the dark ones are preferred, but the middle ones are not preferred,
now when do we have a situation like this.

Suppose you have a forest in which you have some trees that are dark in color, and then
you also have some trees that are light in color. Now, in such a forest if the light colored
individual goes and sits on the light colored bark, and the dark colored individual goes
and sits on the dark colored bark, both of these are spayed from predation. But, the
middle color whether it goes to the dark tree or whether it goes to the light tree, it is not
that much camouflaged, so it becomes apparent and it gets predated upon. Such a
selection in which nature prefers the two extremes, but not things in the middle goes by
the name of a disruptive selection.

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(Refer Slide Time: 31:55)

And third is a stabilizing selection. So, in the case of a stabilizing selection, we have a
situation in which the earlier curve was like this,. In the later generation, this curve
becomes even more narrow down. So, for instance earlier we had these shades 1, 2, 3, 4
and 5 in generation 1. But, in the second generation, the shades 1 and 5 get completely
removed and now this whole curve has become even more towards the center; so, in this
case we have lost two traits, and we have even shifted the system towards a center point.
So, this would be called a stabilizing solution.

(Refer Slide Time: 32:45)

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We observe examples of all three of these in the nature. For instance, this is a study of
directional selection. There is a set of islands that go by the name of Galapagos islands,
and here we have birds that are called finches. Now, these birds have beaks, and their
beak size was studied. There was a draught in 1977, and before the draught we had this
sort of a curve. What we observe here is that this beak depth of 8.8mm is the most
preferred one. Now, after the draught what happened was that during this period most of
the nuts that were there became even more harder to break open. So, here we have this
chart of seed hardness versus the beak depth.

Now, if you have a seed that is harder to break open, so you require a larger sized beak to
break open that seed. Now, in this draught what we observed was that before the draught,
we had this pattern in which the beak size of 8.8mm was more preferred. After the
draught it shifted from 8.8 to 9.8mm. So, there was a directional shift towards larger
sized beaks because of the draught. So, this is an example of directional selection.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:11)

An example of stabilizing selection is the weight of human baby at birth. Here we well
observe that if the weight is around 8 pounds, so we have minimum amount of mortality
that is there in the system, and highest amount of survival rate. If it shifts to the right or
to the left, so in those situations these babies die off more easily.

This is obviously a very old paper and our advances in medicine have enabled other
babies to survive today. But, then if you look at this graph, if you only concentrate on

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this graph, we will observe that babies of eight pounds are selected, so this is the most
optimum weight. This is an example of a stabilizing selection. So, if you shift to the right
or to the left, you have a lesser probability of survival.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:01)

This is an example of a disruptive selection. This is again an example from Galapagos

islands in which we had a bird population in which these beak sizes were more preferred,
and then, these beak sizes were more preferred, but the center ones were less preferred.
We can have a situation like this if we have an environment in which you have, say these
nuts that are hard to crack, and these nuts that are easy to crack, but you do not have any
nuts that come in between.

So, if you have a bird that comes here, it won’t be able to crack a larger sized or a harder
nut. But, if it tries to crack open these softer nuts, it will face a lot of competition from
their already existing birds, which have smaller beak sizes and are probably more adapt
or more amenable to crack open those softer nuts. In such a situation, we will have a
disruptive selection, so we will observe two modes in the curve.

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(Refer Slide Time: 36:07)

Next, we have a look at coevolution, which is a situation in which there are two species
that are evolving at the same time. This is the evolution of two or more species that
interact closely with one another, with each species adapting to changes in the other. A
good example is bee hummingbird that is feeding on these flowers.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:43)

In these flowers, they have an elongated shape much as a funnel, and there is nectar on
the inside. The flower produces nectar to attract these birds, so that if this is a flower, and
here we have the nectar. This bird reaches, and tries to feed on the nectar, and in that

84
process, it gets the pollens from the flower onto its beak. When it goes to another flower
of the same species, it is able to transport these pollens from one flower to another
flower.

If this bird randomly fed on different flowers, so it went to this flower that belonged to
species 1, and then it went to another bird that belonged to species 2. So, in that case the
pollen grains of a species 1 would be transmitted to species 2, which would not make any
sense, because these pollens will not be able to result in fruits in the case of the second
flower.

So, nature wants to have a situation in which the birds and the flowers are specific. So,
essentially if you have a bird species that has this beak, it should only go and feed on
flower of species 1. And the birds that go and feed on flowers of species 2 should be
different. So, species 1 birds should not be able to get to species 2 flowers, and species 2
birds should not be able to get to species 1 flowers.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:07)

Essentially, we have this situation in which you have, say this is your species-1, and this
is your species-2. In the case of species-1, you have a flower that has this shape, and in
the case of species-2 you have a flower that is more elongated. Now, in this case a
shorter beak would do; in this case you will require a very long beak; long and slender
beak to get to the nectar.

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Now, consider two individuals of species-2, so one is this individual. And then there is
another individual that has an even more elongated flower. So, this is another individual
of the same species, species-2. Now, if we consider a bird such as, this bird, and let us
consider one more variety, which is this one.

In such a situation, if we consider this bird, it will not be able to feed on this flower, it
will not be able to feed on this flower, but it might probably feed on this flower.
Whereas, this bird would be able to feed on here, here, here, and here as well. But, in this
case it will find it more difficult, because it is facing competition from this second bird,
which has a shorter beak.

Now, in such a scenario, we will observe that if this species-2 has these different
individuals. This individual with the longest tube or the longest funnel will be much
more specific as compared to this individual that has a shorter funnel. So, if you want
more specificity; more specificity would mean that you have more probability of
reproduction, because more probability of pollens from the same species reaching into
the flower of the same species. So, you want to have more amount of specificity.

Now, more specificity is being provided by a longer funnel and not by a shorter funnel.
After a while, because natural selection is selecting those organisms that are best suited
or that are the most fit, and in this case, we can intuitively guess that a longer funnel will
result in more amount of specificity and so more amount of fitness. So, a longer funnel
will be preferred, and when that happens, this bird will also have to evolve, because in
the next generation if you have even longer funnels, you also require an even longer beak
to get to that nectar in that particular flower. So, this bird will also have to evolve at the
same time. Thus, the evolution of one species is driving the evolution of the second
species.

And now, if this bird evolves, what will happen is that these individuals of the same
species that were having a smaller size or a shorter funnel, they will be they will become
even less fit, because now this bird will choose to get into a larger flower with a longer
funnel as compared to a smaller flower. And this smaller flower will, maybe start getting
birds of some other species. So, in this situation, the longer beak of the bird will also
result in more amount of evolution in the flowers. This is an example of co-evolution.

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(Refer Slide Time: 42:05)

Another example of co-evolution is the evolution of horns. Now, in a number of

herbivores, we observe these horns. So, this is an example of a cape buffalo. And the
horns serve as a deterrent from the predators. If there is a lion, and if this lion observes
two cape buffalos, there is one cape buffalo with a long horn, and there is another cape
buffalo which does not have a horn, say it is a calf.

So, approaching a calf is much easier as compared to approaching an adult with long
horns because, if this adult tries to fight back with its horns, it might even be able to kill
the lion. If you have a situation in which you have horns, so in that situation the predator
will also have to evolve some strategy to be able to counter vent these horns. So,
probably the predator will start approaching the adults from the behind. So, evolution of
horns, which was a response to the pressure of the predators would also result in
evolution of some other behaviors that are there in the predator.

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(Refer Slide Time: 43:19)

Another example is evolution of the stripes of zebras.

(Refer Slide Time: 43:29)

Why do zebras have stripes? Zebras have stripes so that if there is a group of animals,
and all of these animals are having stripes. And then there is a lion, there is a predator
that is chasing, say this particular zebra. If this zebra moves into the group, then the lion
gets confused as to which zebra was the one it was chasing. If you have only one zebra
which the lion is chasing, so the lion will be very easily able to capture this zebra,
because, after a while, our zebra will also become tired. But, if it gets into this group and

88
probably in the confusion, the lion, in place of this zebra, now shifts its attention to
another zebra. In this case this zebra will be able to get its breath back, and will be able
to survive. So, this is one mechanism that zebras evolved to be able to circumvent the
predators.

(Refer Slide Time: 44:39)

Here again we see an example of co-evolution, because we had predators, so we had this
evolution of the stripes; or for instance why do impalas run fast? Well, impalas run fast,
because they have to counteract the cheetahs. So, here we have the impalas, here we
have the cheetahs. And if these impalas are not able to run fast, then these cheetahs will
be able to predate on these impalas. Then, why do cheetahs run fast? Cheetahs run fast,
because they have to predate upon the impalas which run fast.

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(Refer Slide Time: 45:01)

So, essentially these two species, because they are interacting so closely with each other,
they are evolving at the same time. These are examples of coevolution. What we are
observing here is that if you have two or more species that interact closely with each
other, in those situations the evolution of one species, leads to the evolution of the other
species. And the evolution of any species becomes dependent on all the evolutions that
are happening in all the other species; they all become linked together.

Why are these organisms interacting with each other, and interacting so closely with
each other? That is because of ecology. In the case of ecology, we saw that we have
situations of population ecology. A population ecology would say that in this group,
what are the interactions between these different animals. If this animal is slow and
others are fast, then this would be eaten up and its genes would be removed from the
system. So, interactions within the population are important. Similarly, interactions
between the species are also important. So, here we are talking about community
ecology; we have cheetah, then we have the impalas. What are their interactions?

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(Refer Slide Time: 46:27)

Ecology becomes very important for evolution, because the ecological interactions drive
the evolution of different species, and which is one of the importance of learning the
subject of ecology that we can understand evolution; How it happens? Why it happens?
If we are able to understand the interactions that are happening within a species, between
the species, and between the environment and the species when the environments are
changing.

So, in this lecture we saw how ecological interactions are driving evolution. We began
with evolution. What is evolution? How it happens? What are adaptations? What are
genetic adaptations? and What are the steps of evolution? How does natural selection
act? What are variations? Why do we have overpopulation? Why do we have a struggle
for resources? How does survival of the fittest happen? and How does that lead to
evolution?

And then we moved on to the process of co-evolution, where different species are
interacting with each other, and driving each others’ evolution. Not only the species
interact with themselves, but they also interact with the environment. So, any changes in
the environment also drive evolution. So, all of these in total can be said that ecological
interactions are driving evolution, which is a very important reason to understand
wildlife ecology.

So that is all for today. Thank you for your attention. Jai Hind.

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 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Indian Forest Services
Indian Forest Service, Madhya Pradesh

Lecture – 04
The levels of Organisation

Namaste,

Today, we begin our second module which is ecological structures.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:19)

In this module, we are going to have three lectures,

1. The levels of organization,

2. Species abundance and composition, which is biodiversity and
3. A closer look at biodiversity.

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(Refer Slide Time: 00:35)

So, let us begin with the levels of organization. We will start with the story. This is the
story of two watchmakers; written by Herbert Simon and it starts like this. There once
were two watchmakers named Hora and Tempus who manufactured very fine watches.
Both of them were very highly regarded and their phones in their workshops ran
frequently. New customers were constantly calling them.

However, Hora prospered while Tempus became poorer and poorer and finally, lost his
shop. What was the reason?

So, this is a story of two watchmakers.

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(Refer Slide Time: 01:15)

One is called Hora and the second is called Tempus and both of them are very fine
watchmakers. Both of them are highly in demand and both of them have their workshops
in which the phones are ringing constantly because customers always want to know about
them. Now, in this case, Hora is the one that prospered or say he became rich, where is
Tempus is the one who became progressively poorer and poorer. So, this is a story through
which we will understand why organization is important.

Now, we move on. The watches, the men made consisted of about 1000 parts each. Tempus
had so constructed his assembly in such a way that if he had one partly assembled and had
to put it down to answer the phone say, it immediately fell to pieces and had to be
reassembled from the elements. The better the customers liked his watches, the more they
phoned him, the more difficult it became for him to find enough uninterrupted time to
finish a watch. Now, in both of these cases we have watches with 1000 elements or 1000
parts. Now, in the case of Tempus, he constructed a watch in a manner that you had to
bring all the parts together in one go to make the watch a functional watch.

So, all of these have to be together all the 1000 pieces have to come together at the same
time so that the watch becomes a functional watch. However, the better the watches he
made, with time as the quality of watches improved, the demand for the watches also
improved and when demand increases, the customers call him again and again, they phone
him in his workshop and Tempus has to leave his watch.

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So, for instance if Tempus had prepared say 990 pieces he had put together, only 10 pieces
remained and then he gets a phone call. So, he has to leave these 990 pieces and go ahead
and attend the phone call. While he is attending the phone call, all of these pieces they just
break down and so they come up as different pieces which has to be assembled again. So,
this was the mode of operation of Tempus.

Now, because of this, whenever he got a phone call he was not able to complete his watch.
And so, his rate of production of watches deteriorated like anything and there would even
be days in which he would not be able to prepare a single watch. Because, you bring
together 500 elements, you get a phone call it comes down to 0; you then again start
making the watches, then again you get a phone call, again it goes down to 0 and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:31)

Now, let us look at how Hora worked. The watches that Hora made were no less complex
than those of Tempus. But he had designed them so that he could put together sub
assemblies of about ten elements each. Ten of these sub assemblies again could be put
together into a larger sub assembly and a system of ten of the latter sub assemblies
constituted the whole watch.

Hence when Hora had to put down a partly assembled watch in order to answer the phone,
he lost only a small part of his work and he assembled his watches in only a fraction of the
man-hours it took Tempus. So, how did Hora prepare his watches? When the case of
Hora’s watches here again you have 1000 elements, but these 1000 elements work like

95
this. So, you have level 1, now in the case of level 1, you bring together ten of the sub
pieces. These ten of these pieces will be put together and once they are put together, they
become a bigger piece. Now you have this bigger piece in which you have ten of the
original pieces that are together. Eventually, this becomes a sub assembled part of the
whole of the watch.

Now, in the case of level 2, you have ten of these sub assembled pieces and they come
together and then they form another larger piece. And in the case of level 3, you had ten
of these pieces together and all of these ten come together and then they make the watch.
Now, in this case let us call these smaller pieces as, let us say that this is “a”, this is “b”,
this is “c” and then this is “d”. Now, in the watch d, “d” has ten elements of “c”. Now,
each element of c is ten elements of b and each element of b is ten elements of “a”. So,
altogether we have 1000 pieces of “a”, which is what we had in the case of Tempus as
well. So, this is “a” and this also is “a”

So, you have 1000 pieces together, but then because in the case of Hora, all of these pieces
were sub assembled and made into an organization.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:31)

This was an organization in which you had a hierarchy. So, here you have all the a’s, here
you have all the b’s, here you have all the c’s. So, all the a’s come together to form b’s, all
the b’s come together to form c’s and all the c’s come together to make the whole watch.

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Now, if you have such an organization, what happens is that suppose Hora had come to
this stage. He had prepared or he was in the process of making a “c”, so he had say nine
elements of “b” that were together. Only one more element had to be put in and the phone
rang. So, what would happen is that these nine pieces of “b”, but again shattered down and
become nine individual pieces of “b”. But then, when Hora has attended the phone call
when he comes back, he will just have to put these nine elements together, put one more
and he has a “c”.

So, at every stage, here you can observe that the amount of work that is lost, if there is any
error, is very little as compared to the case of Tempus in which the amount of work that
would be lost because of any error would be tremendous.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:51)

So, if we had to put it graphically, in the case of Tempus, suppose, say this is the cut off.
So, this is 1000 a’s or the watch. Now, in this case, if you are able to reach this point, you
have made a watch. But, what happened in the case of Hora was that he had reached
somewhere like here and then the phone rang and then he had to start from 0, then again
he went till this point again, the phone rang, he had to start from 0. So, here you have the
pieces together versus the time.

Now, you would observe in this case that there could be situations in which the whole day
passes and Hora is not able to make even a single watch because every time the phone
rings, the watch goes down to all it is sub elements and becomes nothing.

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(Refer Slide Time: 10:01)

Whereas, in the case of Tempus what happens is that, here also we have this 1000 piece
watch. Now, what happens is that even if he has reached till this stage and the phone rings,
there is only a small amount of work that each to be retreated because only that level of
organization will have to be remade and then he will progress forward, again when the
phone rings, he will progress to this point and then he has made a watch.

Then, he will start making another watch and probably in this case, the phone rang only
once and so, he was able to make two watches in a day. Here is why organization becomes
extremely important in the case of any system. From here, we come to Simon’s
hierarchical principle.

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(Refer Slide Time: 10:53)

So, using this story, Simon came up with a principle that hierarchy emerges almost
inevitably through a wide variety of evolutionary processes for the simple reason that
hierarchical structures are stable. In the case of evolution, we have a series of changes that
go on to make an organism, a species or the whole system more and more fit for survival
and in that process, hierarchy would emerge almost inevitably. So, hierarchy becomes a
sanguine and it becomes a very important parameter if you want to have evolution that is
taking the system towards a bit of fitness and for the simple reason that hierarchical
structures are stable.

(Refer Slide Time: 11:47)

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Now, where do we see hierarchy in nature? Well, you look at anything and you might find
some amount of hierarchy. Here we have a picture of a Roller that is eating a Centipede.
Now, in the case of a centipede, if you look here closely, you have a number of segments
and all of these segments have two legs.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:11)

So, if we draw a centipede, it would be something like this. So, you have different
segments, then you have the mouth parts and maybe you will have the n region. Now, all
of these segments have two legs. What nature has done in this case is that we have this
small structure that was made and a number of copies of this structure were made and then
they were put together. This is a very similar case as that of the watches of Hora. So, you
have this small piece that is constructed from its sub elements.

And then, a number of these pieces are then put together to create the next level of
organization. Similarly, if you look at your hands, all the fingers have these three
structures. So, why these three structures, here we also we are seeing the same thing.

We are observing segmentation as we had observed in the case and these segments are also
very similar to what we had observed in the case of this Centipede. And you will observe
the same thing everywhere when you look around. You will find it in centipede, you will
find this in Millipedes, you will find this in Caterpillars, you will find this in Earthworms,
you will find it even in our bodies.

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So, for instance, if you have a look at your hands, so, the fingers are having these three
segments everywhere. You have a look at the vertebral column that holds our spinal cord
and there also we have a number of bones that are very similar in shapes and then once
these bones are constructed, they are put together.

So, essentially we are observing these levels of organization when we look around in
nature and in the case of this organization, what we observe is that we have one level of
structures that is call them “a”, that are combined together to make a structure called b,
that are combined together to make a structure called “c” and so on. And whenever we
have such an organization, we also observe the emergent principle.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:33)

Now, the emergent principle says that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts or the
whole has properties that its parts do not have.

Coming back to our example of the Centipede, we will observe that this portion, this is a
small segment of a Centipede. It has got some properties, it has a particular weight, it has
a particular size and shape, it has these two legs. But once you have put all these small
parts together to construct the Centipede, the Centipede has properties that are very
different from those of these smaller segments. So, it incorporates the properties of the
segments, but by coming together as a larger organization, it also gets some new properties.
So, the whole is greater than the sum of it is parts and the whole has properties that it is
parts do not have.

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(Refer Slide Time: 15:35)

Now, we look at some more examples of the emergent principle. Here is an example of
fire ants. Now, fire ants are ants that are found in South America and these ants are called
fire ants because they are extremely prone to attacking other organisms and also because
if they bite you, it will feel as if your body parts are on fire. It has got a very pungent, a
very irritating bite. In the case of these ants, we observe that these are small insects, but
then when they come together, when they form an organization that will give out some
new properties. In this paper, we see fire ants self-assemble into waterproof rafts to survive
floods.

(Refer Slide Time: 16:25)

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Now, what happens in this case is that if you have a low lying area and you have an ant
and in this area, suppose you have a lot of rain and there is some amount of inundation.
Now, if you had ants that were separate from each other; all of these ants would die off
because they are all submerged with water. They would not have access to air. To avoid
such a situation, to avoid death, what these ants do is that they come together.

All of these ants will come together, they will attach themselves to each other and they
will form a new structure. In this structure, you will even have air that is trapped inside
this structure to make the whole of this structure buoyant. So, as we can observe in this
image here, you have a group of these ants that are together and inside this structure, inside
this organization will be having a number of air pockets that will make this whole structure
buoyant and if you put this structure onto the surface of water, this structure will float.

Now, once you have a structure like this, what happens is that, all these ants that are on
the top are outside of water. So, they have an access; a free access to air; whereas, even
these ants that are touching the water, their body is not completely submerged. So, in this
case, they also get some access to air and the whole colony is able to survive and if you
look at the electron micrographs of these ants that are together, we will find that their
mandibles or their mouthparts are attached together in a manner that they are not biting
the other individual, but they are together in the form of this organization.

And what happens when you have this organization is that, this organization even if you
have lots of water, this organization will float and when it floats, it will move with the
water and once it finds a tree somewhere, then this organization will then slowly disperse
and then they will climb the trees. So, this is one emergent property an individual ant might
drown in water, but because of this property, because of this emergent property, they are
able to survive. So, again here the whole is greater than the sum of it is parts.

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(Refer Slide Time: 19:07)

Here is another example when they are forming these rafts you can study their properties
and how the properties change?

So, if you look at this image, here we see an ant and on this ant, we have a drop of water
that is put on the top. And here we have a raft and here also we see a drop of water that is
put on top of the raft. Now, we can study the properties of the surfaces of the ant and that
of the raft using this drop of water and by having a look at the contact angles that are being
made here.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:49)

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Now, for any surface, if you put a drop of water and if the surface wets because of the
water, so it is considered a surface such as paper. Now, if you put a drop of water on the
paper, this is a water drop. So, once you put a drop of water on the paper, it will subtend
an angle that is an acute angle which would show that the paper is hydrophilic. Now, if
you put a drop of water on another surface such as the surface of wax, here water will
subtend an angle that is an obtuse angle which would give us the information that wax is
hydrophobic.

Now, hydro is water, “philic” is loving and “phobic” is hating or someone who is afraid
of. In the case of paper, because paper is hydrophilic so, it is in love with water, it wants
to have as much water as is possible. So, it attracts water to its surface because of which
we get an acute angle, @whereas, in the case of wax, because it is hydrophobic it is afraid
of water, it wants to repel water as much as possible. So, it tries to clear of these surfaces.
So, this surface is now cleared off and it wants to have as little contact with water as
possible because of which it forms an obtuse angle. Now, by looking at these angles, we
can understand the level of hydrophobicity of surfaces.

Now, if we come back to the images, here we are observing that there is a drop of water
on top of the ant and this outer surface is called the cuticle. Now, this cuticle is mildly
hydrophobic because it is subtending an obtuse angle, but if you put this drop of water on
a raft of ants, the angle that is subtended, it becomes even more obtuse.

So, the level of hydrophobicity increases, so that the amount of water repelling nature of
the ants also increases. And at the same time, we can also observe that if you put a single
ant inside water it will try to grab a small pocket of air, but if you have this whole raft that
is that is drowned using a stick, it will have so much amount of air that it will be much
more buoyant as compared to a single ant.

So, the whole will have properties that are derived from the components, but are also there
will be some emergent properties that are different from all the components that are
combined together.

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(Refer Slide Time: 23:13)

Now, with this, we can also observe number of liquid like properties of these ant rafts. So,
for instance, here we have one such raft that is put on top of a Petridish, now if you put
another petridish on top and if you press this and then if you release it, it will come back
to the original shape.

So, essentially this group is now getting some properties of elasticity. Then, if you put one
such group into say a pipette and then you put a ball of lead inside this pipette, you will
observe that this ball of lead slowly moves down. It will behave very much like a very
viscous liquid, something like honey.

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(Refer Slide Time: 24:01)

Suppose you have two containers and one container has water and the second container
has honey, now you are taking a ball of lead and you are dropping it in both of these
containers. In the case of water, because the level of viscosity is this, the lead will fall
down very fast whereas, in the case of honey, it will have a slower speed. Now, in the case
of ants, when you are putting them together because they are combining themselves with
each other, they are also getting the properties of viscosity which is an emergent property.
So, if you talk about a single ant, you would not have a property of viscosity because it is
a single element, but you put all of these together and they get an emergent property which
is viscosity and also emergent properties such as elasticity.

So, elasticity and viscosity are things that we are getting as emergent properties.

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(Refer Slide Time: 25:07)

Now, emergent properties are found nearly everywhere in nature. For instance, if you look
at a termite mound; so, a termite again is a small insect and such a small insect and only
do “n” number of items in its life. But you put a whole colony of termites together and
they will form of these structures, these mounds like structures which again have their own
properties. Now, these structures are made in a manner that you have ample amount of air
circulation, you have thermal regulation and so on.

If we talk about the construction of any building, there would be a supervisor that would
be coordinating the actions of all of these; all the people who are making the building
whereas, in this case there is no such supervisor. All these termites are just doing their own
jobs and by doing their own jobs they construct this structure. So, this again is an emergent
property, you just use a single termite and it will not be able to make a mount. But because
of the collective actions, they get this property that they are able to construct this particular
shape.

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(Refer Slide Time: 26:21)

Now, if you look at the level of organization in the biological world. Whenever we are
talking about organization, we say that we have a sub cellular organelles, cells, tissues,
organs and so on. So, if you look at any particular linkage say cell to tissue. So, tissue will
be comprised of a number of cells. Here we will observe a hierarchical principle or
Simon’s principle that will operate. You will have cells as independent units, you put these
cells together and they form the next level of structure which is a tissue. We will observe
hierarchical structures everywhere. And second, we will observe emergent properties
everywhere. So, a cell has certain properties. But when you put all these cells together they
form the tissue. So, tissue will be comprised of cells, but we will also have a number of
properties that are not found in cells. It will also have a number of emergent properties.
When we look at organization, these are two things to keep in mind. Now, what are the
levels of organization in the biological world? So, we begin with the sub cellular
organelles. A number of these sub cellular organelles will come together and form the cell.
Now, a sub cellular organelle does not have any characteristics of life, but a cell is a living
entity. So, just by putting these organelles together, you get a new emergent property which
is life in the form of a cell.

Then, you put cells together and they form a tissue. Tissues come together to form organs.
Organs come together to form an organ system followed by an organism. Now, an
organism is the basic entity from which we can start our analysis, especially in the case of
ecology. So, you put organisms together and these organisms are of the same type. So,

109
they form a population. You put a number of populations together, they form a community.
Now, till community we have all the biological elements. Now, you put community which
is a biological element together with the abiotic elements and you get the ecosystem; a
number of ecosystems together will form a biome and a number of biomes together will
form the biosphere or the life sphere that is formed on our planet.

Now, we will have a look at all of these levels of organization in more detail.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:01)

A sub cellular organelle is a specialized subunit within a cell that has a specific function.
So, you might remember these from your school days, we have mitochondria which are
organelles that are responsible for the generation of energy inside cells. We have
chloroplasts that are found in the plant cells and are responsible for photosynthesis. We
have nucleus which is an organelle that stores DNA and all the hereditary information
together inside. We have vacuoles which are like waste bags or specialized containers
inside the cells to store something.

All of these are specialized subunits within the cell and all of them have a specific
function.

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(Refer Slide Time: 29:55)

Now, if we have a look at the epidermis of an onion. You take an onion, you separate out
it is outer layer, then you stain it with stains and then you have a look. Here we will observe
that there are cells. This is a plant cell and here we observe a nucleus. Nucleus is a sub
cellular organelle; sub cellular because this is at a level that is below that of the cell. So,
this is a sub cell organelle; but an organ is an organization that is performing the specific
function. Here also these organelles are performing some specific functions but because
they are very small in size we do not call them organs, we call them organelles when they
are sub cellular in size. Here we observe sub cellular organelles within a cell.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:55)

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Now, a number of these sub cellular organelles will come together to form the cell and the
cell is the basic structural, functional and biological unit of all known living organisms or
the smallest unit of life. It is the basic structural, functional and biological unit. So, all the
organisms have are made up of a single cell or a number of cells.

One cell in the case of a unicellular organisms such as bacteria and multiple cells in the
case of multi cellular organisms such as human beings. This is the basic structural unit.
The structure of the body will be made by cells. These are the basic functional units
because they will be performing all the functions and they are responsible for all the
emergent functions that are there in the body and they are the basic biological units.

Because all the processes like respiration or say, cell division; they all happen at the level
of the cells. They are the basic structural, function and biological units of all known living
organisms or the smallest unit of life and we can observe cells very easily in the case of
onion, or in the case of animals if you make a smear of blood, you will be able to see the
red blood cells. If you make a smear of your cheek cells, you will be able to see a number
of epithelial cells and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 32:23)

Now, from cells we move on to tissues. An ensemble of similar cells and their extracellular
matrix from the same origin that together carry out a specific function.

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(Refer Slide Time: 32:49)

In the case of a tissue, you will have a number of cells together. You have cells and these
cells are embedded in an extracellular matrix. These cells together with the extracellular
matrix will form a tissue. It is an ensemble of similar cells. These cells have to be similar,
if they are coming from different origins, if they are different cells, then probably we are
looking at multiple tissues together. But, an ensemble of similar cells and their
extracellular matrix from the same origin that together carry out a specific function.

(Refer Slide Time: 33:55)

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Now, what could this function be? When we look at the onion cells, when we are looking
at the epidermis tissue of the onion cells, they are performing a very specific function and
that function is to keep water inside; that function is to protect the onion bulk from outside
environment. So, this is specific function that is being done by this tissue which is the
epidermis tissue and this tissue will comprise of a number of epidermal cells together with
the extracellular matrix that is binding these cells together and this is the matrix in which
these cells are embedded inside.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:15)

Now you put a number of tissues together, so, tissues from different origins together and
you get an organ. Now, organs are collections of tissues with similar functions. So, for
instance, intestines are organs.

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(Refer Slide Time: 34:25)

In an intestine, you will have a number of different tissues.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:33)

If we look at a cross section of intestine, we will be having these tissues which are the
endothelial tissues. We will also be having some blood vessels which are vascular tissues;
we will also be having some muscular tissues. We have blood vessels, we have the
muscular tissues, we have the endothelial tissues and so on.

115
All of these different tissues from different origins, they are coming together to perform a
specific function. In this case, the function is to absorb nutrients that we are getting from
food.

In this case, we are looking at the larvae of a drosophila and we have stained the intestines
using a blue coloured stain and here you can observe one organ. Another organ, say, the
mouth of the organism. So, mouth is also comprised of a number of tissues from different
sources. Even in the case of our mouth, we will be having epithelial cells on the inside, we
will also be having blood vessels, we have muscular tissues, we also have the skeletal
tissues inside and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:03)

The next level of organization is an organ system; a group of organs that work together to
perform one or more functions. It is a group of organs that are working together to perform
some function. For instance, an organ system is the digestive system. Digestive system
comprises of a number of organs. It will comprise of the mouth parts, it will comprise of
the intestines, it will comprise of the stomach, in our case it also comprised of the liver, it
will comprise of pancreas, small intestines, large intestines, rectum and all these different
organs together will form an organ system which is the digestive system. Now, all these
organs are performing some specialized functions and they are put together to perform a
next higher level of function.

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So, for instance, in the case of our mouth, the mouth is only chewing the food, but then
after chewing it goes through the oesophagus which is a conduit medium then it goes into
the stomach which performs the function of a reservoir in which the food items are put
into an acidic medium and then a number of enzymes are added there.

Then it moves into the small intestines which provides a basic medium and then it moves
to the large intestine which will absorb quite a lot of water from the food materials that we
have ingested. Then, it will move to rectum and anus through which those portions of the
food that are not absorbed by the body are then gotten rid off. Now, all of these different
organs are performing just one function together which is the consumption, digestion and
ejection of the food. So, all of these will together form the digestive system.

(Refer Slide Time: 37:47)

The next level of organization is an organism. An organism is an individual entity that

exhibits the properties of life. Now, when we see properties of life, what are those? This
organism should be able to get it is own food. It should be able to digest the food; it should
be able to assimilate the nutrients inside. Then, probably another function of life would be
movement. There are a number of organisms that do not move like plants, but movement
is also another function of life. So, like all the animals move. Then, another basic function
of life is procreation. So, they give rise to their offsprings. All these functions of life that
are together performed; are performed in an entity that is called the organism.

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(Refer Slide Time: 38:33)

Here we can observe an organism which is Hyena. So, this Hyena is carrying food that it
has gotten from somewhere; and so it is able to get it is food, it is able to eat its food, it is
able to digest it, it is able to assimilate it, then Hyena will also give rise to it is own progeny,
it will live in a social structure. So, it will be able to get air, it will be using oxygen, it will
give out carbon dioxide. It is performing the processes of respiration which is another
basic function of life. It is performing everything that a living entity should and this is the
level of an organism.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:19)

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Now, the next level of organization is a population. Now, population comprises all the
organisms of the same group or species which live in a particular geographical area and
have the capability of interbreeding. A population comprises organisms of the same group
or species. Species refers to those organisms that can breed together to give rise to fertile
off springs. Population will comprise of organisms of the same species. If we consider a
population of tigers, will only have Tigers there; we would not have a Lion inside that
population and these groups live in particular geographical area.

So, we can talk about a population of Tigers in Sundarbans. We can talk about a population
of Tigers in Kanha tiger reserve. We can talk of a population of tigers in Mudumalai tiger
reserve and all of these are different population because they are living in different
geographical areas and these have the capability of interbreeding.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:21)

So, for instance this is a population of Cheetah. So, it comprises of a number of cheetahs
that are together and they live in a system and they are living in the same area and they are
capable of interbreeding amongst each other. So, this is a population.

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(Refer Slide Time: 40:35)

Now, from population, the next higher level of organization is a community. A community
is a group or association of populations of two or more different species occupying the
same geographical area and in a particular time.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:53)

So, population comprises of individuals of same species, and community comprises of

individuals of different species and the rest of the things are similar. So, they are the groups
or associations of populations of two or more different species that occupy the same
geographical area and in a particular time. And of course, because these are different

120
species, so they are not interbreeding with each other, but each population is able to
interbreed with each other.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:37)

So, for instance here, we are observing Langur Chital association which we also dealt with
in an earlier lecture. This is an example of a community. Now in this community, we will
have populations of Chitals, populations of Langurs, populations of a number of different
tree species that are living together and this level of organization is called a community.
Now, it is important to note here that in a community, we only have biotic elements. Biotic
elements are living elements. So, Chital is a living entity, Langur is a living entity, all these
trees are living entities. So, a community only comprises of a number of populations and
all of these are living entities.

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(Refer Slide Time: 42:23)

If you add the abiotic components together with it, you will get to the next level of
organization which is an ecosystem. An ecosystem is a community made up of living
organisms and non-living components such as air, water and mineral soil.

(Refer Slide Time: 42:39)

Now, if you look at any ecosystem like this, we are observing an ecosystem which is that
of a pond in a forest. Now, this pond or this forest. So, we have a pond ecosystem here,
we also have a forest ecosystem. Now, in this ecosystem, we have a number of
communities, a number of populations that are living together, but we can also observe a

122
number of non-living entities such as the earth that is seen here or the water that is found
here or the air that is here or the amount of sunshine that this area is getting. So, a
community is able to exist only because of these abiotic factors that are also present in the
same ecosystem.

If you remove water from this ecosystem, which is an abiotic elements, if you remove it,
the whole community will collapse. Similarly, you remove air from this ecosystem, the
whole community will collapse. You remove soil from this system and you would not have
any plants and if you do not have any plants, you would not have any animals. So, this
level of organization in which you have living and non-living things together with the non-
living items supporting the living entities, forms an ecosystem.

(Refer Slide Time: 43:59)

The next level of organization is a biome. A community of plants and animals that have
common characteristics for the environment they exist in is called a biome. So, it is a
collection of ecosystems from different areas, even different geographies that have some
common characteristics.

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(Refer Slide Time: 44:17)

So, for instance if we talk about the Tundra biome, now Tundra refers to these areas. So,
here you have this light green colour that is Tundra and here are these areas on the very
top and on the very bottom. Now, Tundra comprises of those areas that are permanently
covered with snow. So, these are very cold environments.

So, you can have an ecosystem that is here in this Tundra and you can have an ecosystem
that is here in this Tundra and both of these are not connected with each other. But still,
these ecosystems will have some similar properties. Because they are very cold, so the
animals that are found there will be having lots of fur for example, or they will be having
a layer of fats, because they would not be having an access to quite a lot of food most of
the times.

Let us look at the next level, which is the Taiga. So, this is comprised of forest and these
forests have trees that are practically untouched till this date. Now, in these areas whether
you consider a Taiga forest in Canada or you consider a Taiga forest in say Russia, both
of these will have very similar characteristics because they again are very cold. They do
not have quite a lot of access to sunlight, the level of primary productivity is very less and
so, the organisms that are found in this area will also tend to be larger in body size, so that
they are able to store a lot of nutrients inside their body.

So, an ecosystem that is there in the Taiga biome in Canada and an ecosystem that is there
in the Taiga biome of Russia, even though they are very different from each other, even

124
though they are highly separated from each other geographically, they will be having some
common properties and which is why we group all these ecosystems in similar
environments into a biome. This is the next level of organization.

Similarly, you can have a desert Biome. If you consider a desert in India or you consider
a desert in Australia or you consider a desert in Africa or a desert in North America, all
the ecosystems that are found in these deserts will be having similar properties. They have
less amount of water, they have extreme temperatures, may have a lot of sand. And because
of these common properties, they will be having ecosystems that will also be having very
common properties; and the communities and the populations that will live in these areas
will also have a number of common properties. That is why we organize them as biomes.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:13)

Now, you put all the biomes together or all the ecosystems of all the biomes together and
you get to the biosphere. Biosphere is that portion of earth that supports life.

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(Refer Slide Time: 47:27)

Biosphere will comprise of some elements of hydrosphere which is water, some elements
of lithosphere which is land and some elements of atmosphere which is the air around us
and there is a particular confluence of all three of these.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:47)

So, you have the lithosphere, you have the hydrosphere and you have the atmosphere and
there will be some portion of all of these that will support life and that will be called the
Biosphere.

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(Refer Slide Time: 48:05)

Finally, let us sum up by looking at the levels of organization in the biological world once
again. So, we can begin with the organism. Organism is a living entity that is performing
all the biological functions and an organism is comprised of a number of organ systems,
the organ systems such as the digestive system or the respiratory system. The respiratory
system will comprise of your airways, your nose, your lungs, the diaphragm or say the
circulatory system which comprises of the heart and all the blood vessels.

So, you have a number of different organ systems that comprise an organism and each
organ system is comprised of a number of organs. For instance as we saw before, the
respiratory organ system is comprised of a number of organs such as the nose, the trachea
or the windpipe, the bronchi, the bronchioles, the alveoli, the lungs, the diaphragm and so
on. Now, each of these organs will be comprised of a number of tissues. So, for instance
if you look at the diaphragm which is an organ. This diaphragm will be comprised of
muscular tissues, it will have nervous tissues and it will also have circulatory tissues or
vascular tissues.

These tissues will comprise of cells that are similar or of similar origin and they also
comprise of the extracellular matrix that is surrounding these cells and in which the cells
are embedded. So, for instance, if we talk about the muscular tissue in the diaphragm that
will be comprised of a number of muscular cells and a large amount of extracellular matrix
that is surrounding these muscular cells.

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Now, these cells are those are the smallest structural, functional and biological subunits of
life and these cells are able to perform most of the functions of life. So, these cells are also
able to respire, they are able to get nutrients from the blood, these cells are able to get
oxygen from the blood, they are able to perform respiration, they will generate energy,
they will generate ATPs, they throw out waste into the blood vessels to be to be taken off
and dispose and so on. So, you will have a number of muscular cells in the muscular tissue
of diaphragm and all these cells are comprised of the sub cellular organelles. Now, sub
cellular organelles would be the nucleus, the nucleoli, the golgi apparatus, the
mitochondria in these cells, the vacuole in these cells and so on. This is the level of
organization moving from organism downwards.

Now, if you move upwards, from the level of organism will move to a population. So, for
instance, an organism is say, an elephant. So, you consider a single elephant and then you
consider a group of elephants that are living together in a same geographical area that are
capable of interbreeding together and they will form a population.

Now, this population of elephants together with a population of say Chital or Sambar or
Tigers in that area will form a community. So, that is the next higher level of organization.
From population, we move on to communities. Communities will have some emergent
properties that are very different from that of a population. For instance, a relationship will
be that of a predator-prey relationship. If you consider a population of Chitals, there is no
predator-prey relationship in a population of Chitals, but if you consider a population of
Chitals together with a population of tigers, there is a predator-prey relationships that are
acting at this level of organization. So, this is a community. A community is comprised of
a number of populations that are living together in the same place in the same time. Now,
to this community, you add all the non-living elements that are found in that area. So, you
add air, you add water, you add soil, you add sunshine, you add wind speed and they will
form a particular ecosystem. Now, these non-living components of the ecosystem are also
supporting the biotic component and together they form this level of organization which
is called the ecosystem.

Now, you take an ecosystem. So, let us consider a small Oasis that is found in our desert
of Rajasthan. So, that is an ecosystem and that ecosystem is supporting a number of
communities and a number of populations. But then, you consider another oasis that is
found in the desert of Sahara or another oasis that is found in the deserts of Kalahari and

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all of these ecosystems will have some common properties. When you will take all of these
ecosystems together they form a biome that is, a desert biome.

And so, desert biome will comprise of all these oases, it will also comprise of the sand
dunes, it will also comprise of rock formations that are found in these areas, they will also
comprised of a number of salt deposits that are found in these areas and you put all of these
together and you get to the desert biome.

So, here we are talking of the next higher level of organization which is all the deserts of
the world. And you put different biomes together, you put all the cold biomes that is the
tundra biome, you put all the taiga biomes together, you put all the equatorial rainforests
together, you put all the deserts together and you reach next higher level of organization
which is called the biosphere.

The biosphere is that sphere of the earth that is supporting life. So, here are the levels of
organization and at each level of organization, you will be observing hierarchy, you will
be observing Simon’s principle and you will also be observing emergent properties that
arise at each and every level.

So, that is all for today. Thank you for your attention. Jai hind.

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 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Indian Forest Services
Indian Forest Service, Madhya Pradesh

Lecture – 05
Species abundance and composition: Biodiversity

Namaste

In our Ecological Structure module, we now move to the second lecture, which Species
abundance and composition or Biodiversity. The ecological structure is comprised of a
number of species. And so, it becomes very important to understand how many species are
there?, how are they distributed? and what is the composition in a particular ecosystem?
So, how many individuals are there of each species and this is the study of biodiversity.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:45)

A number of ecological studies have been done in the forest, because forest provide an
avenue in which you can understand nature in its most raw form because they are
untouched by humans. So, we are able to see how nature operates without any
anthropogenic influence.

If you enter into a forest, what do you observe? The first thing you will observe is a lot of
serenity. You would not have any loud noises of vehicles, you would not have any smoke
and so on. And, you will also observe a number of trees if you are moving into forest that

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is say a deciduous forest or it or a coniferous forest. You will also observe a number trees.
Now, these trees will also be divided into a number of canopies. So, you will have a top
canopy which is comprised of these tall trees, you will have a middle canopy, you will also
have some ground cover that is comprised of these herbs and shrubs and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:53)

If you look around and if you are lucky, you will also observe a number of animals in the
forest. These are Chitals which are feeding on the grasses that are found in the forest. So,
you will observe some animals.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:05)

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You will also observe some interactions between these animals. So, like we talked before
about the langur chital association. So, this is an example of a langur chital association.
We have this tree on which we have this langur and this langur is feeding and it is throwing
off some pieces of the leaves down into the forest floor. And so, there are a number of
chitals that have come to this area to feed on this leaves.

These chitals would not have had access to the leaves, because they cannot climb the trees
evidently. And, by coming in close contact with another species now they are able to
getting access to this food resource. And, they are also benefitted, because the langurs can
look very far because they are at a higher vantage position. If there is any predator nearby,
if there is a tiger nearby, they would give of alarm calls and the chitals would run away.

Similarly, the chitals are having a ground view of the situation and so, if a tiger is nearby
and if the langurs are not able to see it, because of say, tall grasses, the chitals might be
able to sense the presence of the tiger because of the smell of the tiger. If that happens, the
chitals would give off alarm calls and then they would start running off and that would
also alarm the langurs. Here we observe a number of interactions that are taking place
between different species when we move inside a forest area.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:35)

We will also observe a number of population level interactions amongst a number of

animals. In this case you are observing a troupe of monkeys that are doing allogrooming.

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Allogrooming is grooming of someone else. So, we will observe monkeys and their
behaviours.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:55)

If, we look up, we will observe some birds; we will see parakeets most probably.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:03)

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(Refer Slide Time: 04:04)

Or may be even birds like Mynas or Peacocks if you are lucky or we will also observe
some animals and birds that are migratory.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:06)

So, this is an example of Democil Cranes, which are migratory species that visit our
country for a while and then they move off.

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(Refer Slide Time: 04:21)

We might observe some signs of some animals. So, for instance this is an image of a pug
mark of a tiger. A pug mark is a mark that is left on the ground when the animal is walking.
So, for instance, in this case we have this loose soil. When the tiger was walking here so,
it has left an imprint on the ground which is the pug mark. And, we have kept this pen to
give you a sense of scale of how large this pug mark is. Even though we are not able to
see some animals, we might be able to infer their presence in our forest by using these
indirect signs.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:00)

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Another indirect sign is the scat of animals. So, scat is basically the fecal matter that is left
behind by the animal. And, every animal has a scat of different size and they also have
different behaviours when it comes to leaving their fecal matter. For instance, members of
the cat family would typically, after they are done disposing off their fecal matter, they
would just move like this. So, they will scratch the ground, we will see some scratch marks
near these scats and we can make a correlation about the size of the scat, the number of
scats or fecal samples that have been deposited by the animal. And, some other sign such
as scratching marks on the ground to infer which animal has give off this scat. So, we can
also get a sense of what animals are nearby, by looking at this ground.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:58)

If we look closely into the vegetation we might also observe some reptiles such as
chameleons or some other members of the lizard family.

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(Refer Slide Time: 06:06)

This area might also have some flowers and may be some insects that are pollinating in
this area. For instance, here we have a bee that is pollinating and if you look closely, we
will also observe some other body parts of the bee. So, in this case these are the pollens
sacs in which it stores the pollen.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:28)

Then, we might observe some other inferences such as termite mounds. If there is a termite
mound. So, you also have termites in this area or things like fungi.

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(Refer Slide Time: 06:38)

Fungi play a very important role in the forest ecosystem, because when there is any dead
wood or there are dead leaves that are lying on the ground. So, they are also storing a
number of nutrients inside. This dead log has a nitrogen inside, it has some phosphorous
inside, it has some potassium inside, may be some amounts of magnesium or iron as well
and by decomposing these logs, the fungi are able to release these nutrients back into the
ecosystem so that, they can be made use of by some other organism. We will also observe
some saprophytic organisms such as the fungi. There could also be a number of bacteria
in this area or may be some other fungi that we are not able to look directly from our eyes
but we can make an inference.

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(Refer Slide Time: 07:28)

If we go near a water body, we might observe some reptiles such as muggers or some birds
that will be seen near this area. In these water bodies, there will be some fishes, may be
some frogs, may be some turtles.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:43)

We might be able to see some Turtles or maybe we might not be able to see some turtle
and there will also be a number of plant-like forms that are found in this area.

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(Refer Slide Time: 07:53)

(Refer Slide Time: 07:56)

We will even see a Tiger somewhere or some Bears, or may be some Elephants.

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(Refer Slide Time: 07:58)

Now, the point is, all of these are signs of biodiversity in this area, whether it is the Tiger,
whether it is the Elephant, the plants, the trees, the bacteria, the fungi, all of these are signs
of biodiversity.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:21)

So, how do we define biodiversity? Biodiversity is the variety of life in all its forms and
at all levels of organisation. Now, in the last lecture we looked at the different levels of
organisation that are found in the nature and biodiversity refers to the variety of life. So,

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variety of life is different kinds of life forms that we are seeing; in all it is forms and at
different levels of organisation.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:49)

When we say, ‘in all it is forms’, it includes plants, vertebrates, invertebrates, fungi,
bacteria, and other microorganisms. And, when we say, ‘at all levels of organisation’, we
can say diversity at the levels of genes, diversity at the levels of species, diversity at the
level of ecosystems, or we might even look at diversity at some other level of organisation.
Now, these three are considered to be the most important.

1. The genetic level biodiversity,

2. The species level biodiversity and
3. The ecosystem level biodiversity
We will have a look at these three levels in greater detail.

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(Refer Slide Time: 09:28)

Species as we know are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations,

which are reproductively isolated from other such groups. When we say actually
interbreeding, for instance, if we consider the chitals of kanha, they will be interbreeding
amongst each other. So, they are actually interbreeding a natural population. But, if we
consider the chitals of kanha and the chitals of Rajaji so, both of these are not interbreeding
with each other. Why? because one is in Madhya Pradesh and the other population is in
Uttarakhand, but they are potentially interbreeding natural populations. Why potentially
interbreeding? Because, say if you take a chital from Rajaji and take it to kanha and try to
mate it with the chitals of kanha, they will result in fertile offsprings. So, they are
potentially interbreeding and they are natural populations. So, species are groups of
actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations and these groups are
reproductively isolated from other such groups.

What do we mean by reproductive isolation? So, for instance you have a species that is
called chital, you have another species that is called, say tiger. If, you try to mate a chital
with a tiger they would not be able to mate, or even if in extreme situations if we are able
to coax them to mate, they might not result in offspring, or they might even result in an
offspring that is itself infertile. This is meant by reproductive isolation.They are
reproductively isolated from other such groups. So, species are groups of actually or
potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other

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such groups. Now, species biodiversity asks how many species are there and how are they
distributed? In other words, the number and the distribution.

(Refer Slide Time: 11:29)

The genetic biodiversity on the other hand asks the diversity of genetic information that is
present at the level of phyla, families, species, populations, and individuals. Now, genes
as we know are units of heredity that are transmitted from parents to offsprings. So, we
might have a gene for say, eye colour, a gene for hair colour, a gene for skin colour, a gene
for tallness and so on.

When we consider all these different genes, genetic biodiversity asks, what is the diversity
of genetic information? For instance, if you consider the diversity of genetic information
at the level of a population. Consider a population of chitals in kanha. How are these chitals
different from each other genetically? Are all these chitals have the same gene for height?
or are they having different genes for heights?. Are they having different alleles for
height? or are they having the same coat colour? or are they having the same eye colour?
and so on.

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(Refer Slide Time: 12:36)

Now, examples of genetic biodiversity include Polymorphism and Heterozygosity.

Polymorphism is the proportion or percentage of genes that are polymorphic. A gene is
considered polymorphic if the frequency of the most common allele is less than some
arbitrary threshold and this threshold is generally taken to be 95 percent. Now, what do we
mean by this?

(Refer Slide Time: 13:05)

Let us consider the coat colour; the coat colour of chital. Let us say that it is coded by a
gene called C. Now, this gene C might be available in a number of forms. So, we might

145
have a C 1 allele that codes for a very light coat colour. And, we might be having say C 2,
C 3, C 4, and C 5; and C 5 coats for a very dark coat colour. And, these 3 are coating for
some intermediate coat colours.

Now, any particular organism or any particular individual of chital in this population will
be having 2 alleles for the same gene C. So, basically it will be having 2 Cs , one is coming
from it is father and the second one is coming from it is mother. It is possible that you have
C 1 and C 1, C 1 coming from father and C 1 coming from mother or you could have C 1
and C 5 or say C 3 and C 5 and so on.

If you consider all the individuals in this population and you figure out what alleles are
there. And, then you do a counting of these alleles. It is possible that we might see that C
1 is present 200 times, C 2 is present 100 times, C 3 is present 150 times, C 4 is present
1000 times, and C 5 is present say 10,000 times. In the case of polymorphism, we will ask
the question; is this gene, the gene for coat colour that is represented by C, that is
polymorphic if the frequency of the most common allele is less than 95 percent.

In this particular example how many alleles do we have; number of alleles is 200 plus 100
is 300, 450, 1450 and 11450. So, these are the total number of alleles that we have.

What is the frequency of the most common allele? Here the most common allele is C 5,
which is present in 10000 copies. The frequency is given by 10000 divided by 11450 into
100. Now, this is the frequency of the most common allele. Now, the question is; Is it
more than 95 percent or is it less than 95 percent?

If we do this calculation 10 000 divided by 11450 multiplied by 100, it comes to 87.34

percent. Now is this less than 95 percent, the answer is yes. In this case we would say that
this particular gene is polymorphic for this particular population. Now, suppose we had
say in place of 10,000 genes we had it in 100000 genes. What would be the total in this
case?

So, we have 1450; 101450. And, in this second example what should be the proportion of
C 5. So, here the proportion of C 5 would be given by 100,000 divided by 101,450 into
100 percent. Now, if we do this calculation. So, we have 100,000 divided by 101450 into
100 we will get to a figure of 98.57 percent, which then would be greater than 95 percent.

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So, in such a scenario we would say that this particular gene of coat colour represented by
C is monomorphic for this particular population. So, essentially what we are asking is that
if there is a gene that has only one allele. So, for instance if all these individuals are one
and the same with regard to coat colour everybody just had C 1 C 1.

In that case this particular gene would be called monomorphic; mono is one, morpho is
form. It has only one form which is C 1, but if we have more than one forms we then put
a threshold. When we have this threshold of 95 percent, we ask if the frequency of the
most common allele is greater than this or less than this. Because for instance, if you have
a population in which you have 1 lakh copies of say C 1 and say only 2 copies of C 2.

In that particular case we would say that even though we have 2 different alleles for this
gene, but it is still monomorphic because more or less we can say that all the individuals
are similar when it comes to the coat colour.

The second thing that we ask in the case of genetic biodiversity is the level of
heterozygocity. Now, heterozygocity is the proportion or percentage of genes at which the
average individual is heterozygous.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:11)

What we ask in this case is, suppose in the case of chital we have 100 genes; actually this
number of genes is very large it say between 20,000 to 100,000. But, for an example let’s

147
take 100 genes. Now, heterozygosity asks the question, what is the percentage of genes at
which the average individual is heterozygous?

Heterozygosity means every gene is present in 2 copies. Suppose this was present as 1 1
and 1 1. So, in this case we would call it homozygous for gene 1. Now, in the case of gene
2 suppose it was present as 2 1 and 2 4. So, here we will say that it is heterozygous for
gene 2. And, similarly we will move on till the last gene which is the 100 gene.

In this case suppose out of these 100 genes there were 40 genes for which this individual
was heterozygous. So, in this case 40 out of 100 genes it was heterozygous. We take
another individual for this individual it was say 35 out of 100, may be for another
individual it was 70 out of 100 for which it was heterozygous. Heterozygosity would ask
what is the proportion or percentage of genes for which the average individual is
heterozygous?

We can average all of these values to get an idea of the level of heterozygocity that is
present in this population. genetic biodiversity can be looked at, using these 2 examples
polymorphism and heterozygosity.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:11)

Next is ecosystem biodiversity. Ecosystem as we saw before is a group of interaction

organisms or population or community and the physical environment they inhabit at a
given point in time. If we have a group of different populations, that forms a community

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and to this community you add the abiotic element, so the physical environment and you
get the ecosystem. Ecosystem biodiversity asks the question how many ecosystems are
there and how are they distributed?

(Refer Slide Time: 21:48)

What are the different kinds of ecosystems that we can have in a forest? So, suppose this
is our forest. It is possible that the whole of this forest is comprised of trees. So, in which
case we will say that it has only one kind of an ecosystem, but then it is also possible that
this forest has this area that is a wetland, then it has this area which is a grassland, then
this has this area which is a rocky outcrop; then probably you have this area which is very
close to a riverine. It gives you a different kind of an ecosystem and rest of the area is
comprised of trees.

In this case we would say that this area is comprising of a forest ecosystem, a grassland
ecosystem, a wetland ecosystem, a rocky outcrop ecosystem, and a riverine ecosystem. So,
in this case we have 5 different ecosystems. Ecosystem biodiversity is asking the question,
how many ecosystems are there. In the first example we had only one ecosystem.

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(Refer Slide Time: 23:06)

In the first example we only had this forest and the whole of the forest was comprised of
trees. So, this is one ecosystem and this is another ecosystem. We can see very clearly that
this ecosystem with 5 different smaller ecosystems is much more diverse as compared to
the first case in which we have only one ecosystem in this area.

The second thing that it asks is how are they distributed? Why is distribution important?
Distribution is important, because say in this particular example in place of having a
scenario like this we had a rocky outcrop that moved like this. Now this is a rocky outcrop.
What is the difference that we get? In the first example we had this rocky outcrop and here
we had the water body.

In this case let us look at the number of edges that we have in this is small portion only.
So, we have this edge that is comprised of rocky plus forest and we have this edge that is
comprised of wetland plus forest, so let us call the situation 1 and let us call the situation
2. In this situation we have an edge which is rocky plus forest, we have this edge which is
wetland plus forest, but now we have another edge which is this one, which is rocky plus
wet land.

By having such a distribution by having more number of edges we also increase the amount
of biodiversity in this area why, because there might be some species that prefer living on
the edges. For instance, they could be a species that prefers living here so that it is able to
venture into the forest so that it can get its food, but when the predators come it should be

150
able to run into the rocky outcrop to save itself. So, edges have their own significance in
the ecosystem.

Now, by having a distribution which maximise the edges that are possible, we can
maximise the biodiversity, which is why the ecosystem biodiversity asks this question not
only how many ecosystems are there, but also how are they distributed?

(Refer Slide Time: 26:13)

Now, out of these different approaches of measure in biodiversity. The simplest one is
looking at the species richness and the species evenness which is the species biodiversity.
Why? Because in the case of genetic biodiversity you have to look at individual genes that
are present in the population, which is not only way technology intensive, but also very
much cost intensive, but if you just went into the forest and looked at the number of species
that are there. They can just be looked with your naked eyes or may be with using a
binocular or some microscope. It is the most easiest way of measuring biodiversity and so,
this is the most widely used measurement of biodiversity. Species biodiversity also asks 2
questions; 1, what is the number of species that are present in your area? and 2, what is the
distribution of individuals of different species? Now, what do we mean by that? The first
one is simple species richness, is the number of species present in an area.

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(Refer Slide Time: 27:27)

Consider 2 forests. You have this forest 1 and you have forest 2. Say forest 1 has a total of
100 species and forest 2 has say 1000 species. Species richness asks the question how
many species are present. In this case you have 1000 species here you have 100 species.
We will say that forest 2 is much more biodiverse as compared to forest 1.

So, that is species richness the second thing is species evenness or the distribution of
individuals of different species. For instance in this case, suppose both the forest had equal
number of species. Let us have 100 species in forest 1 and 100 species in forest 2.

The distribution of individuals of different species asks the question, how many
individuals do we have of each species in both of these forests? In this case, suppose
species 1 has 10 individuals, species 2 has 12 individuals, species 3 has say 15 individuals,
and so on till species hundred that also has say 20 individuals.

This is the level of distribution of individuals of different species that we have in forest 1.
In the case of forest 2 suppose we have species 1 that has 2 individuals, species 2 has 3
individuals, species 3 has 2 individuals and so on, but there is one species that has say
10,000 individuals.

In this case we would say that even though both the forest have the same number of
species, both have 100 species, but if we look at forest 1. In this case all these species have
roughly equal number of individuals. When you move out into the forest if you take any

152
snapshot you might be able to see all 100 of these species. So, all these hundred species
are distributed everywhere.

Whereas, in the case of forest 2 we have 99 species with very few number of individuals
and one particular species that has 10,000 individuals. Now, if you move into this forest
you would observe only species number 100, because rest of the species are so few that
that your system is overwhelmed with species number 100. In this case we would say that
the species are not equally distributed or the individuals are not equally distributed
amongst different species.

When we ask this question, what is the level of species evenness, distribution of
individuals of different species, we would say that even though the species richness is
same in both these forest 100 species each, but this forest is much more even and this forest
is very much uneven when it comes to evenness. When we have the same level of species
richness we prefer an even forest. So, we will say that; the amount of biodiversity in forest
1 is much greater than the amount of biodiversity in forest 2.

Now, how do we know how many individuals are there in the forest?

(Refer Slide Time: 31:06)

That brings us to a concept of species accumulation curve. How do you get to know how
many species are there in a forest? Let us consider that we are considering the number of
mammals that are found in a forest.

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(Refer Slide Time: 31:24)

We are seeing the number of mammals in the forest. So, you go into the forest and on the
very first day suppose you saw 10 species, this is 10 species. You have the number of
species and you have days. On everyday suppose you are venturing out into the forest and
you are spending say 6 hours in the forest, and you are looking at different mammals that
you can see in this forest.

On the very first day you will be able to see the maximum number of animals, because
these are the most common animals. You venture out into the forest and you saw say chital
or sambar or langur or maybe some macaques. These are the animals that are very easily
seen, Probably on day 2 you did not find any new animal. The number of species remains
the same. So, this is day 1, this is day 2, on day 3 you got a bit more lucky and you saw a
tiger.

On day 3 your number of species increased from 10 to 11, because you saw a tiger, on day
4 it is possible that you also saw 2 other animals. So, it increased from 11 to 13 may be
because you saw a leopard and you also saw an Elephant, but then with time as you are
observing more and more number of species, it will reach to a point of saturation.

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(Refer Slide Time: 33:14)

So, when we draw the number of days and the number of hours that are spent goes by the
name of effort. We are drawing the number of species verses the effort. On the very first
day you will see the largest number of species, then this curve would increase with time,
it might also remain constant for some days, but then it will again increase as you are going
to see more and more number of individuals, but then after a while it will become flat.
Because for so, many days you are not seeing any new individual.

Here we see that on the first day we saw so many individual then every day we are seeing
some new individuals, but then after a while it is reaching to this level of flatness. And,
once we reach this stage we say that this is the number of species that are found in this
area. We draw a straight line and we see that this is the number of species that we have in
this area. Of course, the number of species may be a bit more or a bit less, but more or less
this is the number of species that we have.

This is a way in which we get to this species richness of an area. After richness the next
thing is to compute the species evenness. So, for all of these species we will keep a note
of how many individuals did you observe for this particular effort, and then we would
compute it in this way.

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(Refer Slide Time: 34:54)

Say you have the i(th) species and you have the population of the i(th) species, so, 1 2 3 4
and so on. Suppose for the first species you saw 100 animals for 2 the second species you
only saw 2 animals, for species 3 you saw 30 animals and so on. You will make the stable
and once that is made, we measure biodiversity using different indices.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:25)

The first index goes by the name of Simpsons diversity index and is given by the symbol
D, which is equal to 1 over sum i is equal to 1 to S and P i square. Now, call it as small p
i and from this we will compute capital P i. Here we have total number of species. S is the

156
last species that we have, let us say we have 100 species that are found in this area. The
total number of individuals that we found in this area is 1000. This is the sum of all the p
i, that is 1000.

P i is computed as p i divided by the (sum of p i). So, in this case because this is 100 so,
you will have 100 divided by 1000 is equal to 0.1. In this case you will have 2 divided by
1000 is 0.002 here you will have thirty divided by 1000 is 0.03 and so on.

Here we are computing the p i. Now, in the case of the Simpson diversity index you have
one divided by the sum of P i square. In this case you will have P i square. Let us draw it
again.

(Refer Slide Time: 37:00)

So, here you had P i. So, P i was 0.1, 0.002, and 0.03 and so on. You do a P i square and
you get 0.01 and then this will be 0.000004, this will be 9 and so on. Here you are having
the P i squares. Now, you do a sum of all the P i squares and you will reach to a value of
x and then D is given by 1 divided by the sum of all the P i square or the sum of this value,
that is ‘x’.

This is the measure of biodiversity that is given by the Simpsons diversity index. D is the
Simpsons diversity index, S is the total number of species in the area and P i is the
proportion of the i(th) species in this area.

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(Refer Slide Time: 38:11)

From this D we get to a value of evenness. Evenness or E is given by D divided by the

maximum value of D or D max.

Evenness is maximum if, for all of these species, you had the same number of individuals
or best if you had only one individual of all the species. For instance in this case species 1
had only one individuals, species 2 had only 1 individual, species 3 had only 1 individual
and so on till species number 100. If, that is the situation, so, mathematically the value of
D will become maximum and when you divide D by the maximum value of D you get the
equitability or evenness value of the Simpsons diversity index.

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(Refer Slide Time: 39:05)

Another, index that is used is the Shannon diversity index. In the case of Shannon’s
diversity index you have is minus sum over I from one to the last number of species that
is i is equal to 1 to S. And, here you have P i log of P i. And this log is the natural logarithm
which is log to base e. Once you compute this value, this is the Shannon’s diversity index.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:32)

Here also you can get to an evenness value by H divided by H max. These formulae do
not have to be remembered for the purpose of this course, this is just to give you an
indication of how this biodiversity is actually measured in the field.

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(Refer Slide Time: 39:53)

From here we move to the next concepts of biodiversity. Geographically we can have 3
values of biodiversity alpha beta and gamma. Alpha biodiversity is the biodiversity that
exists within an ecosystem. In our forest, so, this is our forest and in this forest we are
having 5 different ecosystems. The first ecosystem is the forest, the (second is the rocks),
the second is the grasslands, the third is the wetland, fourth is the rocks and fifth one is the
riverine ecosystem.

Alpha biodiversity asks about the diversity that exists within an ecosystem or for instance
if you are looking at alpha biodiversity in terms of species richness, how many number of
species do we have in the forest ecosystem, or the trees ecosystem? How many number of
species do we have in the grassland ecosystem? Suppose here you have the number of
species as 20 here you have the number of species as 10. Alpha biodiversity is asking the
question, what is the biodiversity that exist within each and every ecosystem. Beta
diversity on the other hand asks what is the diversity that exist among different ecosystems.
For instance it is possible that out of these 10 and 20 species, there are say m number of
species, say 5 species that are common between both of these. There are only P number of
species that is here you have 15 and here you have 5 species that are different between
both of these ecosystems. Beta diversity asks the question, what is the diversity that exists
among different ecosystems? And, gamma biodiversity takes it even further to ask; what
is the diversity that exists among different geographies which are very far from each other?

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(Refer Slide Time: 41:53)

To given example of alpha beta and gamma biodiversity, here is a field situation. You have
2 islands; on the first island you have a patch of trees and a swampy area and on the second
island you have a patch of trees. Here we are looking only at the lizard population that is
there. This swampy area has one species of lizard; this patch of trees has got 2 species of
lizards, one lives on the grasses and the second one lives on the trees, and on this island
we have another species of lizard that is found.

When we ask about the alpha biodiversity, here we have 2 species of lizards, here we have
one species of lizard, and here we have one species of lizard which is the alpha
biodiversity. If for instance we try to increase the alpha biodiversity of this particular
ecosystem or this particular island by draining off this swamp and generating a piece of
woodland in this area. In that case, this species would be lost, but we would be getting 2
species in the same area.

In this case the alpha biodiversity would increase from 1 to 2, because now we only have
one species and if you drain out this swamp and do a copy paste of this area, you will get
2 species, but if you look at the beta biodiversity, currently between these 2 ecosystems
we are having 3 species, 2 here and one here, but when we replace this swamp with this
forest land we will only be left with 2 species.

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(Refer Slide Time: 43:48)

Or to put it as in image, in the first case we have these trees and we have the grasses, and
on the other hand, we have some swamps. In the second case, we would drain off the
swamp and we would have trees here and trees here and we would have grasses here and
we would have grasses here, but in the first case we had a species 1 here, a species 2 here,
and a species 3 here. In this case, we would have species 1 here and species 1 here, species
2 here and species 2 here.

If we look at the alpha biodiversity. So, here alpha is 1 here alpha is 2, because for this
particular region the swampy region, you have shifted from one species to 2 species, but
if we look at the beta biodiversity here beta is 3 whereas, here beta is only 2 because here
you only have 2 species that are there on this island when we are looking at the beta
biodiversity. So, it is important to look at biodiversity at different levels of organisation.

Now, we make use of all this information to decide where to concentrate our conservation
efforts.

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(Refer Slide Time: 45:13)

So, we define some areas as biodiversity hotspots. Biodiversity hotspots are areas with
high species richness. They have a large number of species, a high degree of endemism.
Endemism means that these species that are found in this area are not found anywhere else.
So, these areas are providing a very typical ecosystem or a distinctive ecosystem for these
species that are found here. Because this distinctive ecosystem is not found anywhere else
so, this area has a high degree of endemism and also a very high degree of threat. So, a
high degree of threat would mean for instance if we have a new disease that is taking over
the individuals of these areas. For instance in the case of South America we have a fungal
disease called the chytrid disease that is exterminating the populations of frogs.

So, a number of species of frogs from that area are getting extinct. We will see that those
spots in South America have a very high degree of threat or for instance let us consider the
equatorial rain forest. A number of equatorial rain forests have been cut off to gather
timber, or may be to create some settlements, or may be to construct some roads, or to
have mining, by converting those areas into mining areas. There again because these
ecosystems are getting destroyed we will say that they have a high degree of threat.

Biodiversity hotspots will be areas that have all 3 of these. They have a large number of
species, these areas are providing such ecosystems that these species thrive only in these
areas, they are not found anywhere else. So, they have a high degree of endemism and they
also have a high degree of threat.

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(Refer Slide Time: 47:14)

Once we do that, we will observe that there are certain areas that require a larger degree
of protection as compared to some other areas. For instance in the case of India, if you
look at the Western Ghats. Western Ghats are a biodiversity hotspot, why? Because they
have a very large number of species. These species are not found anywhere else; for
instance some frog species that have been discovered in the Silent valley national park of
Kerala are not found anywhere else in the world.

Those species would be said to be extremely endemic to those areas. These areas are also
having a large amount of threat, because people want to chop off the trees here and convert
these areas into plantations. Because, these areas are also very good areas for say coffee
plantations or for say rubber plantations. In this case, these areas would be classified as
biodiversity hotspots and we would need to a focus more attention into these areas.

In this lecture, we had a look at the ecological structure in terms of biodiversity. We looked
at species abundance and species distribution and species composition of different areas.
We defined biodiversity as the amount of variety that exists in different life forms, in
different forms and in different levels of organisation.

We defined genetic biodiversity, we looked at species biodiversity, we looked at

ecosystem level biodiversity, and we also looked at alpha, beta and gamma biodiversity,
which is biodiversity within an ecosystem, biodiversity between 2 ecosystems and
biodiversity between 2 different geographies respectively. We also had a look at how to

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determine this species richness and this species evenness of an area, by looking at the
species accumulation curve and also by looking at the number of individuals that are
present for every species.

And, to concentrate all this information into one index, we can make use of the Shannon
index or the Simpson index, which gives us a snapshot view of the amount of biodiversity
that is present in an area, in terms of the species richness and in terms of the species
evenness.

Then, we moved on to the biodiversity hotspots which are areas which have a very large
number of species or a large species richness. They have a high amount of endemism
which means that those species are only found in those areas, they are not found anywhere
else. So, if we lose those areas we will lose those species forever. And, 3, these areas also
have a high degree of threat because people want to divert these areas for some other
applications, or probably because these areas are suffering from diseases or maybe they
are suffering from heavy floods or maybe forest fires and so on. These areas which are
defined to be biodiversity hotspots are those areas whose ecosystems require a larger
degree of protection if we wanted to conserve the wildlife in this area.

So, that is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

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 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 06
Biodiversity-II

In the last lecture, we had started with our discussion of biodiversity and in today’s lecture
we will look at biodiversity in greater detail.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:25)

We had ended with the last lecture with the slide, biodiversity hotspots of the world and
we had defined a hotspot as a region where we have a large amount of species richness
that is a number of species are found per unit area there. They are also regions with a high
degree of endemism. A number of species that are found there are found only there, they
are not found anywhere else. If we lose them at those locations, we would not have any
backup of these species. Third, these are areas that are facing a large amount of threat
because of say diseases or forest fires or maybe anthropogenic influences like people
wanted to convert these forests into plantations or agricultural lands or residential lands or
for roads and so on.

If we look at this map these are the locations with a high degree of species richness. Now,
a question arises why are there some regions that have a high degree of species richness?
and why are there some locations on the earth that have a low amount of species richness?

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Now, in particular we can see that the areas between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic
of Capricorn are the areas that predominantly have a larger amount of species richness. On
the other hand, if we look at the areas that are on the very north or south that is the Arctic
region or the Antarctic region there is very little amount of species richness.

What makes certain areas to have more amount of richness? and what makes certain areas
to have less amount of species richness or more biodiversity or less biodiversity?

(Refer Slide Time: 02:13)

There are a number of hypotheses that have been put up and essentially this is a
combination of the evolutionary processes and the ecological processes. It is difficult to
dissect for any particular region whether it is the evolutionary processes that are
dominating all the ecological processes that are dominating. So, which is why we are still
talking about the hypothesis and we have not formulated any theories about them. But,
then these hypothesis gave us a good understanding of the factors that can be responsible
for having more or less amount of biodiversity in any area.

The first hypothesis is known as the evolutionary speed hypothesis. Evolutionary speed
hypothesis suggests that all the biodiversity that has been created because of the process
of evolution. For any pocket of land or water on the earth the number of species that would
be there would depend on

1. the time for which evolution has happened there and

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 2. the speed at which the evolution has happened there.

So, essentially there is more biodiversity in areas with more time to evolve. Basically,
areas that are older would be having more number of species and more rapid evolution. If
there are areas that have shorter generation times or higher mutation rates or natural
selection that is acting more quickly than those areas would be having a greater amount of
biodiversity. An intuitive example for areas that differ regarding the time of labour for
evolution would be the case of old islands versus new islands.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:13)

Suppose, under the surface of some ocean we have seabed and suppose there is a volcanic
eruption here which gives out the magma and with time we have a new island that has just
appeared on the surface of the sea. Because this island was constructed using molten
materials so, essentially it would not be having any species whatsoever on the surface of
this island. If we consider an older island nearby which was created say many millions of
years back, in that case this particular surface would be teeming with a number of
organisms or teeming with a large amount of biodiversity.

Because, here the time available for evolution has been say several million years whereas,
here the time available for evolution is essentially 0 years. Now, even this particular island
would start getting biodiversity which is through a process that we call as succession and
we look at succession in greater detail in one of the later lectures, but then it is important
to note that the time that is available for evolution is an important factor to determine the

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amount of biodiversity that we will have in an area. The second thing is more rapid
evolution now, more evolution could happen because of shorter generation times.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:01)

Shorter generation times means that for species; so, let us consider two species here: one
is a small species and the second one is a large species. Now, in the case of this small
species one pair of parents give rise to say 1000 off springs and these off springs will then
give rise to further number of off springs and the time between these two stages is, say of
the order of a few minutes or a few hours. Let us consider the case of bacteria. E.coli takes
around 20 minutes to perform a cell division.

In this particular case, let us consider some sexual reproducing organisms. So, for instance
we could consider a species of mouse. In the case of mouse the generation time would be
say a few months, say 4 to 6 months. Now, in 4 to 6 months you have moved from 2
individuals to say 20 individuals to say 400 individuals. On the other hand we have some
other species that are large in size. A good example could be the tiger. In the case of a
tiger, when you have a mating, it would generally result in say 3 to 4 cubs and the time to
sexual maturity for these cubs is of the order of a few years say around 6 to 7 years. So,
let us call it as 7 years. In this period of 7 years the smaller population of mouse would
have had a number of generations. Let us consider that this had 6 months of generational
time. So, in that case, when it has 1 generation it would be having as much as 14

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generations and at the same time the number of off springs that have been produced is also
large.

If you have a shorter generation time, if you have say just a hundred thousand years for
evolution and if the species are such that they have shorter generation times; So, they will
be having more number of generations and so, there would be a more rapid evolution. We
will start observing differences in the populations with the time. Also areas which have
high mutation rates; now you can have a high mutation rate in area say that has a uranium
mine. So, that has a larger amount of background radiation or areas that are say having
some other heavy metals or say some chemicals that are leading to higher mutation rate.
So, those areas will also be observing a more rapid evolution and third is natural selection
that is acting more quickly.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:13)

The second hypothesis is known as the geographical area hypothesis. Geographical area
hypothesis says that there is more biodiversity in areas which have larger areas and which
have physically or biological complex habitats because these regions support more niches
or roles for organisms. What do we mean by that?

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(Refer Slide Time: 09:43)

Suppose you have two areas; one is this small area and then this is the second larger area;
let us consider that these are two islands. So, this is island 1 and this is island 2. Now,
because this island 1 is a small island, probably it would be having a fewer number of
habitats that are around. It is quite possible that in a very smaller island the whole of the
areas covered with sand. So now, you have sand and then you have water around it. Now,
in this case you only have a single kind of habitat.

In the case of the larger island you would have a strip of sand that would be there on the
periphery, then it is possible that in the centre you have some hills, you could even have a
small rivulet of sorts that flows through these hills. There could be some areas that are
plains, there could be some areas that are forested, there could be some areas that are
mostly full of grasses, there could be some areas that have a swampy vegetation. In the
case of island 2 we have a larger variety of habitats.

Island 1 would be able to support a very smaller biodiversity because every species has
specific requirements regarding its habitat. It would only support those species that can
live on sand or can live on the confluence between sand and water. However, in the case
of island 2, here we can observe that we will have one species that lives in the forest,
another species that lives on the conflict between sand and water, a third is species that
lives in the swampy lands, a fourth species that lives in the grasslands, a fifth the species
that lives on flat lands, a sixth species that lives in rivers, a seventh species that lives on

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the hills and also other species that live at the other confluences. So, here we will be having
a species that lives on the confluence between forest and grasslands. So, here you have an
eighth species, then you might even have a species that lives at this conference, at the ninth
conference which is between the forest and the swampy lands.

So, more amount of complexity in the habitat, physically or biologically more complex
habitats will correlate with a larger amount of biodiversity and for areas that are larger in
size, it is more probable that you will be having a more varied habitat condition that are
available. Geographical area hypothesis says that you will have more biodiversity in areas
that are large and in areas that are physically or biologically more complex.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:47)

The third hypothesis is called interspecific interactions hypothesis. ‘Inter’ is between,

‘specific’ is a species; so, we are considering the interactions that are happening between
species. These are community level interactions not population level interactions; and this
hypothesis says that there is more biodiversity in areas with competition because it affects
niche partitioning. Now, what does that mean?

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(Refer Slide Time: 13:23)

Suppose you have an area where you have a tree and in this tree suppose we have say two
species of birds. This is species 1 and then this is species 2 and because these species are
not having a very large number of individuals so, the amount of competition is less. If that
happens when the competition level is low, both of these species could use the same niche.
Niche the term refers to the position and role of an organism in the ecosystem.

When we see that both of these organisms are occupying the same niche we mean that they
are in the same position. So, both of these are canopy dwelling birds for instance and they
are performing the same role. For instance, both of these species are performing the role
of eating fruits and dispersing the seeds. When that happens we will have a situation where
both of these can live in the same niche.

Suppose with time you now have more number of birds; you have a third species and a
fourth species. When that happens that the number of fruits that are given out by this tree
are limited. Now you have a situation of competition; not everybody can have access to
the food. When that happens some of these birds will try to become more specialized.
Now, what do we mean by more specialized?

As we know in the case of a tree the fruit has the largest amount of nutrients. So, that is
the most edible part that is available in a tree, but then there could be other parts, say
leaves. In the amount of nutrition that you can have from leaves is typically less than the
amount of nutrition that you can have from the fruits, but when this bird tries to become

173
more specialised, it is because it is not able to compete with the other species, it now tries
to live on the leaves. It tries to eat leaves and get its nutrition from there.

When that happens, with time will observe that the body parts of the bird will start evolving
into structures that are more and more adapted to its new way of life, that is with
generations we might see that in place of beaks that were adapted to eating fruits now, the
structure of beaks is changing because of natural selection in a way that it is becoming
more and more adapted to eating leaves. If there is more amount of competition, then
probably some might even start eating the branches or maybe eating the bark or maybe
some would become insectivorous birds or maybe some would start getting down on the
ground and looking for their feed there.

With more and more competition we will observe that the niches would, the number of
niches that would occupied they would increase and when that happens, when you have a
particular group of birds that is feeding on fruits, then their evolution will drive them
towards having more and more adaptations to fruit eating. When you have a group of birds
that are eating leaves, we will have adaptations with because of natural selection that
become more and more adapted to eating leaves and when that happens the amount of
biodiversity increases. So, earlier when we did not have any competition, then you had a
certain number of birds, but with competition the number of bird species increases.

Similarly biodiversity also increases because of predation because predation retards the
competitive exclusion. Now, what do we mean by that?

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(Refer Slide Time: 17:39)

Suppose you have a pond and in this pond you have say three species of fishes. You have
this purple fish, you have red fishes and you have green fishes. We have these three species
of fishes. Suppose these three species are such that the red one is the most suited or the
most competitive and it is so much competitive because it is so efficient in getting its food
that it would even eat the food of the purple fishes and the green fishes.

If you have this situation, in a very short period you will find that this fish would increase
in its numbers and the other fishes would get exterminated and then after a while you will
have this pond that only has a single variety of fish which is the red fish. Now, that is when
you do not have a predation. Let us put a predator in this picture. We had these three
varieties of fishes, but then you also have a crocodile in the system. You have this crocodile
and this crocodile does not have a preference regarding which fish to eat, whichever fish
it gets it will go and eat it.

What happens now, if the population of the red fishes increases then the crocodile starts
eating more and more of the red fish and so, this population is kept in check. On the other
hand if the number of green fishes increases then the crocodile will go and eat the green
fishes and keep their population in check. Now, just because you have this crocodile here
in the system, so that the red fish will not be able to increase in its numbers so much that
it would outcompete the other two fishes.

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So, predation also helps in having more and more amount of biodiversity. In the absence
of crocodile, in the absence of the predator you would be having a situation in which you
have only one variety of fish, the red fish. When you put up a predatory pressure so, in that
case you now have three varieties of fishes. So, predation can also increase the amount of
biodiversity that we have in the system which is also a food for thought, why we require
tigers in our forest because tigers are predators and they keep the system in check. But, we
will look into it in greater detail in one of the other lectures.

(Refer Slide Time: 20:29)

Another hypothesis goes by the name of ambient energy hypothesis. There is more
biodiversity in areas with more energy for fewer species can tolerate climatically
unfavourable conditions. This hypothesis essentially states that those areas that have more
amount of energy in the form of say sunlight and are having more favourable conditions
would be having a greater amount of biodiversity.

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(Refer Slide Time: 21:01)

We can look at it by considering the structure of earth. In the case of earth, here we have
the equator, then we have the two tropics – the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of
Capricorn, and then the Arctic circle and the Antarctic circle. If we consider this region,
the arctic or the Antarctic regions, both of these regions get a very little amount of sunlight.
So, because of that, not enough amount of energies available for plants to thrive and at the
same time the temperature is so low that everything is kept frozen. So, it makes sense that
we will not have a great amount of biodiversity in these areas.

But, consider the central region, the region between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of
Capricorn. In these regions we have abundant amount of sunshine. We have abundant
energy that can be used for by the plants. We also have more access to water nothing is
kept frozen in these areas and so more number of species would thrive in these areas, but
then we can also look at some other extremes.

Consider an area of desert that is found here. In the case of the desert, you have abundant
amount of energy, but you have a very great shortage of water and when that happens then
you will not have a large number of species that would be able to thrive in that area. So,
essentially what this hypothesis says is more energy would give you more species and
more favourable conditions; say more favourable conditions to life, will give you more
species. So, this is also another way in which we can explain why certain areas have greater
biodiversity and certain areas have lesser biodiversity.

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(Refer Slide Time: 23:15)

Another hypothesis goes by the name of intermediate disturbance hypothesis. Till now,
we were looking at areas with more biodiversity. Now, we are concentrating on areas with
less biodiversity. Now, there is less biodiversity in areas with very high or frequent level
of disturbances because it leads to extinction of species.

What do we mean by frequent level of or high level of disturbance? Suppose you have a
forest and you have a human community nearby and these humans are going into the forest
every now and then they are poaching the wild animals and because the level of poaching
is very high; because they are going into the forest every day, so the level of disturbance
here is very large or probably they are getting into an equatorial rain forest and cutting all
the trees to convert them into plantations. Here we have a very fast rate of disturbance.

So, a forest that took millions of years to come up into its current shape is chopped down
and is converted into a barren land in a period of say a few months or say 1 or 2 years.
That is a very fast level of disturbance or a very high level of disturbance. If you have very
high level of disturbances or very frequent disturbances, so the species that are found in
that area do not have enough time to adapt themselves or to evolve themselves and to and
to avoid their own extinction. So, if you have very high level of disturbances or very
frequent disturbances that will lead to extinction of species.

However, if you look at the other extreme; if there are areas that do not have any
disturbances, very low disturbances or very infrequent disturbances. So, in those areas, we

178
would observe a competitive equilibrium and loss of species of low competitive ability,
that is, if we go back to our example of the pond, if we did not have this crocodile that was
putting a disturbance in the system, then very likely there would be some species that
would outcompete everybody else and they would reduce the level of biodiversity that is
present in this system.

(Refer Slide Time: 25:39)

Essentially if we tried to make a curve of the number of species or the species richness
versus the level of disturbance, we will find that at very low level of disturbances we have
low number of species, at very high level of disturbances we have low number of species,
but in the central region, with intermediate level of disturbances we have a larger number
of species. Essentially we will have a curve that goes like this. This is known as the
intermediate disturbance hypothesis. If you have an intermediate level of disturbance
which occurs at a frequency that is neither very high nor very low, so you will have more
amount of biodiversity.

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(Refer Slide Time: 26:45)

Another good example for intermediate level disturbance is that if you have an area that is
only full of trees, so, in this area there would be say n number of species. If you create
some amount of disturbance by say chopping off few trees, so, these two trees are taken
off. What happens in this case is that the ground level which was earlier not receiving any
sunlight because this area was all full of trees, now you have created some pockets in
which you have sunlight that is now reaching the ground. When that happens, then these
areas that were earlier only having a tree will now be having some grasses or maybe some
other herbs and shrubs.

When that happens, then this also leads to the creation of a more complex habitat. So,
earlier you had only one kind of habitat that was available and which was the trees. Now,
you have multiple kinds of habitats because you have trees you have areas that are barren,
you have areas that are full of grasses, you have all these different ecotones. Ecotones are
areas that are joining two different areas. You have this particular line in which you have
a confluence of a grassland and a forest. You will have some other species that can thrive
on these confluences because you might have say a bird that wants to sit on top of a tree,
so that it can have a vantage look around and whenever it sees an insect or say a small
mammal like a mouse then it can go there and it can eat that species.

If you have an area that only has forests, so, in that case your bird of prey might not be
able to see down below what is happening on the ground. Now that you have created this

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opening, what happens is that, now you can have a bird that sits here and gets the view of
the whole of this area and as soon as a mouse ventures out, it is able to grab that species.
So, some amount of disturbance will lead to more number of species that are formed. So,
that is all about why there are certain regions that have more level of biodiversity and why
there are certain regions that have less number or less amount of biodiversity.

But, then we have another question, why should we care about this biodiversity after all?
I mean what do we humans derive out of this biodiversity? Because, any subject even
ecology needs to meet certain aspirations of human beings. So, if we say that yes we need
to have more amount of biodiversity the first question that somebody would ask us why
do you need biodiversity. I mean say in the case of cheetah. So, cheetah is an animal that
was found in India and in the early 1950’s it was hunted down and now you do not have
any cheetah.

Somebody might ask - this cheetah is now extinct from India, but then it did not lead to
any collapse of the system. What is wrong if we take all the tigers out or say if we take all
the leopards out? It should not also not make very much of a difference. To understand
and to counter such questions we need to understand, why do we need biodiversity after
all? One way to understand is to look at the economic value of biodiversity.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:13)

That is, what are the benefits that we are getting out of biodiversity. The total economic
value is divided into use value and non use value. Use value is something that you get

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because you are using that particular resource and non use value is some benefit that you
are deriving even when you are not using that particular resource and use value is divided
into direct value, indirect value and option value and non use values divided into existence
altruistic and bequest values. We will now have a look at all of these.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:47)

Now, use value is value that is arising out of use of resource.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:53)

And, non use value is value that is arising through even-though the resource is not being
used.

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(Refer Slide Time: 30:57)

(Refer Slide Time: 31:03)

So, we had use value and use value is divided into the direct value, the indirect value and
the option value. Now, these are the three use values. So, what is direct value? Direct value
comprises of consumptive values and non consumptive values. Consumptive value is a
benefit that we derive when we are consuming a resource. Now, in this case consuming a
resource means that if I use a particular resource then it is not available to be used by
somebody else. For example, if we have biodiversity in the form of forest, so, forest will
have a number of trees; with those trees we can derive timber, fuel wood, firewood,

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medicines, we can have access to fodder, we can have non-timber forest produced, we can
have water and so on.

But, these are known as consumptive values because if I take timber out of a forest then
that timber is something that I can use, but any other person cannot make use of the same
timber. So, essentially if we are using a consumptive resource, the total amount of resource
that is available to be used by others, reduces. On the other hand, we also have non
consumptive resources. Non-consumptive resources or non-consumptive values include
recreation, ecotourism, education and research, human and wildlife habitat and so on.

For instance, if I go into a forest and I enjoy the scenic beauty; if I go into a forest and I
observe a tiger and I am very happy that yes, I was able to see a tiger. So, have I reduced
that value? The answer is no, because I can see this tiger if you go into this forest later on;
you might also be able to see the same tiger. By seeing this tiger, I was able to gain a
benefit, I was able to gain some amount of excitement or joy, but by using this value in a
non-consumptive manner, I am ensuring that this tiger is still there. On the other hand, if
I went for a consumptive use of a tiger, so, if I went into a forest, killed a tiger and took it
out and made a trophy out of it. So, if you go into the forest you would not see this tiger.
That is the difference between consumptive values and the non-consumptive values.

If we are conserving biodiversity, then we are ensuring that we have all of these direct
values that are available to us. If you have a forest and there are a number of medicinal
plants that are found in the forest. So, for instance, trees like cinchona. Cinchona, the bark
of this tree was the first one to be used against malaria. It is an anti malarial drug or for
instance things like Rauwolfia serpentina; which is another medicinal plant. The forests
are till date quite unexplored. If we get into the forest, it is quite possible that we might
find some other medicinal plant, but we can only make use of these if the forest is still
surviving there. So, that is the first value, that is the direct value.

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(Refer Slide Time: 34:33)

Now, indirect value includes things like watershed benefits, that is agricultural
productivity, soil conservation, groundwater recharge, regulation of stream flows. These
are indirect values, but even in this case, I am not taking out soil to be used in my own
farmlands, but because we have a forest so, it is conserving the soil. That is not just being
useful for me, but it is useful to the society at large. It is an indirect value or things such
as ecosystem services like nitrogen fixation or waste assimilation.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:23)

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For instance, we went to an area near Agra at the Kakraita plant where there are drains that
are carrying out the municipal waste. Now, and here you have a river. Now, if you directly
drain this municipal waste into the river, what will happen is that the river water will get
polluted. So, other people will not be able to use the river water. It might lead to spread of
diseases or it might even lead to a situation in which the fishes that are living in the river,
the turtles that are living in the river or the birds that are dependent on the river will all die
off. So, that would also affect the economy and the employment of a number of people
such as fishermen. So, it makes a lot of sense to treat this wastewater.

Now, to treat this wastewater you could go for a treatment plant; a wastewater treatment
plant, but then what people in Kakraita did was that, before the water was left out into the
river, this wastewater was divided into a number of channels and around those channels
they planted trees. Now, what happens is that, in the case of municipal wastewater you
have large amounts of nitrogen and large amounts of other minerals that can act as
fertilizers if they are used by plants, but that can act as toxins when you put them into the
water.

Now, just by doing this, you ensured that all of those nutrients get absorbed by the trees
and then whatever water remains is so devoid of these nutrients that if you let that into the
river, it does not produce any amount of harm. Such types of services are known as
ecosystem services and this was an example of waste assimilation. A forest can act as a
very good waste assimilator. So, in place of constructing a wastewater treatment plant that
could cost you lakhs or even crores of rupees, you can just have a small forest and divert
all of your water there and that water will get used or things such as carbon sequestration.

Now, we all know that we are in a period of global warming. So, because a large amount
of carbon dioxide has been released into the atmosphere and is currently also being
released into the atmosphere, we are observing greenhouse effect. Because of it, the earth
is warming up and we are seeing climatic consequences of that. Now, if you have a forest
that holds biodiversity, that holds different kinds of trees so, all of these trees will take up
all this carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and fix it in the form of wood.

These are other indirect values or even things like evolutionary processes of global life
support and biodiversity that are being supported because you are having these forests.

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(Refer Slide Time: 38:51)

The other kind of values, that we derive out of biodiversity are things like option value.
Option value is an option for the future; direct and indirect use of biodiversity. For instance
if we have a forest we have an option to clear up this forest and use all the timber or we
have this option to keep this forest as such and maybe say 10 years down the line if there
is some disease that we do not have a cure for, we might go into this forest and search for
different other biological molecules that might offer a cure. Option value is the value that
we are deriving for keeping this option open that we are not using this forest now, but we
are waiting for some time.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:49)

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To give another example, if you have say a piece of land that is available for sale and this
is an agricultural land and then you have another piece of land that is also for sale and you
have a road that is passing near this one, but not near the first piece of land. However, the
second piece of land is costing you say 4000 rupees per square meter and the first land is
costing you say 3000 rupees per square meter. You want to have a land that is close to the
road, but you are not sure whether you are ready to pay this price of 4000 rupees per square
meter or should you go for this cheaper land.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:37)

Option value would mean that because you are not able to take this decision right now you
will pay say 10000 rupees to this person and 10000 rupees to this person and you will say,
ok, I am not yet sure that I want to buy this land or that land. So, you take this money and
you keep this option open for me so that I can make my decision after say 6 months. So, I
am paying you these 10000 rupees so that after the end of 6 months I can decide which
land I should buy or not buy.

Now, if you have paid this money (and it is obviously, negotiable), once you have
negotiated an amount and you have paid this amount. So, both these people will keep the
land available for you, they will not sell it to somebody else. So, that is an option value.
Similarly in the case of biodiversity, the option value is the value that we might derive
some future benefit from our biodiversity.

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(Refer Slide Time: 41:47)

Another value is known as existence value. Existence value is the value that we derive
from the knowledge that the resources continue to exist. For example, a number of children
in India look at discovery channel or national geographic and are looking at African lions
or are looking at giraffes or things like zebras or ostriches. All of these are found in Africa,
but we look at them and we feel happy that these organisms are there and if somebody
kills say a rhinoceros or a lion that is found in Africa, we feel sad because we feel that it
would have been much better if this lion continued to survive.

Existence value is the value that we are deriving from the knowledge that this lion is
continuing to exist. We are not going to Africa to see this lion, but just because this lion is
there we feel happy and if this lion dies off we feel sad. So, the difference between this
happiness and the sadness is a value that we are deriving even though we are not utilizing
this resource and that is known as an existence value.

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(Refer Slide Time: 43:11)

Another value that we derive out of biodiversity is known as altruistic value. Now,
altruistic value is a value that is derived from the knowledge that there is some resource
that is being used by somebody in the current generation. For instance, if I think of say
Kaziranga national park and tiger reserve. Now, Kaziranga has a number of rhinoceros in
India and it is quite possible that I might not directly be associated with Kaziranga, but I
know that quite a number of people in Assam are getting their employment because of
Kaziranga.

Because, tourists are going there and they are going there to see the rhinoceros and when
they go there, they spend their money, they live in resorts or maybe guest houses and they
are also paying money to the local economy for food, for services, for recreation, for
transport. So many people are acting as tour guides or forest guides inside this forest and
so, I know that Kaziranga is providing employment to quite a number of people who
belong to my own country, though Kaziranga is not providing employment to me.

Altruistic value will say that I am deriving a value because somebody in my current
generation, somebody who is my countryman or somebody who is a fellow resident of
earth is deriving value from a natural resource so, I feel happy that it is providing an
employment not to me, but at least it is providing employment to somebody else. That is
a value that we are deriving because Kaziranga exists and this kind of a value goes by the
name of altruistic value.

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(Refer Slide Time: 44:57)

Another value is known as a bequest value. Bequest value means that I have this resource,
I have a certain amount of biodiversity and I want to leave this biodiversity as such for my
future generations, for my children, for my children’s children and so on. For example; for
instance, today we are able to see tigers and we are able to derive joy out of it. Now, we
could have this proposal that let us kill off all of these tigers, let us stuff them and let us
sell them to foreigners. Now, if that happens we might get quite a huge amount of foreign
exchange, but then I might feel sad because my future generations will not be able to see
tigers, if such a thing happens.

So, bequest value is the value that I am deriving by leaving use and non-use values for
offsprings or future generations. So, I am not allowing tigers to be killed even though it is
giving our country foreign exchange, because I want it to survive for the future generation.
This is a value that I am deriving out of these tigers by not using these tigers. This kind of
a value goes by the name of bequest value.

If we talk about the importance of biodiversity to all of us, we can count all of these
different biodiversity or all of these values that we are deriving out of the biodiversity. For
instance, Kanha national park is providing a lot of direct values. For instance people are
going there and people are getting employment because of that, which is a direct value;
some amount of indirect values because tourists are going there and they are feeling happy.

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Kanha also has a lot of bequest value because we want to leave Kanha as such for the
future generations.

Kanha also has an existence value because people all over the world feel happy that yes,
there is a national park called Kanha national park that exists in India. It also has a lot of
altruistic value because I know that yes, some of my countrymen are getting employment
out of it; out of Kanha. So, all of these values together signifies the value of biodiversity
and which is why a study of ecology becomes extremely important to conserve all of this
biodiversity. We looked at different kinds of values, but then; Can we put a rupee value or
a dollar value to all of these different values?

(Refer Slide Time: 47:37)

Now we come to the methods of valuation of all of these. There are three accepted
approaches for valuation. The first one is called the market price method. In the case of
the market price method, we go for the direct use of biodiversity. For instance, if there is
a forest that is there in Balaghat and we are deriving timber out of it, so, market price
method would ask, how much volume of timber was extracted from this forest every year?
and what is the price of that timber that is being extracted from this forest? You multiply
both of these and you get a market value of the forest. This forest is important because it
is giving us say 20 crores of rupees every year; that is the market price method.

Hedonic pricing method is a way of asking; what is the amount of happiness that I am
deriving out of this biodiversity? For instance, if you have a tall tower in a city and one

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side of that tower is facing, say a forest area or maybe it is sea facing and that sea facing
apartment which is much more pricey as compared to another apartment that is there in
the same tower because when you look at sea, you feel good. That feeling of good is known
as hedonism. Hedonic pricing takes into account the difference in pricing between an area
that is exposed to biodiversity and an area that is not exposed to biodiversity.

The third is travel cost method. Travel cost method asks how many people are coming.
For instance, if we are looking at Kanha tiger reserve, how many people are coming to
Kanha tiger reserve and how much is each person paying to go to Kanha tiger reserve and
to enjoy its facilities. If we add all of that amount and we make this assumption that if
somebody is going to Kanha tiger reserve and is say paying 10000 rupees.

Obviously, the value that the person is deriving from Kanha tiger reserve should be greater
than 10000 rupees because; obviously, if I go to the market and say I am going into the
market to purchase a computer and somebody says that the price of this computer is thirty
thousand rupees. Now, if I think that I am going to derive a benefit that is greater than
30000 rupees then I will be happy to pay 30000 rupees, but if I think that the benefit that
I will derive out of this computer is only say 20000 rupees, then why should I pay 30000
to get that computer?

Similarly in the case of the travel cost method we make an addition of all the expenses that
are being borne by different people to reach our area and to enjoy it is facilities and when
you make this computation, then you get to a figure that is known as the valuation of Kanha
tiger reserve through travel cost method.

Another method of valuation goes by the name of the circumstantial evidence or the
imputed willingness to pay, such as the replacement method or the damage cost avoided
method.

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(Refer Slide Time: 50:59)

A good example is say in the case of Punjab you have some hills and these hills have some
rivulets that are flowing through them and these rivulets then become part of the larger
river. These small hills have trees and these trees are binding the soil and because they are
binding the soil. So the soil is not able to reach out through these rivulets and into the main
river.

What happens if all of these trees are cut down and all of this soil comes out? What will
happen is, we will have a huge amount of sediment load in this river, this sediment will go
and it will deposit itself somewhere which might create some amounts of problems. For
instance, if this sediment load gets deposited here so, we might have a situation in which
this river changes its course. In case of flowing like this, it now starts flowing like this,
which might result in a situation of flood somewhere or there could be a situation that,
because of this huge segment load the fishes die out. So, that is some amount of loss, that
is being caused if the sediments come down and these forests are protecting this soil and
are not allowing it to be leached out.

Now, the damage cost avoided method would ask if these forests are removed from here
what would be the level of damage that is caused. What would be our expenses because of
floods? What would be our expenses because we will have the sediment deposition that
will have to be removed? What will be the damage because of the death of fishes? What
would be the damage because of loss of productivity of soil? And you add all of these and

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you get to a value that goes by the name of the damage that will probably be caused if
these trees were cut. These trees are avoiding this damage. So, this is at least the value that
we should put on these trees or on this biodiversity.

A similar method goes by the name of replacement or substitute cost. For instance, I can
say ok, I want this situation to persist, I do not want the sediments to get out, but at the
same time I need to get timber out of it. So, I will remove all of these trees. I will cut down
all of these trees and probably, I will put up some sort of a fabric on top of this area which
goes by the name of a geo fabric. I put some geo-fabric here and maybe I will construct
some filters here to ensure that this sediment does not get into the rivers and in those areas
where I am supposed to get a deposition of sediments I will maybe go for some amount of
excavation works to avoid this damage.

When we are doing all of these; when we are installing geo-fabrics, when we are installing
filters, when we are installing excavation works, we will have to pay some cost for doing
all of these activities. So, if we add up all of these costs; which means that, this was the
cost of the replacement that would be needed if we are removing the forest. That goes by
the name of the replacement cost method. So, how much amount of expenses we will have
to make if we wanted to replace these forests with some other structure.

The last method of valuation goes by the name of contingent valuation method which is a
form of exercise in which we use surveys or expressed willingness to pay. In this case, we
might go to Punjab and we might ask everybody, all the population around, not just in
Punjab maybe even in the neighbouring states and we will ask them, if these are the forests
and these forests have to be cut and if we are cutting these forests and if you do not want
these forests to be cut, you will be asked to pay some tax and that tax will be paid to pay
these people, so that they keep these forests on their lands. So, what is the amount of money
that you are willing to pay for these forests?

So, if somebody asked me and if I say ok, I can pay say 100 rupees every year for this;
you go and ask somebody else and that guy says, ok, I will pay say 80 rupees every year,
somebody else says ok, I will pay 10000 rupees every year. This is a survey method in
which we are asking people how much amount are you willing to pay and we add up all
of these values and we get to a value that this is the value of the forest that is being
considered out of this survey because people are saying that this is the total value of forest

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because this is the amount I am willing to pay to keep these forests there. So, this method
goes by the name of the contingent valuation method.

In this lecture, we had a look at biodiversity in greater detail. We saw, why there are some
areas that have more amount of biodiversity, why there are some areas that have lesser
amount of biodiversity, we looked at different hypotheses which make some areas to have
more amount of biodiversity and some areas to have lesser amount of biodiversity, then
we looked at the values of biodiversity that are there for the society at large.

So, only when you know the value of biodiversity can you convince somebody why the
conservation of this biodiversity is important and which is also a role of ecology because
ecology is a tool that can be used to conserve biodiversity. And, when we know what are
all values we are deriving and if we can get to a dollar value or a rupee value, we can say
that at least this much amount of money needs to be used for the study purposes, for
research purposes and for conservation purposes and this also makes way for ecology.

So, that is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai Hind”.

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 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Indian Forest Service, M.P
Indian Institution of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture - 07
Positive Interactions

“Namaste”

Today we begin with a new module which is ecological interactions.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:19)

In this module, we will have three lectures. The first is Positive Interactions. We will begin
with, what are ecological interactions? and then move on to the positive interactions that
we observe in different ecosystems.

Then will have a look at negative interactions in the second lecture and the third lecture
will be a study of behaviors and behavioral ecology. So, let us begin with positive
interactions.

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(Refer Slide Time: 00:42)

What are interactions? Interactions are effects or impacts that the organisms in a
community have on each other. So essentially, if you see any organism that is there in the
ecosystem, it will be doing something or just by its presence; it is taking up some space.
And when it does so, it is putting and impact on the neighboring organisms.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:11)

For instance if you have a forest and in this forest we have this tree; now just by its presence
here, it will be casting a shadow beneath itself and also to some degree on the sides. Now,
just by its presence, it is taking away all of these resources, all of this space, may be a lot

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of water, a lot of sunshine and a lot of mineral nutrients. Because of which if there is any
plant that is trying to grow up here, they will not be able to get adequate amounts of water
or nutrients and then they will die out.

This is a process that we call as competition. This is a negative interaction that this tree is
causing just by its mere presence, because it is casting a shadow on the surface of the
ground. On the other hand, this tree by the same process might also be helping somebody
else. For instance if we have an animal and this animal cannot face the very high heat; that
is there in the summer seasons, so you will find that this animal will move in the shade of
this tree and so this animal will get some help out of this tree.

This is a positive impact that this tree is causing by its near presence here and also because
it is releasing water in the process of photosynthesis, it is taking water from the ground
and then it is releasing it through evapotranspiration. Now, through this process of
evapotranspiration; it is also cooling the surroundings. These surroundings are much more
cooler as compared to the warmer surroundings that are there in the vicinity. All of these
different impacts that any organism in a community is casting on the other organisms in
that community are known as ecological interactions.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:09)

And these interactions can be divided into two parts; we have intraspecific interactions and
interspecific interactions.

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(Refer Slide Time: 03:28)

So, essentially what we mean by that is if you look at the word roots, ‘intra’ is within and
‘inter’ is among. Now, ‘specific’ is related to species; now intraspecific would mean
interactions within the species. For instance, if we consider a population of say chitals; so,
any impacts that when chital is causing on another chital would come in the category of
intra specific interactions.

Whereas when we talk about in inter specific interactions; it would mean interactions
among different species. For instance, if we have chital and we have sambar and if there
is some interaction some impact that a chital is causing to a sambar; then we will call it as
inter specific interaction.

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(Refer Slide Time: 04:22)

The next thing is harmonious and inharmonious interactions; now harmonious means
something there in harmony or positive ecological interactions. How do we define a
positive or harmonious ecological interaction? It is an interaction where none of the
participating organisms is harmed. Whereas, inharmonious interactions or negative
interactions are those interactions, where at least one of the participating organisms gets
harmed.

Even though there could be situations where none of the organisms is getting a benefit, but
if none of the organism is getting a harm; we will call it a positive ecological interaction
even if no none of the organisms is getting a benefit, the main principle here is the harm
principle.

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(Refer Slide Time: 05:11)

If we look at different intraspecific ecological interactions; we see harmonious interactions

in the form of colonies and societies that we will look in greater detail in this lecture. And
there are some inharmonious interactions such as intraspecific competition and
cannibalism.

Intraspecific is within the species; there is some competition. When we were looking in
the previous example; so in this example, if this tree, this plant and this tree belong to the
same species, then the kind of competition that is happening here will be called as in
intraspecific competition. So, that is an inharmonious interaction and we will look at it in
greater detail in the next lecture, and cannibalism where, an organism eats another
organism of the same species.

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(Refer Slide Time: 06:10)

These are the intraspecific interactions; what about the inter specific ecological
interactions? Interspecific is between two different species. In this case we have
harmonious interactions that is positive interactions in the form of proto-cooperation,
mutualism and commensalism and we will look at these in greater detail in this lecture.

Inharmonious or the negative interactions which are interspecific competition; now what
do we mean by interspecific competition? In the case of our tree, if say this tree and this
plant belonged to different species; then such a kind of competition that this tree is not
allowing this plant of a different species to prosper to grow there; then we will call it an
interspecific competition. Other examples of inharmonious interactions are parasitism
which is related to the parasites that are found.

Predatism, which is related to predation or predatory behavior in which one organism eats
another organism of another species; so this is known as predation. And the third one is
ammensalism in which an organism is harming another organism of a different species
even though it is not getting a benefit out of it.

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(Refer Slide Time: 07:31)

We can summarize these interactions in the form of this table. So, we have ecological
interactions, impact on the first organism and impact on the second organism.

In the case of competition, you have a harm to both the organisms. Here we are having
two organisms that are interacting in the ecosystem; if their interaction is in the form of
competition, so both the organisms are getting harmed. On the other hand, if it is
ammensalism, then one organism is harmed whereas, there is no impact on the second
organism.

And a very classical example of ammensalism is where you have cattle that are browsing
in a grassland. Now, on those grasses that they are eating they are showing a predatory
behavior; so they are removing the other organism in the form of exploitation. Whereas
just by walking they are trampling a number of plants and when they are trampling these
plants the cattle are not getting any benefit out of this behavior. So, the impact on the cattle
is 0; they are neither getting a benefit nor are they getting a harm; but just by walking on
the grass when they are trampling the grass the impact on the grass is negative, so such
processes are known as ammensalism.

Third one is exploitation; now exploitation is where one organism gets a benefit and the
second organism gets a harm. For example, we have predation, parasitism; so most of the
diseases are examples of exploitation. For instance, if you get tapeworms; so these

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tapeworms will be getting food from you and they will be harming you. This is an example
of exploitation.

Neutralism is a situation where there is no impact on any of the organisms that are
interacting. Now, examples of neutralism are very limited, because in a number of
situations we have not yet been able to dissect out clearly what are the impacts on the
organisms. For instance, you could say in the first instance that two trees that are separated
from each other.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:55)

Here we have a forest, here we have one tree and here we have another tree and this is the
canopy and this is the second canopy. In the first case, it might occur that both of these
trees are not having any impact on each other; neither a positive impact nor a negative
impact because they are very much separated from each other, but then it is quite possible
that the roots of the first tree are so long and so vigorously growing that they are tapping
into the water source or the water that is available to the second tree. And if that situation
occurs then we would say that there is one tree that is getting a benefit and another tree
that is getting a harm.

While in the first instance; it might appear that both of these trees are in a relationship of
neutralism, but it is also possible that they might be exploiting each other, but we call these
kinds of interactions as neutralism where the impact on the first organism and the impact
on the second organism are both 0.

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Next we have commensalism; now commensalism is an interaction where one organism
gets a benefit and there is no impact on the second organism. Here also when we say no
impact; it might be a minimal impact, it might be an impact that we are yet to discover;
however, if more or less if we see that there is a very minimal impact or no impact on the
first organism; we will say that it is a relationship of commensalism. Here, one organism
is getting a benefit and the second organism is not getting any benefit or any harm.

A good example could be, if you are walking on the countryside and you watch a buffalo
and on top of that buffalo there is a crow that is getting a hitchhike. Now, this crow is
getting a benefit because it is not expending any energy; it is just using the buffalo as a
means of transport. And there is no impact on the buffalo because a buffalo is say around
400 kg organism. So, it does not make much difference if say 2, 3, 4 kg crow is sitting on
top of it.

However, there might be some negative, some negative impacts because even though it is
a very minimal weight, but still this buffalo has to explain a bit more of energy. But, we
can classify such interactions in the name of commensalism because the impact on buffalo
is minimal, it is very close to 0 and finally, we have the interaction called as mutualism.
Mutualism is a relation where both the organisms are getting benefitted.

To sum up here we have 6 different kinds of ecological interactions, competition,

amensalism, exploitation, neutralism, commensalism and mutualism.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:01)

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When we are talking about intra specific that is belonging to the same species, harmonious
interactions we said that we have the examples of colonies and societies. Colonies are
defined as functional integrated aggregates formed by individuals of the same species.
They are functional integrated aggregates that are formed by individuals of the same
species. Good examples in this case are coral reefs, filamentous algae and microbial
colonies. What do we mean by functional integrated aggregates?

(Refer Slide Time: 13:41)

Let us have a look at a piece of coral reef. Now, this is how a coral reef would look like.
This is a small portion out of it and then, here we are observing that you have this huge
rock like structure and it appears that this is just one piece of rock, this is just one organism.
Whereas, actually we have a number of different organisms of the same species that have
colonized it together and they have formed an integrated aggregate; so this is an example
of a colony.

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(Refer Slide Time: 14:15)

Another example of colony is microbial colonies; for instance in this petri dish and this is
an image from the Nobel lecture of Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin; the
first antibiotic.

Here we are seeing penicillium colony; so this is a colony that is made by a fungus and
here we are having normal staphylococcal colonies; so all of these are different colonies.
If you look at any one of these colonies, we will see that this is one structure; you will not
be able to differentiate different bacteria that are inside this structure. But then, all of these
bacteria have come from one single bacterium through the process of multiplication.

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(Refer Slide Time: 15:03)

What is happening here is that on the surface of the petridish, and here you have a nutrient
agar medium. In this case, you had a single bacterium that came here and then it multiplied
and so it became from one to a million bacteria, but all of these bacteria are together.

When you look at this structure; you will not be able to see different bacteria from each
other; we will call this a colony of the bacteria. Here we are having colonies of
staphylococcus which are bacteria and here we have colonies of fungus, which is the
penicillium and because penicillium is releasing penicillin; so it is able to kill the bacteria.
So, this is how penicillin was discovered. So, intraspecific positive or harmonious
interactions are colonies.

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(Refer Slide Time: 16:10)

And the second one is ‘societies’. What is a society? Interactions for labor division and
collaboration among individuals of the same species; so, these are interactions that are for
division of labor. So, for instance when we look at a colony; a society of bee in the form
of a bee hive; so we will be having a queen bee inside, we will be having a number of
drones and a number of worker bees. Now in that, case there is a strict division of labor;
so in the case of the queen bee, her role or her labor is to is to give rise to a number of
eggs, it is to lay eggs. The role of drones is to fertilize the queen and the role of the workers
is to go out for foraging to get food from outside, to defend the nest, to build up the nest,
to take eggs and when these eggs hatch, to feed the larvae and so on.

So, there is a strict division of labor; so, these are also interactions for labor division and
collaboration. Why is this collaboration essential? Because if we just consider a group of
worker bees, they will not be able to reproduce; so they do not have this ability. Whereas,
the queen bee that has the ability to reproduce that queen bee is not able to defend itself.
Only by coming together they are able to pass on their genes; so this is an example of
collaboration. These are interactions for labor division and collaboration among
individuals of the same species. Examples are bee hives, termite mounds and wolf packs.

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(Refer Slide Time: 17:57)

Even in the case of a termite mound; you will also have termites that are serving different
purposes.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:03)

When we look at interspecific harmonious interactions; so interspecific is between two

different species, two or more different species; harmonious interactions because these are
positive interactions, they are not harming anybody.

So, in this case the first example is that of protocooperation. Now, protocooperation is
defined as an ecological interaction in which both participants benefit, but which is not

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obligatory for their survival. Now in the case of protocooperation, you have two entities
both of them are interacting and they are interacting in a way that they are mutually getting
benefited; the first party also gets a benefit, the second party also gets a benefit.

However, even though they are getting this benefit, they are not reciting together for a very
long time because this is not compulsory for their survival. When we say obligatory,
obligatory means compulsory; so, this is not compulsory for their survival; so they might
even go away from each other. A good example is, birds eating ectoparasites on the bodies
of animals.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:18)

So, a good example is - these ox birds that are there on the surface of the giraffe. We went
to Kruger National Park and there we saw this giraffe and on the body of this giraffe, you
can observe that there are many birds. There are so many birds that are sitting on the body
of this giraffe.

What are these birds doing? These birds are eating the insects and the parasites that are on
this skin of this giraffe. Why are they eating these insects and parasites? Because these
insects are parasites are serving as food for these birds. With this interaction, by coming
close to the giraffe and by sitting on the skin of the giraffe and eating away all these insects
and parasites, these birds are getting a benefit, they are getting food out of it. This is a very
easy source of food; Why?

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Because if these birds went out into the ground. It will be a very much difficult to see these
insects and to eat them; whereas, on the surface of this giraffe it is very easy to see these
insects. So there is benefit to the first party; now what is the benefit to the second party?
What is the benefit to the giraffe? Why is this giraffe allowing these birds to come to its
body, sit over it and do their job, get their food? Well, this is because the giraffe is also
getting a benefit out of it because the skin of the giraffe is getting cleaned in this manner.

These birds are removing the insects and the parasites that would remain on the body of
this giraffe. However, even though both of these parties are interacting together and both
of these are getting a benefit; even then, this is not obligatory for the survival of either the
birds or the giraffe. Even if there are no birds around; this giraffe will live and even if there
are no giraffes around; these birds would live because they would switch to some other
source of food; so which is why we call this interaction protocooperation. In this, both the
parties are getting a benefit; however, this benefit is not obligatory for the survival of any
of these.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:36)

Another example is cleaner fishes; so we will look at a small video to see what cleaner
fishes are. This is an example of what we call as a hippo spa; so this was featured in the
National Geographic some time back.

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(Refer Slide Time: 21:51)

Here we have a hippopotamus and that is lying in a river.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:02)

Similar to the case of the giraffe where we had so many birds that were eating its, eating
the insects and parasites on its surface, here we have a number of fishes that are known as
cleaner fishes; that are cleaning the body of this animal, the hippopotamus.

In this process, this hippopotamus is getting a benefit because its body is getting cleaned
up. It will have less number of diseases, whereas, at the same time the fishes are also
getting a benefit because the dead skin cells of the hippopotamus are serving as food for

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these fishes. Not only do these fishes clean the outer skin, they also clean the mouth of the
animal. For instance we normally do a brushing of our teeth, but in the case of these
animals; they do not have a toothbrush. This is an alternative arrangement that nature has
provided to them. So, once they open up their mouth; these fishes will even get to the
inside of the mouth and clean it.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:10)

This animal is opening its mouth and the fishes will clean the insides as well. In such an
interaction, it is essential that these fishes should not be harmed by the animal, because if
these fishes think that this is a predatory animal; so they will not be coming there and
cleaning its body or its mouth. Similarly, the hippopotamus should not also be getting any
sort of harm through this process.

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(Refer Slide Time: 23:42)

Another example is that of hermit crabs and sea anemones.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:51)

Now, hermit crab is a crab that has a soft shell on the top. Let us say that this is a crab and
if you have a crab in a water body, there are a number of predators that can come and eat
up this crab.

Now what the hermit crab does is that because it has a soft shell; it will make use of any
molluscan shell. So, any sea shell or any cowries shell that is available, so, it will just take
up any of these shells that are vacated and it will get inside. Essentially, when it goes

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inside; it will have this larger shell on top of it and then it will use it as a means of
protection. On the other hand, we have these organisms; so this is something that we
observed in the Marine National Park in Gujarat. Here we have seawater and here we have
this animal and this animal is known as sea anemone.

This is how it will look; so it is a very beautiful looking animal and this is a predator
animal, but as soon as you touch it; it will get inside. What this animal does is that it also
has a number of stinging cells on its body and this animal can even prey upon some smaller
fishes. When this hermit crab has this shell on top, it uses the shell for protection. It can
get an even better protection if it could go to a sea anemone and maybe take off this small
portion and then stick it on top of its own shell. In that case, we will have a situation where
you have sea anemone on the top and you have all these tentacles that are around.

Now, how does this help; when you have these tentacles which have stinging cells, so a
number of fishes will be extremely vary of coming close to the hermit crab. This anemone
is providing an added protection to the hermit crab. At the same time, as we observed here
in the; so, as we observed here in this video, this animal is a sessile animal. So, it remains
attached only at one place. If it is found here and only when some fishes come near it, will
it be able to predate upon those fishes, but then if it has a connection to the top shell of this
hermit crab. So, this anemone will also get a benefit of transport which would mean new
sources of food. In this process, both of these organisms are getting benefit out of each
other and so this is also an example of protocooperation. Why is this protocooperation?
Because you can have hermit crabs that live without a sea anemone on their top and you
also have sea anemones that live without a hermit crab. Such type of relationship is not
essential for their survival, but in this relationship, both the organisms are getting a benefit.

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(Refer Slide Time: 27:39)

Another kind of relationship is known as mutualism. Mutualism is an ecological

interaction in which both participants benefit and which is obligatory for their survival.
The only difference here is that both the participants are getting a benefit, but this is also
compulsory for their survival. Examples are microbes that digest cellulose in the stomachs
of ruminants and the bacterium rhizobium in the root nodules of legumes plants.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:20)

How does this relationship work? If we look at the root nodules of legumes plants such as
soya beans. This is the root of soya bean and here we will find that it has a number of

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nodule like structures. Nodules are these small protrusions that have come up on the
surface. These nodules harbor bacteria of the rhizobium species. These rhizobium bacteria
get a benefit of shelter and food from the plant. When they are here in these nodules; they
are getting protected and at the same time they are getting a free, an easy source of food
through the plant and these bacteria are able to fix nitrogen that is found in the air.

They convert nitrogen into nitrites and nitrates so that it becomes amenable for absorption
by the plant. If you just have nitrogen, the plants are not able to absorb it through their
roots, but if you convert them into inorganic minerals like nitrates on nitrates, so, in that
situation the roots are able to absorb the nitrogen in the form of nitrates and nitrates. These
bacteria which are found in the legumes; they are benefiting the plants by providing them
with nitrogen which is essential for their growth.

If you have a plant and you do not give it nitrogen this plant would die. The presence of
these bacteria permits this plant to survive even on those soils that do not have a heavy
amount of nitrogen in them, and these plants are permitting these bacteria to survive in
those areas, where survival otherwise would have been impossible. In this case, both the
organisms, the plant as well as that the bacteria are getting benefit out of each other and
this benefit is so essential for their survival that it is obligatory. They cannot live without
each other; which is why we call these as mutualism.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:29)

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Another type of interaction goes by the name of commensalism. Commensalism is an
ecological interaction in which one individual benefits, while the other is neither benefited
nor is harmed. Here also we have two different organisms; this is an inter specific
interaction and it is a harmonious interaction, it is a positive interaction; nobody gets a
harm. However, there is only one individual that gets a benefit, the other individual does
not get any benefit.

Examples are bacteria and other microorganisms that live on the skin without being
pathogenic or beneficial. For instance if you look at the surface of your hand; if you took
a sterile cotton swab and if you moved it across on your hands. If you put it into an agar
plate, you will find that there are a number of bacteria that grow on the surface. These
bacteria are not harming us and neither are they providing us any benefit, but then why are
these bacteria lying on the surface? Because they are getting food out of us, because, if
there are any dead cells; they will act as food for the bacteria. If we give out any oily
secretions, that would act as food for the bacteria; so the bacteria are getting a benefit
whereas, we are not getting any benefit out of it. At the same time, we are not getting any
harm because of these bacteria because these bacteria are non pathogenic bacteria, they
are not causing any diseases to us. It does not matter to us whether they remain there or
not. We are neither getting a benefit nor are we getting a harm.

Such types of interactions in which you have a situation where one organism gets a benefit;
while the other organism neither gets a benefit nor is harmed is known as commensalism.
Another good example of commensalism is egrets that feed with buffalos.

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(Refer Slide Time: 32:33)

Here we have a very interesting example. When I was looking out of my building; I saw
this wall which was being constructed. This is an area in Bhopal that is getting constructed
and here we have this wall and there are a number of a egrets. Egrets are small birds and
these are insectivores birds; so they feed on insects. Where do they get these insects from?
Well they will find them in the soil.

You have these grasses here and these grasses will also be harboring a number of insects.
There might be some locusts, there might be some grasshoppers and a number of other
caterpillars and so on. You have a plentiful supply of food in the form of insects that are
found in these grasses and you have the predator in the form of these egrets.

These egrets came to this wall very early in the morning say around 7 o’clock or say 6.30.
And they would just come here and they would keep on waiting; they would not do
anything else. We used to wonder what they are doing there, because you have a bird that
is hungry, you have insects that are available, why is this bird not getting down and eating
the insects? We used to see this every day.

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(Refer Slide Time: 34:09)

One day when it was a weekend and I was there at home. I observed that close to around
10.30 or 11.00; we used to see some buffaloes that came up to these grounds. And
immediately when these buffaloes came here, the egrets came down and started feeding
on the grass. Now what is happening here? If, you consider yourself to be an egret and you
see this grass around. This grass would be having a number of insects, but then how do
you get to that insect?

So, you come down and you find that there is an insect that is behind a leaf. Insects are
also very adapted camouflaging themselves. They will not show themselves off; most of
these insects will also be green in color and when you are around; when an egret is around,
these insects would hardly move. In that case it becomes very difficult for the egret to
catch hold of an insect or to put it in terms of energetics; the cost of a getting an insect is
much greater than the benefit that you will get out of eating that insect.

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(Refer Slide Time: 35:17)

Essentially if you have an insect and if that insect say gives you let us say 3 calories of
energy upon being eaten. If you do not have a buffalo around, you go down and you do
the foraging and you spend say 5 calories of energy on average per insect that gets eaten.

What we are seeing here is; if you have the birds; if this bird gets down. So, basically this
bird would be living somewhere else. It came to this wall early in the morning; so it has
expended some amount of energy to come to this area that is rich in insects, that is rich in
food; so, that has expended some amount of energy. If this bird comes down here and
when it comes down here it would start searching for insects and these insects because
they are camouflaged, so, this bird will have to spend time; it will have to spend energy to
catch these insects. On an average, if you are looking for insects, because it is energy
intensive; suppose on an average you are spending 5 calories of energy per insect that you
are able to catch; so, that is the cost of the operation. Now what is the benefit that you are
getting out of it? You have those small caterpillars or you have these grasshoppers and you
are eating those and on an average 1 insect will give you 3 calories of energy.

On an average, we would find that this would become a lossy operation because the cost
of getting the insect is much greater than the benefit that you will get out of eating that
insect. The bird does not want to spend its energy, it does not want to get into a game that
is lossy for it. This bird will not get down; it will just keep on sitting there. It will sit here,
it will not get down.

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Another thing that adds to the cost is a cost of predation. For instance if you have this
ground you might also see some pariah dogs, some street dogs that can come here, and
when these dogs come, they would want to eat the birds. They might chase the birds or
they might even try to attack the birds; when that happens, the bird will again have to fly.
Flying again will entail some more amount of energetic cost; so, this bird does nothing it
just sits there.

Now say around 10.30, 11 o’ clock when the buffaloes come the situation changes. How
does it change? That’s because when you have these buffaloes around, you will also have
the milkman who comes along with these buffaloes and he chases away the dogs. So, now
these birds are free from the danger of being predated. At the same time; when these
buffaloes are grazing on the grass, when they are moving around. When they are moving,
these grass blades will also be moved. When that happens, a number of insects would just
jump out; now, why does that happen?

(Refer Slide Time: 39:30)

In ethology, (ethology is the science of behavior of organisms), we have a concept of

‘flight distance’. What is the flight distance?

Suppose you have a grassland and suppose you have an animal say a chital that is standing
here. Now you are here and you go towards the chital; now you are say, at a distance of
around say 200 meters. Now at 200 meters this chital feels that it is extremely safe. You
will not be able to just jump and grab this chital because you are very far apart. You move

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closer; so now, you say you are 150 meters away from the chital. Now this chital is getting
more and more alarmed because it is getting this sense that you are getting close to it, but
still you are 150 meters away; so it does not have to worry about you. Next you come even
closer, so now you are 100 meters away. Now this chital is extremely anxious, but still it
waits because if it saw you and started running; so it is also expending its energy.

It always has to make this decision whether I should run away or whether I should continue
to eat these grasses. Because this chital is here in the grasses because it is eating the grass;
it is getting food from the grasses, now if it runs away it will not be able to get this food.
It has to make this decision whether it should run or whether it should continue feeding.
You came as close as 100 meters and this chital is still feeding and then you come as close
as say 50 meters. When you come as close as 50 meters; now this chital thinks that you
are so close that now if anything happens; you can jump and you can grab this chital. What
will this chital do? It will stop feeding and it will start running away in the other direction.

This phenomena of flight distance is observed in a number of organisms. We see it in a

number of wild animals, but we also see it in the case of the insects. When the animal is
moving; so the insect might also feel that it will get trampled upon under the hooves of the
buffaloes. When this buffalo moves, this insect out of its sheer fright, will start moving. It
might jump and as soon as it insect jumps, you have this egret nearby and this egret will
grab this and eat it. In the first instance, when the buffalos were not around; this egret had
to be very of the dogs and also it had to do a searching for the insects by itself; manually
by expending its own energy. But when the buffalos are around, the buffalo does all the
work for the egret and the egret is getting benefit out of it. Now why does the buffalo
permit the egret to be around?

That is the second question; now in place of the egret suppose it was something like a tiger.
Would the buffalo allow a tiger to come so nearby? The answer is no; why? Because the
buffalo also feels that tiger might harm the buffalo, but an egret is not going to harm the
buffalo; so, its fine with the buffalo. At times, you will also observe that this egret will
come on top of the body of the buffalo and will hitchhike for some distance; the buffalo
does not mind that as well.

In this example what we are observing is that we have two organisms that are interacting;
one is the egret, the second is the buffalo. One organism is getting a benefit out of this

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interaction; the egret is getting the benefit. You will always observe that the egret comes
close to the buffalo, the buffalo will never go close to the egret because the buffalo is not
getting any benefit out of it. But at the same time the buffalo is also not getting any harm
out of this interaction. Such an interaction where you have two different organisms in the
community; one gets a benefit, the second neither gets the benefit nor gets the harm goes
by the name of commensalism. This is a commensal relationship between both of these.

In today’s lecture what we observed is that we have a number of ecological interactions.

We have a number of species that are there together; these species will interact with each
other, they will have some impact on each other, they will have some effects on each other.
These effects could be voluntary effects; where an animal is doing something or these
could be involuntary effects just because of the presence of that organism or the animals
that is there. These impacts can be positive on other organisms or they can be negative on
the other organisms; if these are positive interactions, we call them harmonious
interactions.

(Refer Slide Time: 44:50)

What are the key terms that we have in this lecture? We have interactions and these
interactions can be harmonious or they can be inharmonious. Inharmonious is somebody
is harmed and here somebody is one of the two organisms that are interacting with each
other. In the case of harmonious interaction, you have nobody or let us say nobody of the
parties gets harmed; so, that is one type of classification.

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Another classification is whether these interactions are intra specific or whether they are
inter specific. Now intra-specific is within same species and inter-specific is among
different species. For instance, in this image, if we have an interaction between this egret
and this egret, that is an intra specific interaction or between this buffalo and this buffalo
this is an intra specific competition an intra specific interaction. For instance they might
be competing against each other.

If this buffalo eats up most of the grass, the second buffalo might not be able to get enough
amount of grass. Or for instance, if this buffalo is trying to mate with say this buffalo and
this buffalo is also trying to mate with this buffalo; so, both of these buffaloes are
competing against each other. These are examples of intra specific interactions, but when
we consider the interaction between the egret and the buffalo; we have an inter specific
interaction.

Then we looked at some harmonious interactions that were intra specific and some
harmonious interactions that were inter specific. In the case of intra specific interactions
we looked at colonies and we looked great societies. Now colonies, good examples are
colonies of corals or say colonies of bacteria or microbes that are there on the agar plate.

In the case of colonies the organisms are so close together that they behave as a single unit.
Whereas, in the case of societies you have different organisms that are living together,
there is a division of labor and then they are helping each other; a very good example is a
society of honeybees; so, where you have the queen bee, the worker bees, and the drone
bees. In the case of inter specific interactions, we saw a number of examples. Some
examples are commensalism, mutualism then we had protocooperation.

In the case of protocooperation you had both the organisms that were getting a benefit, but
this is not obligatory for their survival; they can live even otherwise. You had this example
of giraffe and the birds. The giraffe is providing food to the birds the birds are removing
insects from the giraffe and so both are helping each other, but they can remain away from
each other.

In the case of mutualism, again you have a situation where both the parties are helping
each other, but this is obligatory for their survival. You have rhizobium in the root nodules
of legumes plants; if you remove the rhizobium, the plant would die. If you remove the
plant the rhizobium would die, and both are helping each other because the rhizobium is

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providing nitrogen as a nutrient to the plants and the plants are providing shelter and food
to the rhizobium. Both are getting benefit out of it and if you remove this interaction both
the parties would die off. That was the second harmonious interaction and the third one
was commensalism that we just looked at.

We will continue this lecture with the negative interactions in the next lecture.

That is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

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 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture - 08
Negative Interactions

“Namaste”,

Today we will move forward with our discussion on Ecological Interactions and look at
negative interactions.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:23)

Before we begin, let us summarize what we had learnt in the previous lecture. We had
looked at 6 different kinds of ecological interactions. The first is competition. In the case
of competition, the first organism is harmed the second organism is also harmed. This is a
negative interaction and we will explore it in greater detail today.

The second one is amensalism. In the case of amensalism, one organism is harmed; the
second organism does not suffer a benefit or a harm. This is a negative interaction because
at least one party is getting a harm. We will also look at amensalism today. The third one
is Exploitation. In the case of exploitation, you have a harm to the first organism and a
benefit to the second organism. Because at least one party is getting a harm, we call it a
negative interaction or an inharmonious interaction.

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We look at exploitation today and various forms of exploitation such as predation,
parasitism and so on. Next is neutralism. Neutralism is an ecological interaction where the
first organism is not harmed and the second organism also is not harmed. So, none of them
is getting a benefit or a harm. So, there is no impact on any of these two organisms because
of the interaction, but because there is no harm, we will call it as a harmonious interaction.

Next one is commensalism. In the case of commensalism such as the egrets that were
feeding along with the buffalos as we saw in the previous lecture, there is one party that
does not get any harm or benefit that was the buffalo in our example and there was one
organism that was getting a benefit that was egret in the example.

So, because none of the parties is getting a harm, we call a harmonious interaction and the
last one is mutualism in which there are two parties that are getting benefit. Both of them
are getting benefit and then we also saw it looked at a variant of mutualism that is known
as Protocooperation.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:35)

In today’s lecture, we will focus on the inharmonious interactions. So, what is harmonious?
What is what is inharmonious? Harmonious interactions are positive ecological
interactions where none of the participating organisms is harmed; as you saw in the
previous class and in the case of inharmonious interactions; these are negative ecological
interactions, where at least one of the participating organisms is harmed; which we will
consider in today’s lecture.

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(Refer Slide Time: 03:03)

What are the main kinds of non-harmonious or inharmonious ecological interactions that
we see in nature. Here again we can divide them into intraspecific interactions and
interspecific interactions. In the case of intraspecific interactions, we have interactions
between individuals of the same species. Intra is within, specific is within the same species;
and here we have the examples of intraspecific competition and cannibalism.

Intraspecific competition is where members of the same species are competing against
each other. Intra is same, specific is species; same species competition. For example one
human being competing against another human being, one chital competing against
another chital, one tiger competing against another tiger. So, these are intraspecific
competitions.

The second one is Cannibalism. Cannibalism is a situation in which one organism eats up
another individual of the same species. For instance, a good example is the black widow
spider. After mating the female kills and eats up the male. That is an example of
cannibalism. Here also one organism is getting harmed. It is getting killed and eaten. It is
an inharmonious interaction and it is intraspecific because the male and the female back
widow belong to the same species.

Next is Interspecific interactions, which is between two species. One is interspecific

competition where one animal or one organism is competing against another organism of
a different species. Examples include, chital competing with sambar or chital competing

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with hares that are found in the nature. These will be the examples of interspecific
competition or say a tiger that is competing with a leopard. This is interspecific
competition. Another example is Parasitism. Parasitism is where one organism acts as a
parasite on the body of another organism. Third one is Predatism or Predation in which
one organism eats the member of another species. So, it eats up another organism which
belongs to a different species. That is an interspecific inharmonious interaction.

And the fourth one is Amensalism. Amensalism is a process in which one organism is
harmed and the second one does not suffer any benefit or any harm. These are all the
inharmonious interactions that we look in greater detail in today’s lecture.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:59)

We begin with competition. Competition is defined as the ecological interaction in which

individuals explore the same ecological niche. When we say explore the same ecological
niche, niche is the position or the role of an organism. For instance, if you have two
insectivorous birds, so there are two birds that are feeding on insects. Their niche is the
same; you can have an even more precisely defined niche. There are two birds that are
eating ground dwelling insects. So, these are exploring the same niche or their ecological
niches part partially coincide. When we say partially coincide, we mean that there is one
bird that is eating insects that are found in trees and also on the ground and there is another
bird that is eating the insects that are found on the ground.

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In this case both the niches are partially coinciding because both the birds are exploring
the same niche that is that of the ground even though their niches are not completely
overlapping with each other. Competition is the ecological interaction in which individuals
explore the same ecological niche or their ecological niches partially coincide and
therefore, competition for the same environmental resources takes place. There is
competition for the same environmental resources and these resources could be anything
such as food, they could be shelter, they could be physical space, they could be mates, they
could be access to water, they could be access to sunlight so on.

There is competition for the same environmental resources. We typify competition as

intraspecific versus interspecific. Intraspecific competition is competition between
members of the same species and interspecific competition is competition between
members of different species. We looked at their examples before; the second is
exploitative versus interference competition.

Exploitative competition is where organisms are exploiting the same resource and
interference competition is competition where organisms are not permitting another
organism to use the same resource even when they are not exploiting the same resource.
A good example of exploitative competition is the situation where there are a number of
animals that are grazing together on the same grassland.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:45)

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In this case, there is a piece of grassland and you have a number of organisms that are
feeding on this. There is one animal, there is another animal and then, there is the third
animal. If this animal eats up the grass, if it eats up a majority of the grass, so the grass
that is available to these two animals will be less. Essentially in the case of exploitative
competition you are exploiting the resources in such a way that you are overshooting your
own share, so that the share of others reduces. This is exploitative competition. In the case
of interference competition, you can have a situation in which you have the same
grassland.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:31)

And you have these same herbivores that are waiting to reach the grassland. So, let us
reduce the size of this grassland. Here you have the grassland, here you have the herbivores
and here you have a dog that is not allowing them to get into the grassland. This is an
interference competition. Even though this dog is not using the grassland, this dog is not
feeding on the grasses, but it is interfering with the ability of the herbivores to reach into
the grassland.

This is an example of interference competition. Another competition goes by the name of

apparent competition and we look at exploitative interference and apparent competition in
more detail soon. Let’s see an example for apparent competition.

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(Refer Slide Time: 10:33)

You have say a pond and in this pond, you have these two species of fishes; the red fish
and the green fish. Now, you have say 3 of green fish and 3 of red fish. Suppose the red
fish multiplies itself very much. And in this situation, suppose you had a predator. That
predator say is a bird. So, you have a bird that is coming and feeding on the fishes. Now,
in this case, because the number of red fishes and the number of green fishes are one and
the same, say 3 fishes. So, equal number of these animals are removed from the system,
but now, if the red fish multiplied itself and it became in place of 3, it became 6; now what
will happen now this bird will have an access to more amount of food because it has more
number of red fishes that are there in this pond. It has more amount of food. Probably, it
will be able to reproduce in a much better way. In that case it reproduces and now in place
of one bird, you have two birds. What happens now? You have two birds and these two
birds will again require fishes to feed.

When that happens, these birds will not only be consuming the red fishes, they will also
be consuming the green fishes. Because in this pond you had the red fishes, they increase
their number leading to an increase in the number of predators and those predators are now
predating upon the green fishes as well.

Essentially what these red fishes have done is that they have created a situation in which
the green fishes are getting harmed even though that was not their intention, even though
they did not want to do that, even then just because they increase their numbers, so the

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green fishes are getting harmed and such a scenario goes by the name of apparent
competition. We will locate apparent competition in more detail in a short while.

To recap competition is the ecological interaction where individuals explore the same
ecological niche or their ecological niches partially coincide and therefore, competition
for the same environmental resources takes place.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:07)

Now, we will look at some examples. Let us look at these Penguins. We went to South
Africa and there is a place known as the Boulder Beach. On this boulder beach, we have a
colony of penguins, so these are African penguins that are found in South Africa and most
of these penguins were either having an egg or they were even having a baby. This was
post their mating season. If you observe these penguins, they are at a certain distance from
each other and this distance is what we refer to as the pecking distance. If these birds were
any closer, they would start biting off the other bird because each bird requires a certain
amount of space. So, here we have a competition for an environmental resource which is
space on this beach and they require this space, so that they are able to make their nest, so
that they are able to lay their eggs, so that their babies come out and their babies are able
to survive and become the next generation. To do that, you require a piece of this sandy
beach. Now this sandy beach is not available in plenty, the number of birds is much greater
than the amount of sandy beach that is available. What they do? They compete for the
resources. The best bird will get the best location and it will drive off the other birds to

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those locations that are not that good and if any other bird tries to come within its own
territory, it will start to bite that bird or it will start to peck at that bird. Let us now see how
that looks like.

What these birds are doing here is that when they come close together, they peck at each
other. They show a behaviour that is a behaviour of competition. They want to displace
the other one out of their own territory and then they are also showing a behaviour, or a
ritualistic behaviour in which this bird which has become dominant. It will take its beak
upwards, it will start making a display, it will show off its neck and it will make a noise,
whereas, these birds that have become recessive so they are not as competitive as this bird.
So, this one is dominant, this one is recessive.

In this situation, this bird will show off a display that yes I am the boss here, this is my
area, you cannot come into this area and these birds will keep their heads down and they
will act in a submissive manner. We look at this clip once more. So, just keep an eye out
for the dominant and the recessive behaviours when these penguins are fighting for the
territory. So, the left bird, it took its beak above and this one kept it down.

(Refer Slide Time: 16:53)

Another example is the example of these black bucks that are fighting for the mate. So,
here we have two male black bucks here. We have a female black buck and these two black
bucks are fighting to have access to the mate. So, in this case the resource that they are
fighting for is not space. You have ample space here. It is not grasses. You have ample

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amount of grasses here, but they are fighting for this resource which is the mate. So, how
do these animals fight?

This is how they will fight. So, they will use their horn. They have these long antlers and
they will use these antlers to fight against each other. This one is closer to the female and
this one is able to displace the other one away from the female. These are black bucks that
are fighting for the mate. Now, when such a situation happens, when there are organisms
that are fighting for a resource, in the case of conservation this can have very significant
consequences and one example of that consequence is the phenomenon of habitat
displacement.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:23)

Now, what happens in the case of a habitat displacement. In this example, what you are
seeing is that you have these black bucks that are there in this grassland. Now these black
bucks feed on the grass and so, they require the grasses to be there and this is one of the
best suited locations that they can have to survive. They have ample amount of grasses,
they have some trees to protect them from the sun if need be and they happily living here.

Here you have let us say that this area also adjoins say a rocky place. So, you have here a
number of grasses and grasses are there on the flat land, you also have some trees that are
providing them with shade and then, you have these rocks and then, you have the black
bucks. The whole area is being used by the black bucks.

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Now what happens is, if you have say people who bring in cattle into this area, so they
bring in this cattle. Now, if cattle come into this area, they would also be herdsmen that
would accompany the cattle. So, you will have people who come with their cattle and they
want their cattle to graze on these same grasses because these grasses are not only
nutritious for the black bucks, they are also nutritious for the cattle and the more nutritious
grasses the cattle get, the more amount of milk they would produce. So, the farmers will
be happy. In that case what happens is when the farmers or when the herdsmen come with
their cattle to this area, they probably would also come with some dogs and other stuffs.
They would either kill off these black bucks or they would force these black bucks to move
somewhere else. Now this is the most prime habitat that the black buck has.

The black buck has access to food, it has access to shelter, there are also a few water bodies
here. This is the most prime habitat, but then when the herdsmen come with their cows,
they will displace away these black bucks. We will have a situation in which these black
bucks will get into this location which is a sub prime location and this area will now have
the cattle in place of the black bucks.

In this case here you have the prime habitat and in this area you have the sub prime habitat.
Now why is that so? Because this area is the prime habitat, because it has flat terrain, it
has ample amount of grasses, it has some trees for shelter between the summer season, it
also has some access to water. This area is now a sub prime habitat? Why?

Because this area is say rocky or this area does not have enough grass or say enough food
or water or maybe this area does not have trees for shelter. Now, in such a situation, we
observed that these animals are getting displaced out of their habitat into a subprime habitat
and this thing is known as habitat displacement. In nature what we observe is that, in this
area you have these black bucks and they are competing against each other. Probably they
will also be having some sambars , some chitals and some other such animals nearby.

For instance if you have sambars in this area, you will have a phenomena that is known as
niche differentiation in which you will find that the black bucks are most suited for these
grassland habitats and the sambars are more suited for these rocky areas. So, they will
automatically make use of both these niches, but when humans get into this picture, they
tend to displace these animals from their habitat and to conquer those habitats.

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When we say that man is able to conquer the earth, man is able to conquer the forest and
we convert forests into our… into areas that we want in the form of farmlands or in the
form of habitations. This is what is happening. This important phenomenon of niche
differentiation and habitat displacement together with the phenomena of competition is
very much required also for conservation.

(Refer Slide Time: 24:07)

Let us look at different kinds of competition. We differentiate between exploitative

competition and interference competition. Now, remember exploitative competition is
competition where you have a number of animals that are competing for the same resource.
This is what we had discussed before, in the case of exploitative competition. You have
all of these herbivores that are competing for the same amount of grassland. In the case of
interference competition, you have some animals that are not allowing others to make use
of the same piece of grassland.

Exploitative competition is also called a scramble competition whereas interference

competition is known as contest competition. In the case of exploitative competition there
is a scramble for resources. Everybody wants to use the same resource. In the case of
interference competition, everybody is contesting for the same resource. They are not
using this resource, but there is only a contest.

Competition is exploitative when species or individuals compete for the same limited
resource that is herbivores that are fighting for the same piece of grassland and competition

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is interference when species or individuals deplete others resources by interferences such
as aggressive displays or fightings. You have a dog that is barking and so is not allowing
the other animals to get inside. In exploitation organisms use of resources directly. It is no
longer available for use by others. Essentially if one cow eats up most of the grass, this
grass is not available to be used by other cows. The organisms are using up the resources
directly.

In the case of interference, one organism prevents others from using the resources. So, it
is not using the resources itself. When we look at this example of the dog, so here we have
this dog that is not using the grassland. It is just preventing the cows or the buffaloes or
the cattle from entering into this grassland.

We have this phrase in english , “a dog in the manger”, which means that you have a dog
that is sitting on a pile of hay, it is not eating up that hay and it is not allowing the other
organisms to eat up that hay. Now, there is no direct contact or conflict between the species
or individuals in exploitation. There is no direct contact or conflict because when these
cows are competing against each other, they are not competing personally against each
other, they are just eating up the resources. There is no direct contact between both of
these, but in the case of interference competition, there is a direct contact or conflict
between the species or individuals in interference.

In the case of the dog and the cows, the dog is directly conflicting with the cows.

(Refer Slide Time: 27:09)

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Further, competitive ability and exploitation is the rate of resource consumption.
Competitive ability of one cow can be defined as the rate at which that cow is eating up
the grass. The more amount of grass it eats up per unit time, the more is its competitive
ability and the less amount of grass will be available to be used by the other cows. In the
case of interference competition, competitive ability in interference is the ability to put on
aggression or fight. In the case of interference competition, the more amount of fights you
can put up, the more amount of aggressive displays that you can do, the more you can bark,
the more you can use your horns to keep others away, the more is your competitive ability.

Pure exploitative competition can be modeled as affecting the carrying capacity. When we
see carrying capacity, carrying capacity is how much amount of resources are available
and how many individuals can survive on that amount of resources. For instance, if you
have a piece of grassland and if you sow some grasses that can grow very fast and are more
nutritious, so more number of cows or more number of herbivores can be accommodated
or sustained by that piece of grassland.

We will say that the carrying capacity is increased. On the other hand, if you have a cow
that is eating up all the grasses, so less amount of grass is remaining for the other animals.
So, we will say that the carrying capacity is not going down. Pure exploitative competition
is where you do not have any amounts of interference. Pure exploitative competition can
be modeled as affecting the carrying capacity. It is as good as you reduce the carrying
capacity of the grassland and pure interference competition can be modeled as affecting
the rate of increase per individual.

Basically when the cow eats grass, so it is using that grass or that energy or those nutrients
to build up its own body and also to give rise to the next generation of offsprings. Pure
interference competition can be modeled as a reduction in the ability of the animals to use
the resource. Even though you have the resource, you are not able to use it.

For instance, this can be modeled as follows. Suppose 100 kgs of grass was required to
give rise to an offspring, now you can say that in place of 100 kgs of grass you will require
say 200 kgs of grass. There is an impact on the rate of increase per individual or you can
say that earlier you were having an offspring every 6 months. Now, there will be an
offspring not every 6 months, but say every 9 months. That would be a way of modeling
the situation.

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For pure exploitative competition, the relation between the rate of change per individual
of one species and abundance of the second is non-linear. Now in the case of exploitative
competition, the rate of change per individual of one species and the abundance of the
second is non-linear. What do we mean by that? The more number of individuals that you
have of a species, so for instance, there is a piece of grassland that is being eaten by cows
and buffaloes.

If you have more number of cows, then what is the rate of increase of buffaloes? How does
it impact that? If you did not have any cows, so the buffalos were having access to all the
grass. They would use that grass to increase their weight or to increase the total amount of
biomass that is available in the form of their bodies and in the bodies of their offsprings.

You put in more number of cows and the amount of grass that is available for the buffaloes
is less. The rate of increase will reduce, but then the relationship between both of these is
non-linear, but in the case of interference competition the relation between the rate of
change per individual of one species and the abundance of others is linear.

The more number of say dogs you have in your grassland, the lesser would be the rate of
increase in the cows or the cattle and this relationship will be a linear relationship.

(Refer Slide Time: 31:49)

Let us look at some examples of exploitative and interference competition. An

intraspecific exploitative competition is an organism over grazing on a land shared by

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several individuals of the same species. For instance you have a grassland that is being
grazed by a number of cows. In this case, every cow is doing an exploitative competition
against every other cow that is present on the same piece of grassland. This is an
intraspecific competition and it is between animals of the same species.

Next is interspecific competition. In this case, you have the same piece of grassland that is
being grazed by cows as well as buffalos. In the interaction between the cow and the
buffalo, one cow and one buffalo will be an interaction of exploitative competition, which
is interspecific in this case because you have cows that are competing with buffalos,
members of another species or another example is canopy trees of several species
competing for the available sunlight. What do we mean by this?

(Refer Slide Time: 33:03)

In a forest or in any piece of land, the amount of sunlight that is available is limited. So, if
you have a tree. This tree is now casting a shadow. This is the shadow region and if you
have saplings here of different species, so all of these species are now not able to get access
to the sunlight because of the presence of the first tree. Because you have this tree of
species 1, these saplings of a species 2, 3 and 4 are also not able to get access to the
sunlight. This is an example of interspecific, because this concerns two different species.

This is inter specific competition because they are competing for the same resource and
this is an exploitative competition because the more the first species is consuming, the
lesser is available for the rest. For instance, in place of this canopy if you had a smaller

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canopy say if this was the canopy. In that case the amount of the shadow region would
have been lesser and so this individual would have survived.

This is an example of an inter specific exploitative competition. If you look at interference

competition, the example in the case of intraspecific competition is an animal that is
showing territorial behaviour to its conspecifics. What does that mean?

(Refer Slide Time: 35:05)

When we looked at the penguins and there was a penguin that was not allowing the other
penguin to use that resource, now it is also possible that in place of using. Suppose there
is a penguin that requires this much space, but it is also possible that it shows an aggressive
behaviour for this much of a space. In that case the penguin does not require that much
amount of space, but it is not allowing others to make use of that space. This will be an
example of an intraspecific, because there is one penguin that is competing against another
penguin a member of the same species.

It is intraspecific interference competition interference because they are both directly

involved with each other. There, this interaction is one on one and it involves aggressive
displays, it involves fighting and in the case of interspecific interaction, we can have
allelopathy. What is allelopathy? Let’s take the same example of the tree in the forest.

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(Refer Slide Time: 35:55)

You have this tree and say the leaves of this tree when they come down. When they die
off and they come down here, they release some chemicals into the soil and those
chemicals do not permit saplings of other species to thrive.

Because of these chemicals these saplings would die off whereas, the saplings of their own
species would survive because they are resistant against their own chemicals. This would
be known as allelopathy. Another good example of allelopathy is what we saw in the
previous lecture.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:45)

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You have this petri dish and you had these fungal colonies of penicillin or penicillium and
you had these bacterial colonies and the bacterial colonies that were close to the
penicillium colony because of the impact of penicillin, they were dying off, they were
lysing off. Antibiotics are some chemicals that are released by one species to kill off or to
retard the growth of members of another species.

This is also an example of an inter specific. It has two different species; fungus and bacteria
interference competition. What does interference competition mean? Because in this
particular example the colony of fungus is only using up this amount of area on the agar,
it is not using this area, but still it is not permitting anybody else to come here; very much
like the situation of our dog that was preventing other animals from getting into the
grassland. This is an interspecific interference competition.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:03)

Now, apparent competition as we saw before is an interaction between two prey species
with a common predator. In this case, there are two prey species that are competing against
each other just because you have a common predator. You have for instance chital and
sambar and so, if the number of sambars increases, so tigers would get more amount of
sambars. They will get more amount of nutrition, more proteins. They will grow up, they
will reproduce much more because you have an ample amount of food in the environment,
the number of tigers grows up and then, these tigers also start killing up the chitals.

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Sambars are competing against chitals not directly, not because of using this the same
resource, not because they are showing up a display of aggression, but just because they
have a common predator. Apparent competition is an interaction between two prey species
with a common predator and increase in the population of one prey species may lead to an
increase in the abundance of the common predator, in this case the tiger, leading to a
stronger predation pressure on the second prey species; in this manner the two prey species
have a relation of indirect competition between them mediated by the numerical response
of the common predator species.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:29)

Essentially here we have two species A and species B and you have a common predator
P. So, if A increases that would cause P to increase. The predator increases and when the
predator increases, that puts the pressure of the population of B down. The increase in A
is also leading to a decrease in B. This is an apparent competition.

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(Refer Slide Time: 39:51)

It has several interesting characteristics. Generally the predator in case of apparent

competition is a food limited generalist species. What do we mean by generalist species
versus specific species? A generalist species is something that is not very particular, not
very choosy about what it wants to eat. It will eat up A and it will also eat up B. So, it is a
generalist species, it is a food limited species.

The number of predators that are available in the environment are only limited by the
amount of food. Only in that situation will have a situation of apparent competition
because, suppose you have this population of P that was limited not by food, but say
because of some diseases. In that case, any increase in A would not result in an increase
in the P population and so will not result in a decrease in the B population. This is only
possible when you have a food limited generalist species.

Now, some prey species act as keystone species in the community. Some prey species act
as keystone species and a good example is that of the fig trees. Fig trees are keystone
species because their impact on the ecosystem is much greater than their numerical
abundance. What happens in the case of forests is that, in the summer season you do not
have a very large amount of or a very large variety of food that is available, but fig trees
because most of their parts are edible, their leaves are edible, their fruits are edible, their
flowers are edible, so they act as a source of food in the case of the dry season as well.
When the number of fig trees increase, when the amount of food that is being provided by

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the fig trees, when it increases, the birds that are feeding on the fig trees they also increase
in their numbers and when that happens these birds will also go on eating other trees that
are available in the vicinity that have any edible portion.

Essentially in this case, the fig trees are doing an apparent competition to the other species
even though they are the keystone species for the whole of the ecosystem. At times some
prey species may even get excluded from community through diffused apparent
computation and so there are also situation in which some prey species may even get
extinct not just excluded. When the prey trophic level as a whole gets regulated by the
predator, each prey species is regulated by an ensemble of the predator along with the
available resources. Now, this is something that will consider in more detail in the next
module.

(Refer Slide Time: 42:39)

Some examples that are observed are insect host-parasitoid communities. You have insect
host and you have some parasitoids. Parasitoids are more like parasites that live inside the
bodies of these animals and are later able to kill these insects. The more number of insects
that you have, the more amount number of parasitoids that you will have and these
parasitoids will also act as a decimating factor for other insect species; also exotic shrubs
and trees through the action of seed predators.

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(Refer Slide Time: 43:17)

What happens in this case is, suppose you have a forest and in this forest you have certain
trees and then, you have a bush and that goes by the name of lantana. Lantana is an exotic
shrub. It is not native to India, it comes from africa and this lantana has flowers and fruits
and it gives off flowers and fruits in a very large number. The fruits are edible.

They are eaten up by a number of birds and these fruits are sweet and the seeds that are
inside are able to survive through the gut of the birds and when these birds sit somewhere
else and drop these seeds, so this lantana will be able to spread there, but then another
thing that we observe in this case is that when you have this lantana around, it will give
out so many number of fruits, so much amount of seeds that the number of seed predators
would grow, would go up; what are these seed predators? things like birds.

When these bird populations have exploded, so these birds will also start eating up;
because now you have more number of birds. These birds will also eat up the fruits and
the seeds of the other species. Lantana is able to give out so many number of fruits and
seeds, but other plants might not be having the same mechanism. In that case lantana would
spread, but the other plants would get decimated. This is also another example of apparent
competition.

Another example is as follows. For instance if you have grasses, so something like
bamboo. Bamboo is a species of grass and when bamboo flowers and when it gives out
seeds, the seeds are extremely nutritious and those seeds will lead to a boom in the

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population of the rodents. When the rodent numbers would increase, they would also feed
on other species and they will also decimate other plants. This is also an example of
apparent competition.

(Refer Slide Time: 45:25)

Apparent competition results in the reduction of the prey species, equilibrium densities
and growth rates and is a common phenomenon observed in several food webs. It helps us
understand the dynamics of predator-prey systems and provides insight into the top down
regulation in food webs.

Top down regulation in food webs is something that will discuss in the next module.
Essentially in the case of any food web, you can have interactions that go by the name of
trophic cascades. In the case of tropic cascades, you work on the very top predators and
when you work on the top predators, you can have an impact on the other tropic levels as
well.

For instance, in this case, when you are working on the top predator which is the bird, you
increase the number of birds that are there in this system. You can also modulate the other
shrubs that are available in this system. The other shrubs will get decimated because you
have the lantana here. Apparent competition, it helps create positive feedback loops for
invasive species. Lantana is an invasive species and it creates a positive feedback loop.
Why? Because when you have lantana, when you have this invasive species, it will give
out a large number of fruits.

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Those fruits will be eaten up by the predators, the birds, the bird numbers would go up,
these birds will also eat up the other fruits and the other shrubs that are there in the vicinity.
The other populations will get decimated when other shrubs die off. So, quite a lot of space
is created in this ecosystem for lantana to take over. When lantana comes into this forest,
this lantana would spread like anything because just because this lantana is there, other
species will get died off. When they die off, you have land available that can be taken up
by the lantana.

It creates a positive feedback loop for the invasive species enabling them to quickly
colonize newer areas by negatively influencing the established species because the
established species will be eaten up by the birds. Thus an understanding of the
phenomenon is critical for the proper management, conservation and health of the
ecosystems.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:47)

Next we look at cannibalism. Cannibalism is the act of one individual of a species

consuming all or part of another individual of the same species as food and this is
something that we know very well. Examples are sexual cannibalism in black widows and
sexual cannibalism in praying mantis. For instance in the case of black widow after the
mating process is done, the female will eat up the male. It will use the male as a food
source. That is an example of cannibalism.

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(Refer Slide Time: 48:19)

Next is parasitism. It is an ecological interaction in which one organism lives at the

expense of another. You have an organism that is living off the body of another organism
and the examples are ectoparasites. Ecto is outside. In the case of parasites, you can have
ectoparasites; ecto is outside.

(Refer Slide Time: 48:41)

You can have endoparasites, endo means inside. Ectoparasites live outside the body of
their host. A good example is leech. Leeches live outside the body of the host, but when it
gets into contact with the organism with its host, it sucks out blood from the host and then,

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it is able to live off the blood. Endoparasites on the other hand live inside the body of the
host. So, a good example is the malarial parasite. Malaria happens because of this
protozoan plasmodium vivax and when you have plasmodium vivax, it is a parasite it lives
inside the body, it lives in the blood vessels along with the blood cells.

This is how a leech looks like. This is a leech that is moving on the surface of road. It
moves with the salutatory motion.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:49)

So, you have the surface, it moves, it takes the first hand forward, then moves back and
then moves the second portion, then again it moves like this. So, this is the salutatory
motion that is used by leech. Let us look at it again. So, here we are observing a leech that
is moving on the surface of land.

When it gets contact with one of its hosts, so, for instance when it gets into contact with
the cow or with a buffalo or with say a sambar or a chital, it will attach itself to the skin of
that animal and it will start sucking up blood from that animal. This is an ecto parasite.

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(Refer Slide Time: 50:37)

The next negative interaction is predation. Predation is an ecological interaction in which

one individual mutilates or kills another to get food. In the case of predation, there is an
organism that is killing off another organism, an organism of another species to use it as
food.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:01)

We saw an example of predation before when we saw that this bird called roller was eating
up the centipede. This is the predator, this is the prey and the predator is predating upon
the prey. This sort of an ecological interaction, where the predator is getting a benefit and

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the prey is suffering a loss, the predator is getting food, the prey is getting eaten up and
dies in the process. This process is known as predation and predation is not just common
in the animal world.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:33)

We also see it in the case of plants. This is a Pitcher plant. In the case of a pitcher plant,
these are modified leaf structures and in this, you can see that this is a funnel like tube. So,
this thing is called a pitcher and this is the lid. In this pitcher plant, you will have the inside
surface of this top lid will give out some sugary secretions.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:07)

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For instance, if we say that this is a pitcher. Now this is a pitcher and then this is the top
lid. What happens is this top lid, it will have a number of hairs and it will have a very
smooth surface. It is so smooth that any organism is not able to sit here and it will give out
some sugary solutions at this end which will act as a bait for the other insects.

If an insect comes to eat this bait, it has to come to this portion and as soon as it comes
here because it is extremely slippery, it will fall inside the pitcher. So this is the pitcher
plant and this is an example of predation that is being done by plants. Another example is
the Venus flytrap.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:55)

Another interaction goes by the name of amensalism. Amenalism again is a negative

interaction. It is an interaction where an organism inflicts harm to another organism
without any cost or benefits received by itself. There is one organism that is harming
another organism, but in return it is neither getting a benefit nor is it getting a harm and a
classic example is the trampling of grass due to the movement of animals.

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(Refer Slide Time: 53:27)

For instance, we saw these black bucks that were there in Velavadar Blackbuck national
park. Now Velavadar black bucks are feeding on this grass. When they are feeding upon
this grass, this would be called as a form of predation, herbivory predation, but when these
are not eating up the grass, when they are just walking around, then also they are trampling
up the grass, plants. When they are moving and they are trampling the grass, so grass is
suffering a harm, but this movement or this trampling is neither giving this black buck any
benefit nor is it giving it any amount of harm. Such types of interactions where one
organism gets harmed, but the other organism neither gets a benefit nor a harm goes by
the name of amensalism.

In this lecture, we continued our discovery of the ecological interactions, we looked at

positive interactions in the previous lecture and in this lecture, we concentrated on the
negative interactions. The negative interactions can be intraspecific or within the same
species, or it can be interspecific or between two different species. A very good example
of negative interaction is competition. In the case of competition, you can have interference
competition, you can have exploitative competition or you can even have apparent
competition.

Other negative interactions include parasitism or predation or amensalism and so on. A

study of these interactions is extremely crucial for ecology because it helps us understand
how this system is working, how any ecosystem is working, how different populations in

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a community are interacting with each other. Different individuals are interacting because
they want some benefit out of the other organism because they want to maximize their
own fitness.

Every organism wants to have the maximum share of resources. It wants you have the
maximum amount of nutrition, so that it can give off a large number of offsprings and
most of those offsprings should be able to survive to the later generations. For that, it will
fight for a territory, so that it has an exclusive access to that resource and it can make that
resource available to its offsprings as well for instance.

That is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

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 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture - 09
Study of Behaviour and Behavioral Ecology

“Namaste”,

Today we begin our next lecture which is the Study of behaviours and behavioural
Ecology.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:17)

Before we begin let us look at the definitions. What is behavioural ecology? Behavioural
ecology is the study of the evolutionary basis for animal behaviour due to ecological
pressures. Essentially what we are saying when we say behavioural ecology is that, we say
that there is an ecological pressure which is governing the behaviour of animals and we
are trying to understand what is the relationship between both of these and how that also
plays a role in the evolutionary process.

Behaviour refers to the ways that organisms respond to each other and to particular cues
in the environment.

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(Refer Slide Time: 00:58)

Essentially, if you have a stimulus and that stimulus is resulting in a response. The way in
which the organism is utilizing or sensing this is stimulus making all the computations
about what to do and giving out this response, all this, is known as behavior. The study of
behaviours; the scientific study of animal behaviour goes by the name of ethology.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:25)

There are a number of topics that we study in the case of behavioural ecology. We study
foraging behaviours which means how do animals eat, how do they decide, which thing to
eat, what not to eat and so on. Anti-predator behaviours: so, how do animals try to avoid

262
their own predators, how do they try to save themselves. Social behaviours: how do
animals behave in a group and also the mating behaviours and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:54)

One fundamental approach through which we understand behaviours goes by the name of
the cost benefit approach. Now the cost benefit analysis is an assessment to determine
whether the cost of an activity is less than the benefit that can be expected from the activity.

To give a simple example, suppose I consider that the cost of this pen is say 10 rupees and
the benefit that I will derive by using this pen or by getting this pen is say 15 rupees. So,
in that case, I will go and get this pen, so that will be a behavior. On the other hand, if I
think that the cost of this pen is again 10 rupees, but the benefit that I will get out of getting
this pen is say 5 rupees. In that case, why should I go for this pen? Maybe I will not get to
go for this pen.

Similarly an animal also has to make a number of choices. For instance there is a tiger and
that tiger sees a sambar in front of it. This tiger has to make some calculations, how far is
that sambar, what is the terrain that is between the tiger and the sambar. If that terrain is
extremely rugged, if this tiger has to say climb up a mound and then get back. Probably it
will not go for hunting this sambar because the activity by which it will go and hunt the
sambar will also entail quite a lot of cost in terms of energetics. The tiger will be expending
its energy to get to that sambar to chase that sambar and to kill that sambar. The benefit

263
that the tiger will get if it goes for this attempt is the energy or the nutrition that will it will
get by eating that sambar.

If the cost is more than the benefit. If the terrain is extremely rugged and there is a very
low probability that this tiger will be able to eat the sambar. In that case when the cost is
more than the benefit, the tiger will probably not go for this; for chasing this sambar. On
the other hand if the benefit is much greater than the cost. For instance this tiger sees that
it was resting somewhere and this sambar came near itself. It does not have to run a very
great distance. At the same time this tiger is hungry. Essentially it requires these nutrients.
It puts a very high price or a very high value on nutrition. In that case, this tiger will go
and attack the sambar and maybe kill it and eat it.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:32)

Essentially we perform something when the cost less than the benefit so, in that case you
have the behaviour that will happen. If the cost is greater than the benefit, then you will
probably have some other behaviour which will refer to as by B‘. In this case the second
behaviour in the case of our tiger would be to do nothing or maybe to take some bit more
of rest. In this context, this curve becomes important. Here we are trying to put, so in this
case we are trying to understand what is the territory size that will be used by an organism?
By putting this territory size here and the cost or benefit as the territory size changes on
the y axis.

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The y axis is cost of benefit, the x axis is the territory size. For instance if there is a tiger
that has a small territory. If you have a small territory, you have a small amount of benefit
because you can only hunt “n” number of animals that are present in your territory and at
the same time the cost of defending that territory is also less because there is a very small
area that needs to be defended. If the territory size increases so, the cost increases.

The tiger will have to expend much more amount of energy to defend that territory. The
cost of defense increases like this. Earlier it was very less and then it is increasing
exponentially and then, when you have a very large size territory, any small bit of increase
in the size will entail quite a lot of cost to defend that territory. On the other hand if you
look at the benefits that are gained; if you have a very small territory, you have a very little
amount of benefit. As territory size increases your benefits increase, but then they start
getting saturated after a while because one instance if a tiger is able to kill only 1 prey
every week. It is killing somewhere around 50 preys in a year. If it is able to get 50 preys
in this much size of territory that is good enough for it.

Now, if that size increases so, at this size you have like 100 animals that are available to
be killed; at this size we have around 200 animals that are available to be killed, but then
a tiger is only going to eat somewhere around 50 animals. So, what is it going to do by
having 200 animals in its territory? That does not make any sense. In that case we will say
that the benefit increases, but after a while it starts saturating, which is why we are saying
that this curve is becoming more and more parallel to the x axis.

As territory size increases, so, in this area we will say that the benefit is greater than the
cost in this area. So, all of these territory sizes are those that the tiger will go for. If we
look at this area, so, at this particular size of territory we have the cost of defense is greater
than the benefit that is being provided by that size of territory.

The tiger may not go for that size of a territory. So, all of these, the curve that is from here
to here, now this is the area in which the tiger is going to operate. Amongst all of these
different sizes there would be one size that is the most optimum size. If the tiger goes for
this size, so, the benefit minus the cost which is the profit is with very large. If for instance
the territory size is this much, so, let us draw this curve.

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(Refer Slide Time: 08:27)

Here we have the territory size and here we have the cost or benefit. Now in this case, the
cost increases like this and the benefit goes like this. Now this is the benefit; now if we are
considering a territory size of this much. At this territory size, the cost and benefit are
equal. So, the profit, net profit is 0 and similarly at this particular point you have the net
profit is equal to 0. Now at this size of the territory, we have a profit that is given by this
much which is the benefit minus the cost. And at this size you have a profit that is given
by this much size which is the benefit minus cost and if we take another area to the left,
again the profit reduces.

If we say that we have these profits of P1, P2, P3, so, in that case, we have P1 is less than
P2 and P3 is also less than P2 so, P2 is the maximum. In this case, this territory size will
be called as the most optimum size of the territory because here your benefits are much
greater than the cost. If we consider a territory size like this. So, at this particular size, we
have the benefit that is given by this much. This is the benefit and the cost is given by this
much. So, the benefit is less than the cost. Actually the tiger will be expending much more
amount of energy and is getting very little in return. So, probably it will not go for that
particular size. By doing such an analysis we can compute or try to understand why certain
behaviours are preferred by animals and why certain behaviours are not preferred by the
animals.

Now, we will look at another example.

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(Refer Slide Time: 10:44)

This example is about why do carnivores live in groups? Now here we are considering a
theoretical case in which you have lions and the x axis is showing you the group size of
the lions and the y axis is showing you the group hunting success. Essentially, group
hunting success means that if the group of a particular size is going for a kill, so, it has
spotted a prey animal and it is going for a kill so, what is the probability that this group
will be able to kill the prey and get the food? Now if there is only 1 lion in the group, so,
if you have the point here. So, the group hunting success is only about 0.3 which means
that only three out of 10 animals or roughly 1 out of 3 animals that is being hunted gets
hunted.

Now, if you have more number of lions in the group. Suppose you have 2 number of lions,
so, the hunting efficiency increases point from 0.3 to 0.5. In the first case you had a
situation that the lion was able to get food only one in three cases and the second case it
gets food roughly 50 percent of the time. And as the size of the group increases and if they
are able to cooperate fully, so will have a situation in which the group hunting success will
become closer and closer to 1. Essentially if you have like 10 lions in the group and these
10 lions are cooperatively trying to hunt an animal so, there is a very good chance that they
will actually be able to hunt that animal, but that only happens if the lions are cooperating
fully.

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Whereas, if the lions are trying to cheat or if the lions are trying to hunt by themselves and
they are not cooperating. So, one lion is not cooperating with the next lion; so the hunting
efficiency will not increase. So, this is what our theoretical model states. Now if you look
at actual field situations of the lions and if we see these lions of Uganda so, we will observe
that the actual situation is somewhere in between. Actually you have lions that cooperate
for some time and they also try to cheat for some. This is a way in which we can understand
why the lions are living in groups.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:13)

We can even dissect it further by looking at the cost and benefits of group living for lions.
Now we consider the cases of males and females separately, now if you are living in a
group and if you are a male lion, so, there will be a sharing of paternity which means that
if there is only 1 lion and or say, in the group you only have 1 male lion. All the cubs that
are born in this particular pride will be fathered by only that particular lion, but if that lion
is allowing another male lion to live inside that group so that male lion may also give rise
to the progeny.

In that case the paternity of the cubs is being shared by both of these lions. If you have say
3 or 4 male lions that are living together so, all 4 of them will be sharing the paternity or
in other words the lion, the 1 male lion that was earlier having an exclusive access to all
the females, now has to share the females between the other lions.

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So, that is a cost of grouping for the male lion. The benefit of grouping for the main lion
is that it has an increased access to mates. For instance if you had only a single lion so, it
would not be able to compete with the already existing prides. It will not be able to make
a space for itself, but then if it combines with another male lion and if they work
cooperatively, in that case they will be able to topple the other prides and take their
females. So, the benefit of grouping is that it increases the access to mates and also it
provides a protection to the offspring against infanticide.

What is that mean? If you have a pride in which you have male lions and female lionesses
and if that pride is toppled over so, essentially the male lions have been defeated by an
incoming group. What this incoming group will do is that, it will kill off all the cubs that
are there in this pride, why? Because the male lions that are coming from outside they also
want to mate and the females will not get into heed, if they are having cubs with them.

So, the incoming lions will try to kill off the existing offsprings to make way for their own
offsprings. As we saw in one of the earlier lectures, we always talk about fitness. Now
fitness does not mean that you give rise to more number of progeny. It means that you give
rise to more number of progeny and more and more of them are able to survive and able
to reproduce to the next generation as well.

If the lions are able to produce cubs, but if those cubs get eaten up or are killed by incoming
lions, that does not make much sense evolutionarily. Which is why we have this behaviour
that the lions, even though they have this cost of sharing the paternity even then they will
try to remain in group, they will also allow other lions to come and cooperate with
themselves. By having an increased access to mates and by providing a united front, it is
much more plausible that the pride in which this cooperating lions are there will not be
toppled and so their offsprings will have protection against infanticide.

Now that is for the main lions. What is the benefit for the female lions or the lionesses?
Why do lionesses also live in the group? Lionesses too lives in groups, so again here we
have the cost and benefits. The cost of living in the group is a lower rate of food intake
because the larger the size of the group, the lesser the amount of food that you will have
from every hunt whereas, it also has some benefits; there is help from the kin and there is
territorial defense.

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In protection of their cubs and in performing the grooming of the cubs they also get help
from their siblings. And then it also helps in territorial defense because you have more
number of lions and lionesses that are defending the same amount of territory. As we saw
before, there is a cost, there is a benefit both for males and females. So, the males and the
females will normally go for the cost benefit approach and wherever the benefit minus the
cost is the greatest, that would be the optimal number of males and the optimum number
of females that will come together to form the group.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:05)

Now, similarly herbivores also live in groups, why?

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(Refer Slide Time: 18:09)

This paper demonstrated that when you have bisons that are living together and there is
this pack of wolves. Now, if again, if you have a big sized pack of wolves so, they will be
able to hunt much more efficiently if they are able to cooperate with each other. Similarly,
if the bisons are there in the group, in that case the wolves will find it extremely difficult
to hunt the bisons because they will put up a united front for defense.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:38)

If the bisons becomes solitary, if one of the bison lags behind, then that case that particular
bison will be attacked by the wolves from all sides and then it will get eaten up.

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(Refer Slide Time: 18:51)

(Refer Slide Time: 18:53)

We can see that in the case of group living animals if you look at the cost and benefits the
benefits are increased foraging efficiency. Essentially if you are hunting together, if you
are living together, if you are hunting together so, there is a greater chance that you will
be able to hunt somebody. In the case of these wolves they were able to hunt because they
are of a larger size. If there was a single wolf, probably, it would not be able to hunt the
bison. On the other hand, the cost is that there is competition for food and there is an
increased risk of diseases or parasites.

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Now because this bison was hunted by so many wolves, so, all these wolves will have to
share the flesh. In that case that is a cost that is associated with the group living and at the
same time because they are living together, if one of these wolves gets sick, so, that will
also spread diseases to the other wolves. Hence, by living together there is a greater
propensity that you become prey to diseases.

The other potential benefit is that of reduced predation whereas, the cost as the attraction
of predators. What do we mean by this? If you are living together so, for instance; if this
bison was not a part of this group, but was living alone. In that case this bison would
normally have been hunted long back, but because you have all of these bisons that are
putting together a united front, so, only one of them will get hunted and the others will be
able to survive.

So, that is a benefit. The cost is that if you have a larger sized group, so, more number of
predators might get attracted to hunt this particular group. Here again, you have cost and
benefits. Other potential benefits are increased access to mates whereas, the potential cost
are loss of paternity and brood parasitism. Now what does that mean? If you are living
together in a big group so, the animal has got a greater access to the mates because you
have more number of males and females that are living together; so, it is much more likely
that you have an access to a mate.

The potential cost is loss of paternity as we saw before because the mates are not
exclusively available to any particular organism and also there is a chance of brood
parasitism in which you can have a situation where an outsider can come into your group
mate with the females and then move out.

Similarly, you have the potential benefit of help from the kin if you are trying to raise your
kids and the potential cost is loss of individual reproduction.

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(Refer Slide Time: 21:49)

Now by looking at different cost and benefit analysis, we can also understand various
ecological behaviours like this community interactions that we saw before. You have this
langur, here, you have the chitals here and they are interacting because the chitals are
getting access to the leaves and the fruits from these trees when the langur is dropping
them. The chital is also having a benefit of having these eyes; the eyes of the langurs that
are on top of the tree and are able to see the predators.

On the other hand, the langurs are also getting some amount of benefit from the chitals
because the chitals are able to sense the predators from a lower height. These cost and
benefit analysis can help us understand different community interactions in ecology.

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(Refer Slide Time: 22:37)

Another example is, if you are living in a group, then there is a chance that you will find a
predator nearby and you have to make a decision whether or not you should give out an
alarm call.

What is an alarm call? This is a ground dwelling squirrel. This is a species of squirrels that
lives on the ground, it lives as part of a group and whenever it sees a predator it gives out
this alarm call. If you give out an alarm call, you are alerting everybody in the group that
there is a predator nearby, but then the predator will also hear you alarm call. In that case
you are making yourself much more visible to the predator. There is a chance that the
predator in place of hunting anybody else will go after you because you have made your
position extremely clear to the predator by giving out this alarm call. So, again you have
the cost and benefits of giving out an alarm call.

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(Refer Slide Time: 23:57)

You have the cost and you have to benefit. The cost is that you are using up your energy
to make the alarm call and the other cost is that you are making yourself visible to the
predators. The benefit is that you are able to save the group. Now the question here is, the
cost is something that you are entailing to yourself. You can get killed if you make the
alarm call. The benefit is something that you are making to the group because you are
saving not yourself, but the other organisms that are there in the group.

Here we are looking at one question of population dynamics. We have this population of
ground squirrels and every squirrel has to make this decision whether or not to give an
alarm call. If there is an alarm call, it is putting itself at risk, it is using up its own energy
and the benefits are not coming to itself, but are coming to the other members that are there
in the group.

In the first instance it might look like any squirrel that is giving out an alarm call is
sacrificing itself for the group. Is it a case of altruism or are we observing some other
points that are working here or are at play here to give up this behaviours?

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(Refer Slide Time: 25:31)

So, this phenomena was studied. Scientists tried to understand, when do you make a call.
So, here we have a graph of the callers regardless of residence to a predatory mammal.

Here we see that if you have these adult females and here we have an expected rate of
calling and here we have the observed rate of calling. Now expected rate of calling is given
by computing – the expected values are computed by assuming that animals call randomly
in direct proportion to the number of times they are present when a predatory mammal
appears. Essentially if you have more number of females or if you have situations in which
the females were there, when there was this predatory animal that had come there. So, we
put a random chance that every animal is going to make a call every “n” number of times.

So, from that we get this expected rate of calling and here you observe the observed rate
of calling. This is what actually happens in the ground. Now you can see here that the
females were expected to call say 41 percent of time, but they actually called around 65
percent of time. So, their calling was much greater than what we had expected.

In the case of adult males, we had expected them to call around 25 percent of times, but
they actually called just around 8 percent of time. Now in the case of 1 year females, we
had expected them to call say around 15 percent of times, but they also called somewhere
around 38 percent of times. So, in the case of 1 year females as well as in the case of the
adult females, we observe that they are observed rates of calling are much greater than the
expected rates of calling.

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In the case of 1 year males, we had expected them to call around 10 percent of time and
they actually call say around 5 percent of 9. Here also the observed rate was much less
than what was expected. And in the case of juveniles it was very much less than what was
expected.

(Refer Slide Time: 27:51)

Now the question is so why do females call more than expected and why do males called
less than expected? What is there that is making the females put themselves more at risk
to alert their group? This question brings us to the concept of kin selection. In the case of
these ground dwelling squirrels it is observed that the females in generally live together
and the males after they have reached some stage of maturity they move out.

Essentially, if a female is calling up, is giving out this alarm call, it is alerting most of its
own relatives whereas, the male does not have much to lose in terms of genes if one of the
members or more of the members of the group gets killed. Because the male wants to
protect its own genes because it is in any case going to move somewhere else. The male
puts much more price on saving itself than saving the group whereas, the female puts a
much greater price on saving the group than on saving itself because it has more number
of genes that are common with that of the group. Here we have the concept of kin selection
and kin selection see is the evolution of traits that increase the survival and ultimately the
reproductive success of one’s relatives.

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(Refer Slide Time: 29:18)

Now, in the case of kin selection, if we are observing this behaviour that you have
organisms that are even willing to sacrifice themselves to save somebody else from their
own kin which are relatives. If this behaviour is being observed, it means that this
behaviour must have evolved over time.

Now if there is a behaviour that has evolved over time, then this behaviour must be
providing more fitness. Because if you have a situation in which there is a behaviour that
gives you more amount of fitness only then that behaviour will be selected through the
process of natural selection and only then such a behaviour will be evolved and which is
why we are observing this behavior. Now the question is, how is it possible that by
sacrificing yourself you are getting a fitness? and by you; I mean not just you, but your
genes how are your genes getting to a situation that they are more fit to survival if they are
sacrificing?

Here we also have another corollary which is known as group selection. Natural selection
for traits that favor groups rather than individuals because group selection operates much
more slowly than the individual selection so, it is a much weaker selective force in most
circumstances. Now in this case, what we are seeing is that when we have the kin selection,
we are also observing the group selection. Kin selection is only working when you are
working in a large size group and in this group your own fitness is not that important as is
the fitness of the whole of the group. Now why is that so?

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(Refer Slide Time: 31:18)

Hamilton gave us this rule which says that genes increase in frequency when we have this
formula it works. So, we have r into B is greater than C where r is the genetic relatedness
of the recipient to the actor; often defined as the probability that a gene picked randomly
from each at the same locus is identical by descent. So, r is the genetic relatedness between
the recipient and the actor. In this case the actor is the ground squirrel that is giving out
the alarm call and the recipients are the other members of the group. Now B is a additional
reproductive benefit that is gained by the recipient of the altruistic act.

Now, reproductive benefit that is gained by the recipient; by this we mean that when the
ground squirrel made out the alarm call the other members of the group, they were saved
and they were able to reproduce and their progeny was able to survive. So, that is the
additional reproductive benefit that it got because there was one squirrel that sacrificed
itself.

If that squirrel had not sacrificed itself or had not given out the alarm call which increases
the chances of it getting sacrificed so in that case more and more members of the group
would have been killed and so their progeny would also be less. And C is the reproductive
cost to the individual performing the act which is the reproductive cost of the squirrel that
gave out the alarm call.

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(Refer Slide Time: 32:58)

Basically what we are seeing here is that if you have an individual and this individual has
a number of other relatives. Now, if you have to make a choice whether you should kill
yourself or whether you should have the whole of this group killed; so how do you make
that choice? It will depend on how much are you related to the big group. So, for instance
if the level of relatedness is very less. So, basically this individual is related to this
individual and all the other members are not related to the actor individual or A.

So, the other members are not related to A only B is related to A. So, in that case because
A and B have different have different genes. So, A would try to protect itself even at the
cost of the whole of the group because it does not have much to lose if the group dies off.
On the other hand, if A has a relative here, here, here so, if all of these are related to A. So,
in that case, if a sacrifices itself and is able to save so many members of the group, so,
more and more of the genes that were present in A are getting a survival because the group
gets the survival or to put it in the words of Haldane. So, Haldane give up this statement,

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(Refer Slide Time: 34:35)

If an individual loses its life to save two siblings. Now you have a situation.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:41)

You have a mom and a dad and then you have say 3 siblings. These are the paternal
chromosomes. So, if this is paternal, this is maternal. This individual has 50 percent genes
from P and 50 percent genes from M and similarly this individual has 50 percent from P,
50 percent from M and similarly this individual has 50 percent from P and 50 percent from
M.

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Now, if this individual, if individual A sacrifices itself to save B and C together. So, in
that case by losing 50 percent of genes of P, it is saving more than 50 percent genes of P.
So, by losing 50 percent of genes of P by sacrificing itself, it is able to save more than 50
percent of genes of P and by losing these 50 percent of genes of M, it is able to save more
than 50 percent genes of M.

Essentially in genetic terms, it is a benefit. So, if an individual loses its life to save 2
siblings or 4 nephews or 8 cousins, it is termed to be a fair deal in evolutionary terms as
siblings are on average 50 percent identical by descent, nephews are 25 percent identical
by descent and cousins are 12.5 percent identical by descent.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:20)

Another example of how behaviour plays a role in ecology is the case of territoriality.
Territoriality is a type of intraspecific or interspecific competition; intraspecific is within
the same species, interspecific is between two or more species; that results from the
behavioural exclusion of others from a specific space that is defended as a territory. What
do we mean by that?

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(Refer Slide Time: 36:52)

If you have this much space and there is a tiger that is defending this area. It will not allow
any other tiger to come to this area. This is a territorial behavior. Now the purpose is animal
territoriality aims at excluding conspecifics. Conspecifics are individuals of the same
species; like another tiger. Animal territoriality aims at excluding conspecifics.

If you have this tiger here, it will not allow this tiger to come into this territory. So, it is
excluding another member of the same species or occasionally animals of other species.
So, for instance if this tiger is not allowing a leopard to get into this territory, then we will
say that it is excluding an animal of another species from certain areas through the use of
auditory, visual or olfactory signals as well as aggressive or ritualized behaviours.

What would this tiger do to exclude others? It would give out some amount of auditory
signals. Essentially it will start growling, for instance, or it will give out some..or some
sort of visual signals by say scratching on different trees so that it makes a mark. So, if
there is a bark of a tree, this tiger will go and scratch on the bark so that it makes it known
to everybody that I am here. This is my calling card or it might say scratch on the ground
or it might give out some olfactory signals. Olfactory signals means that this tiger will go
close to a tree and then it will give out a spray of urine on that particular tree so that it is
giving out its smell that this is my area. So, by doing all of these different behaviours, it is
excluding others from its own territory and this might also involve aggressive behaviour,
say, aggressive behaviour is when one tiger attacks another.

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Here we are looking at one problem of population ecology. So, population ecology will
try to understand how these individuals in a population are members of the same species
that are living together, how are they interacting with each other. Territoriality is one way
and which they are interacting. What sorts of behaviours do we see?

(Refer Slide Time: 39:20)

Well, we can find tigers that are hunting, actually attacking each other.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:28)

We have seen this example of penguins that were showing out this ritualized behaviour.
So, they pegged at another and also they gave out this sound.

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(Refer Slide Time: 39:37)

We saw these black bucks that were also showing this aggressive behaviour. In this case
also they are excluding others from their own areas.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:46)

If we have territoriality, why do we have territoriality is the question, why did this
territorial behaviour evolve? What are the costs and benefits of having this territorial
behavior? Now the cost is increased energy usage because if you have to defend a territory,
you will have to go around, you will have to make multiple rounds, you will have to patrol
that territory which requires energy.

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If you have to show a ritualized behaviour or aggression that also requires energy, that also
requires time. So, increased time demands and also in an increased risk of predation, why?
Because when you are targeting or when you are using all of your time and energy against
a member of your own species so, it is much more likely or very easy for a predator to
hunt you.

So for instance, if there is an animal that is engaged in a ritualized behavior. If you have a
sambar that is doing a preaching behavior; now what is a preaching behavior? A sambar
will go to a very tall tree or a tree that is situated at a height and there this sambar will
stand up on two of its legs and then it will give out some visual displays or it will give out
some olfactory signals at that particular location. So, it will be known to everybody that
this is the biggest sambar in this area.

When a sambar is doing this, when it is engaged in this particular behavior, a tiger might
very easily come and hunt this sambar because the sambar is not putting any attention on
the tigers; it is only putting its attention to the other members of its own species. So, this
also increases a risk of predation, but even with all of these costs we see territorial
behaviour because it provides certain benefits. If you have a territory you have an exclusive
access to resources.

If a tiger has defended this territory, so all the animals that are inside this territory are now
food for this particular tiger. It does not have to share these animals or these prey species
with the other tigers. If there are any tigresses in this territory, it does not have to share it
its mates with the other tigers. So, it provides an exclusive access to resources and once it
has been established, territory reduces competition, why? Because in the earliest situation
if you are allowing this tiger to enter into this area. So, both of these animals would have
been using the same area.

So, there would have been much greater competition, but once you have defended this
territory, once you have excluded this tiger outside, so, then the amount of competition is
much less and one more benefit is that it regulates the size of the population because for
instance, here we observed that you have these penguins and each of these is maintaining
a territory and each of these will require this territory and will not permit anybody else or
any other penguin to enter into its own territory.

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(Refer Slide Time: 43:06)

For instance, if the total area of beach is say A (sq.m) and area of territory for each pair is
a (sq.m). So, then the number of pairs that can be found in this beach will be given by
capital A divided by a. And if the number of pairs so, the number of penguin pairs; if it is
greater than this value of capital A divided by a, so, in that case they will not find any
space for breeding. They will not find any amount of sand nearby to have their own nest.

This behaviour of territoriality it automatically puts a check on the size of the population.
This is also another benefit that we get from the territorial behaviour. This is why we see
territorial behaviours even though we have so many costs that are involved with having a
territory.

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(Refer Slide Time: 44:21)

This territorial behaviour is also regulated by the environment because an animal wants to
have a territory. So, the benefits that an animal is getting out of a territory is that it gets an
exclusive access to the resources.

(Refer Slide Time: 44:41)

For instance there is a bird and this bird say it requires 100 grams of insects as food every
day. This bird is not going to defend a territory that can provide it with say 200 grams of
insects every day. Because, if it has this much amount of territory and this much amount
of territory gives it 100 grams of insects every day and if it wanted a larger territory say

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this much excess territory, so, this stage also gives it more amount of insects ability, but it
only requires this much. In that case why should it use its energy to defend a much greater
area than is required, right? In that case it will not defend this area and it will allow some
other bird to take this area as a second territory. This is bird 1 and it will allow a second
bird to take this area as its own territory. So, you will have these two territories.

What happens if we increase the number of insects that are available to this bird in this
area itself? In place of this area providing it with 100 grams of insects suppose we added
more number of insects into this territory so, that this area in place of providing 100 grams
starts providing 200 grams of insects. In that case would this bird reduce its area? It turns
out that if you do that the bird will reduce its area by half. So, the amount of insects that is
being provided in this particular patch of land is an environmental phenomenon.

It is something that is being regulated by the environment. For instance, if you have more
amount of winds that bring in more insect into this territory so, this territory will have
more number of insects. Or for instance, if there is a bloom of flowers and so, insects are
having more flowers to feed on so, the number of insects would grow up. So, that is an
environmental phenomenon and that is regulating a behaviour which is territoriality, the
size of the territory.

In this study, we take the flower density. Flower density was increased experimentally and
here we have the size of the territory. As we can see, if you have a less flower density, you
go for a larger size territory. If you have more number of flowers so, you have more amount
of food, you go for a lesser size of a territory. So, we can say that there are a number of
behaviours that get regulated by the environment and territorialities.

In a sense, the study of behaviours or behavioural ecology provides us answers or provides

us explanations to a number of phenomena that we observe in nature, be it population
interactions, be it community interactions or ecosystem interactions and so on. Hence,
study of behaviours or behavioural ecology is an extremely integral part of the study of
ecology.

The next question is how do we study the behaviours? There are a number of methods
through which we study behaviours; one behaviour is to design information from the
activity patterns.

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(Refer Slide Time: 48:16)

This is one example. In this case, we have plotted time on the x axis. It goes from 12
o’clock in the midnight which is 0000 hrs for 24 hours. So, this is 6 o’clock in the morning,
this is 12 o’ clock in the afternoon, this is 6 o’ clock in the evening and on the y axis, we
have density of animals and we have plotted this black line shows the tiger density and the
dashed line shows the chital density or the chital activity that is seen at that particular point
of time.

Here we observe that both of these curves do not match each other. So, the amount of
concordance between both of these or the amount of overlap between both of these is just
about 24 percent. Why is that so? If we see this is the time where chitals are most active.
They are most active during early day and during late in the evening, they rest for some
time in the afternoon, but they are active at these two points.

Why are they active most during these two points? Well because the tigers are not that
much active at that particular time. The tigers are more active during the night time. So,
between 12 o’ clock in the midnight and 6 o’ clock in the morning the tigers are more
active and from 6 o’ clock in the evening to 12 o’ clock in the midnight, they are more
active. In that case, the chitals are trying to avoid their predators; so, this is a behaviour of
avoidance, but at the same time there has to be some amount of overlap between both of
these, why? Because the tiger wants to have some amount of overlap because if there is

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absolutely no overlap so, in that case it will not be able to prey upon or predate upon the
chitals.

On the other hand, if we look at the overlaps between two carnivores. In the case of tiger
and jackal, we will observe that there is a much greater overlap between both of these.
Here again the black line is the tiger and the dashed blue line is the jackal and here we
observe that the amount of overlap is as greater as 67 percent. So, this was one example
through which we can discern different behaviours and why they are happening, by
looking at the activity patterns.

(Refer Slide Time: 50:41)

The second way is by making of ethograms. Now an ethogram is an inventory of

behaviours that is exhibited by an animal during a behaviour exercise. How do we make
an ethogram? It tells an inventory of behaviour. We are observing the animals and we are
making an inventory of what this animal is doing.

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(Refer Slide Time: 51:01)

We begin by a description of the study site, define the behaviours. We need to exactly
define what do we mean by walking, what do we mean by standing and so on. And then
we do a scan sampling and a focal animal study and then we go for time budget analysis.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:16)

For instance this was an exercise that we did at Sariska National park. So, there was a
water body, there was this elevated road and on this side we had some chitals and there
were some trees here.

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(Refer Slide Time: 51:32)

This is the description of the study site and then we define different acts like sitting as
abdomen touching, the ground legs folded and stationary.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:38)

Standing is all hoods touching the ground, leg straight, animal stationary and this is a sub
dominant interval during walking or feeding and so on.

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(Refer Slide Time: 51:48)

(Refer Slide Time: 51:49)

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(Refer Slide Time: 51:50)

(Refer Slide Time: 51:51)

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(Refer Slide Time: 51:52)

So, we define sitting, standing, walking, looking, feeding, running, auto-grooming. Auto-
grooming is when an animal is cleaning itself or scratching or licking some part of its own
body.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:58)

Allogrooming is when the animal is cleaning or scratching or licking some part of

somebody else’s body. We have defined all of these acts. Once we have defined these
behaviours, we next want to know what each and every animal is doing during the period
of our analysis.

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(Refer Slide Time: 52:13)

So, for that we go for two kinds of studies: one goes by the name of scan sampling and the
second is the focal animal sampling. Now in the case of scan sampling if we have n number
of individuals.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:26)

We start with the first individual and we make a note of the time and what this animal is
doing, then next what this animal is doing, next what this is doing and so on till we go to
the last animal. In this way, we are performing a scan of their behaviours from one end to
the next end and then will repeat these behaviours to get a table something like this.

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(Refer Slide Time: 52:49)

In this table, here we have the starting time and the ending time and at this time, so, we
started at 14:55hrs and we ended at 14:56hrs.

During this time, the adult male in this scene was walking, the second adult male was
feeding, the third adult male was feeding and so on. In this case, we are making a scan of
what every animal is doing in that particular time.

(Refer Slide Time: 53:18)

The second way is a focal animal study. Now in the focal animal study, we focus on one
particular individual. In this case, coming back to the drawing board, we will see that

299
suppose we are focusing on this animal. We will observe the behaviours of this particular
animal for our designated period of time. Once that is done, then will move to another
animal and witness its behaviour or observe or make a note of the behaviours of this animal
for a particular designated time.

(Refer Slide Time: 53:45)

In that case we will come up with this table. In this table it says that for the first individual
that is the adult male, it showed all these different behaviours from these to these times.
So, it did feeding from 15:14:40 to 15:15:05 and it spent 25 seconds here from after that
it shifted from feeding to walking. Here we had ended at 15:15:05. From 15:15:05 till
15:15:27, for 22 seconds it did walking and so on. By this method, we can understand what
each and every animal is doing for the designated periods of time.

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(Refer Slide Time: 54:25)

And from that, we can come up with a time budget table or a time budget graph.

(Refer Slide Time: 54:28)

This graph can be in terms of seconds or in terms of percentages or in terms of a pie chart.

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(Refer Slide Time: 54:34)

(Refer Slide Time: 54:36)

What we are observing here is that feeding is the most dominant behaviour that was shown
in this particular group. As much as 44 percent of time was being spent on feeding. 30
percent time was spent on walking which might be a behaviour that is correlated with
feeding because the animal has fed on grasses somewhere and then it moves on, then feeds
again then moves on and so on. Then it spent as much as 17 percent looking around.
Looking is mainly carried out in the case of predators. Now, if we have a situation in which
there is a tiger nearby. So, in that case these two values will probably go down and looking

302
will increase. This is a way in which we understand the behaviours. We make a note of
behaviours to understand how that is playing a role in the ecology.

(Refer Slide Time: 55:24)

For instance in our observations, we saw that the dominant behaviours were feeding,
walking and looking, as we saw in the pie chart. Juveniles spend less time looking than
adults and sub adults possibly because of parental protection. So, just by looking at their
behaviours, we can make this inference that because juveniles are spending less amount
of time looking around, but their parents are spending much more time looking around.
So, there is a sense of parental protection that is also being provided. Here we are looking
at population level interactions where the parents are looking out for the children. And
then sub-adult males spend considerable time in auto grooming, so sub-adult males are
now getting into the stage of adulthood in which case they will also be able to mate. So, at
this particular stage, they spend a considerable amount of time in auto grooming.

Then we can make a correlation between different ages and different kinds of behaviours.
In this way, ethograms and time budget analysis can help us record and understand the
behaviours of animals with important implications for ecology.

In this lecture, what we saw is that different behaviours are there because they have been
evolutionarily selected. These behaviours have been selected because they are providing
some amount of fitness to the individual or to the group. What is that fitness? Why are
some behaviours shown by certain organisms and not by others can be inferred by looking

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at the cost and benefits of any particular behaviour. A behaviour like territoriality or a
behaviour like avoiding of predators can be understood by looking at the cost and benefits,
and an animal will perform a behaviour only when the benefits are greater than the cost. It
is in net profit and then by looking at the cost and benefits we can even come to a
conclusion about what is the most optimum level of behaviour that an animal should
depict. So, the most optimal behaviour will be where the benefit is much more greater than
the cost; so the profit is maximized. That is the behaviour that will be shown.

We also looked at the concepts of kin selection and group selection. So, even if there is a
behaviour that is not favoring yourself, but you are able to save a number of individuals
that are related to yourself. In that case, evolution will select this behaviour because by
this way the genes that are responsible for such a behaviour get selected and they are able
to propagate themselves. The fitness increases and with that those particular genes that are
responsible for the altruistic behaviours also increase.

Finally, we looked at different methods through which we understand these behaviours;

through which we go to the field and observe these animals and note down their different
behaviours to make correlations that are important for population ecology, community
ecology and so on.

That is all for today.Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

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 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Indian Forest Service, M.P

Lecture – 10
Food chains, Food webs and Trophic levels

“Namaste”,

Today we begin a new module and that is Ecological Energetics.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:19)

In this module we will have three lectures; Food chains, Food webs and Trophic levels
followed by primary production and nutrient cycles.

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(Refer Slide Time: 00:28)

So, let us begin with the first lecture food chains, food webs and trophic levels.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:30)

This is an image that we all must remember from our school days. It says that there is grass
and grass is eaten by some insects and then there is a frog that eats these insects, then there
is a snake that eats the frog and then there is the hawk or the eagle that eats the snake. And
the plants are getting their energy from the sun and this is what essentially a food chain is.
In the case of ecology, we are going to study this food chain in greater detail and also

306
understand what are the kinds of nuances that we observe in different food chains and food
webs.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:08)

Let us begin by defining what a food chain is. The transfer of food energy from its source
in plants through herbivores to carnivores, detritivores or decomposers is referred to as the
food chain. So, detritivores or, waste or debris feeders and the food chain has primarily
got to do with the transfer of food energy.

The sun is providing energy to the plants and that energy is getting stored in the form of
carbohydrates and in the form of different organic molecules so that energy from sunlight
is getting converted into chemical energy. This chemical energy is moving through
different organisms in this community in the form of the food chain.

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(Refer Slide Time: 01:54)

We also have a number of other definitions that we will use later on. Autotrophs are
organisms responsible for primary production. They are known as primary producers and
they include trees, plants and algae. Auto means self, troph means nutrition.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:12)

Auto is self, troph is nutrition. These are plants that are making nutrition by themselves.
On the other hand, hetero is other, so heterotroph is an organism that is using some other
organism for its nutrition. Autotrophs include trees, plants and algae and also a number of
bacteria that get their energy from chemicals which are known as chemoautotrophs.

308
Heterotrophs are organisms that cannot produce their own food. They are organisms like
us, they rely instead on the intake of nutrition from other sources of organic carbon mainly
plant or animal matter; and example includes most animals such as us.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:04)

Now autotrophs are divided into photoautotrophs and chemoautotrophs. Photo is light; so
photoautotrophs is light self-nourishment or light self-nutrition. Photoautotrophs are
organisms that use light as a source of energy to manufacture organic molecules and food;
example most plants. And chemoautotrophs, chemo is chemical; so, chemoautotrophs are
organisms that use chemical reactions as a source of energy to manufacture organic
molecules and food.

An example is this bacterium, Hydrogenovibrio crunogenus, which is found in deep sea

hydrothermal vents. Hydro is water, thermal is heat. You have heated water vents that are
found inside deep seas, they are mostly of volcanic origin and you have these bacteria that
you that utilize this chemical energy to make their own food.

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(Refer Slide Time: 04:00)

Then when we talk about food chains we can divide all the organisms into producers and
consumers. Producer is an organism that makes its own food which is the autotrophs;
including both the photoautotrophs and the chemoautotrophs. Consumer is an organism
that consumes some other organism for food; some other organism or some other part of
that organism.

The consumers which are using some other organisms or parts of some other organisms as
food are further divided into primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary consumers.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:32)

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Primary consumer is an organism that consumes the producers. This is an organism that
consumes the plant matter or the autotrophs. An example is a grasshopper or another
example could be the cow or all the herbivorous animals: chital, sambar, elephant and most
of these organisms are very important, prey species in the ecosystem.

These species are eaten up by their consumers, their predators which go by the name of
secondary consumers. Primary consumer is something that is a herbivore and secondary
consumer is a carnivore. It could also be an omnivore which is also feeding on the plants,
but primarily it is a carnivore. It is an organism that consumes the primary consumer. So,
that is the frog; so we have the producer.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:29)

You have the producer, that is eaten up by the primary consumer, which is then eaten up
by the secondary consumer, which is then eaten up by the tertiary consumer, which is then
eaten up by the quaternary consumer and so on. Tertiary consumer is somebody who eats
a secondary consumer.

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(Refer Slide Time: 05:57)

And an organism that consumes the secondary consumer example is a snake. And
quaternary consumer is an organism that consumes the tertiary consumer such as the hawk.

In this particular example, we are seeing that you have producer in the form of grass, and
the primary consumer is a grasshopper, the secondary consumer is a frog, the tertiary
consumer is a snake and the quaternary consumer is a hawk; a hawk or maybe an eagle.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:34)

These consumers can also be classified as herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, detritivores

and so on.

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Going through the terms - Herbivore is an organism that eats only plants, their primary
consumers; example is a cow. Carnivore is an organism that eats other animals and they
can be secondary, tertiary or quaternary consumers. So they can be anywhere, but they
cannot be the primary consumer and they cannot be the producer. An example is the tiger.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:00)

Omnivore is an organism that eats both plants and animals and they are generally
secondary or tertiary consumers; example is the bear. The bear can eat some insects, it can
also eat some amount of flesh, but it also feeds on fruits, it also feeds on roots of plants
and so on; so, it is an omnivorous.

Next is a decomposer; a decomposer is an organism that converts dead material into soil
and recycles the nutrients. When we are talking about any food chain so in this food chain
not only is energy getting passed, but also other nutrients such as minerals. For instance
when we talk about proteins, so proteins have nitrogen in them. The plant proteins have
nitrogen, from there the nitrogen has moved into the grasshopper, from there to the frog,
from there to the snake, from there to the hawk and eagle. But then, if all the nutrients, all
the inorganic materials and the nutrients if they get locked up in all the organisms, in that
case the plants will not be able to get the nutrients.

What is the role of the decomposers? The decomposers break up the bodies of all of these
and also of the plants when they are dead and then they release all of these nutrients back

313
into the soil. A decomposer is an organism that converts dead material into soil and
recycles nutrients. Decomposers include detritivores and microorganisms.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:47)

When we say herbivore. So herbivore: vore is eating and herbi is herbs. So, this is an
organism that eats herbs or that eats the plants. In the word carnivore; ‘carni’ means flesh.
(This is the same word root that is also seen in ‘carnival’ which is a festival of the flesh;
that is how the word root goes.) So, carnivore is an organism that eats up ‘carni’ or that
eats of the flesh; so, that is a carnivore.

In the word omnivore; Omni means both or Omni means all. Omnivores is something that
eats up everything. It eats up plants, it also eats up the flesh. When we say detritivores: so
here you have something that eats up the detritus. Now what is a detritus? The detritivores
consume detritus which is decomposing plants and animal parts as well as feces. So, any
dead part, any decomposing part, so the organisms that eat up those are known as in
detritivores. And once they eat these up they make it more and more exposed to the action
of microbial decomposers such as bacteria and fungi that further break it down. A good
example of detritivores is an earthworm.

If you have dead leaves that are there in the soil, the earthworm will eat up those dead
leaves. And then it will take out some amount of nutrients from there, but in this process
it will also convert those dead leaves into its own fecal matter. And by breaking off the
larger tissues into smaller chunks it makes it more and more exposed to the action of the

314
microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi. Which further break it down to release all the
nutrients into the soil. So, that is the rule of the detritivores.

(Refer Slide Time: 10:43)

When you talk about food chains, there are two kinds of food chains; one is the grazing
food chain and the second one is the detritus food chain. Grazing food chain starts from
the plant base. So, it starts from grazing the plant base.

Grazing food chain starts from a plant base goes through herbivores to carnivores. And
grazing food chains are then further subdivided into predator food chains and parasitic
food chains. On the other hand a detritus food chain starts from the detritus or the dead
and decaying matter and then it goes through detritivores to carnivores.

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(Refer Slide Time: 11:24)

Essentially in the case of the grazing food chain; so when you have the grazing food chain,
you have plants followed by herbivores followed by carnivores. And then these carnivores
can be; so they can be secondary, tertiary, quaternary and so on.

In the case of detritus food chain, you have detritus followed by detritivores and then these
are followed by the carnivores which can again be secondary, tertiary, quaternary and so
on. Now we will look at some examples.

When we see the grazing food chain you have two examples, two sub types; one is the
predator food chains. So, predator food chain, a good example is grass that is eaten up by
chital and that is eaten up by tiger or the one that we saw before; you have grass that is
eaten up by the grasshopper, that is eaten up by the frog, that is eaten up by the snake, and
which is eaten up by the hawk. Now when we observe a predator food chain the size of
the organisms generally increases as we move up the chain. So, grass is very small, chital
is a bit larger, its close to around 60-70-80 kg animal and then if you look at a tiger that is
a very large animal say around 300 or 400 kgs weight.

So, the size of the organisms increases as we move up the chain. On the other hand when
we look at the parasitic food chains, so a parasitic food chain, an example is rat flea
followed by a parasitic protozoa. So, again in this case the rat will be preceded by the grass
or say grains. In this case this portion which is the parasitic food chain, so from a grass to
rat will be a predator part of the food chain, but this part is a completely parasitic food

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chain; rat to flea to parasitic protozoa. In this case the size of the organisms generally
decreases as we move up the chain. A flea is very much smaller than a rat and the parasitic
protozoa are microorganisms that are living on the flea. Here the size goes down as we
move up.

Now in the case of a detritus food chain, you have detritus followed by detritivores
followed by carnivores. An example is, you can have the fallen leaves of mangroves.
Mangroves are plants that grow in the vicinity of the sea shores or ocean shores, and when
the leaves of these plants, when they die and when they fall down, so they get into the
water, and there they are they are consumed by the detritivores.

Now these detritivores are then eaten up by the detritivore consumers. For example, small
fish or insect larvae; so, here we had some detritivores some very small organisms that are
eating these up and then these organisms are further eaten up by the insect larvae. And
from there they get eaten up by small fishes then large fishes, and then piscivorous; pisci
is fish vore is eating. There are fish eating birds. They are eaten up by the fish-eating birds,
so this is a detritus food chain.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:01)

If you look at the differences between both of these food chains we observe that, in the
case of a grazing food chain the primary source of energy is the sun, which is then used up
by the plants. In the case of the detritus food chain the primary source of energy is detritus.
It starts with the detritus or a dead tissue or a dead organism. Then the first trophic level

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in the case of grazing food chain is herbivores, because they are eating up the plants. In
the case of detritus food chain they are detritivores.

Now the length of grazing food chain is generally longer, and the length of a detritus food
chain is generally shorter. What do we mean by that?

(Refer Slide Time: 15:45)

If you have say plants, then they are eaten up by herbivores, then they are eaten up by the
secondary consumer, then they are eaten up by the tertiary consumer, then the quaternary
consumer and so on. At each of these stages: so from plants to herbivores; plants, suppose
they have say 100 calories of energy that is stored in their body tissues, when the
herbivores have eaten those, they will spend quite a lot of energy to warm up their bodies
to ensure that the blood circulation goes on for the movement of their bodies. And so, only
about 10 percent of that energy will get stored in the bodies of the herbivores. Here you
only have 10 calories, from here to the next level again it will be 10 percent. This will have
only 1 calorie and then this will have 0.1 calorie and so on, 0.01 calorie.

The more up you go into the food chain then the lesser is the amount of energy that is
available. In the case of a grazing food chain, because it starts with the sun, so you have
ample amount of energy that is available in the grazing food chain and so it can support
longer chains. Whereas, in the case of detritus food chain because the starting material
itself is very small, it does not have a huge amount of energy. It cannot support a very long
chain of organisms. A detritus food chain is therefore, generally shorter in length.

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(Refer Slide Time: 17:30)

That is about the food chains, but then if we look around in the nature, we will observe
that not a chain is present, but multiple chains that are present and all of these multiple
chains make up a food web.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:47)

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For instance when we were talking about our simplest food chain in which we had grass
and then this grass was eaten up by the grasshopper, then this was eaten up by a frog, then
a snake and then a hawk. But then grass is also eaten up by say a locust and grass is also
eaten up by say some other caterpillars. Then a frog will also be eating up a locust and
maybe there would be some birds that would directly be eating up a caterpillar or they
would also be eating up a locust. And then, you could also have a bird that eats up a
grasshopper directly. And then, you can have a snake that maybe feeds on bird eggs or you
can have a situation in which there is a frog that is also eaten up by a bird.

When we look at these combinations, this becomes more and more complex. A
combination of different food chains that works together goes by the name of a food web.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:00)

We define a food web as a system of interlocking and interdependent food chains. All of
these different food chains they are linked together, they are interlinking and they are
interlocking and they are interdependent on each other.

Then we also define a trophic level. A trophic level is each of several hierarchical levels
in an ecosystem consisting of organisms sharing the same function in the food chain and
the same nutritional relationship to the primary source of energy. When we look at this
food web, so here you have grass, you may also have some trees, you may also have some
shrubs, you can also have some herbs and so on.

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And all of these, if you look at this definition, all of these organisms share the same
function in the food chain that is all of them are producers, and the same nutritional
relationship to the primary sources of energy. All of these are using the energy of the sun.
All of these are using the energy of the sun and then they are passing it on to the primary
consumers or the herbivores.

All of these together will form a trophic level. Similarly, all of these together, the
grasshopper the locust, the caterpillars that are eating or that are feeding on these
organisms, the grass, trees, shrubs, herbs and so on, they will form another trophic level.
When we look at a food web we can define different trophic levels, we can define
organisms that are producers, that are primary consumers, secondary consumers, tertiary
consumers and so on. Although, it looks much more simpler in theory than it looks in
practice.

(Refer Slide Time: 20:53)

For instance this is a food web that is found in the Atlantic Ocean. As we can observe here,
there are so many interrelationships, so many who eats whom relationship here that it
becomes a bit difficult. But then, it is also possible that one organism may a be a part of
several different trophic levels.

For instance here we have a situation in which you have a bird that is eating up caterpillars.
When this bird is eating up caterpillars; so you have caterpillar as the primary consumer,
so the bird becomes a secondary consumer. But then if this bird eats up a frog, so, in this

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case the frog is a secondary consumer; so, here the bird will also become a tertiary
consumer or if this bird eats up say some fruits from the trees, so it will also become a
primary consumer.

Essentially any organism in a food web may occupy more than one of those trophic levels.
We can understand the level of complexity that is involved here. You have so many
relationships and every organism or many organisms can occupy different trophic levels
at the same time. So, to reduce this complexity we make use of some tools.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:12)

And one such tool goes by the name of an ecological pyramid. Now, an ecological pyramid
is a graphical representation designed to show the biomass, numbers or energy at each
trophic level in a given ecosystem. It is a graphical representation that is designed to show
biomass. Biomass is the total amount of mass that is formed out of the biological entities
that are present at each trophic level or the number of organisms that are there at each
trophic level or the energy that is there in each trophic level.

And these ecological pyramids also go by the name of trophic pyramid, eltonian pyramid,
energy pyramid, food pyramid and so on. We will look at some different kinds of
pyramids.

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(Refer Slide Time: 22:58)

The first pyramid is the pyramid of numbers. Pyramid of numbers shows you the number
of organisms that are present at each trophic level. What do we mean by that?

(Refer Slide Time: 23:10)

This is one pyramid of numbers. In the case of the first trophic level which is the plants or
the producers, we will go into the field and will count how many plants are there; how
many individual grasses are there. And when we total up all of them; all the trees, all the
herbs, all the shrubs, all the grasses that are there together will come up with a number.
And this number will be depicted by this particular portion of the pyramid.

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The area of this pyramid or the area of this particular block is proportional to the number
of entities that we have at this trophic level. And all of these different slabs are showing
different trophic levels. This is the trophic level of the producers, this is the trophic level
of the primary consumer, this is the trophic level of secondary consumer, this is for the
tertiary consumer, this is for the quaternary consumer and so on. This pyramid will show
us the number of individuals that we have at each trophic level.

For instance, if there is an ecosystem in which you have tigers and you have leopards and
both of these are apex predators or both of these are quaternary consumers. This particular
block will tell you how many tigers are there plus how many leopards are there, you put
both the numbers together and you reach to this level.

Generally it is observed that the number of individuals will go down as we move up the
trophic level. Because, for instance in a tiger reserve like the Panna tiger reserve, you will
have say around 30-40 tigers. So, that will form this upper block. So, you will have say 40
tigers, but then if you look at the number of their prey species. So, if you look at the number
of chital or the number of sambars they might go up into several hundreds or maybe even
several thousands. So, as we move down, the size would increase.

If you look at say the number of grasses, that are there then that might even go up into
millions. As we move up a pyramid the number decreases; as you move down a pyramid
the number increases. You have a larger size base and you have an out narrower top. This
is something that is intuitively expected.

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(Refer Slide Time: 25:41)

In this case you will have say, grass and you have say, 1 million individuals of grass. And
then you have these 1 million individuals of grass are supporting say chital and sambar,
and their number is say 4000. And then this number would be supporting say around tigers
plus leopards say, around 50 individuals.

We see that as we are moving up in the trophic levels, as we are moving up in the pyramid,
the number is going down. But then you can also have an inverted pyramid of numbers.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:32)

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In an inverted pyramid of numbers, you will have a situation in which the number of
quaternary is much greater than that of the tertiary consumers, which is greater than the
number of secondary consumers, which is greater than the number of primary consumers,
which is greater than the number of producers.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:54)

One such example is given by the tree ecosystem. In the case of a tree, a tree might be
supporting some number of birds. Because a tree is such a large organism, so it might
support a number of birds. Let us say that there are 100 birds that are being supported by
one tree; so here you have 1, and here you have 100. Now if we consider any parasites that
live on the birds, each bird would be supporting say around 50-60 parasites. And each of
those parasites such as a flea would be supporting a number of hyper parasites say, such
as bacteria or protozoa.

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(Refer Slide Time: 27:33)

In this case, what we are observing is that you have one tree that is supporting say, 50 birds
or let us say 100 birds. Now each of those birds is supporting say 10 parasites. So, if each
of those supports 10 parasites, so this particular block would become 10 into 100 is fleas
1000 fleas or 1000 parasites.

If each of these parasites is supporting say 200 bacteria. In that case, the number of bacteria
that will come on the top here would be very large, because each parasite is supporting
200 bacteria and you have 1000 parasites. You have 200000 or 2 lakh bacteria. This is a
pyramid of numbers that is inverted, because you have a smaller sized bottom and a larger
sized top.

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(Refer Slide Time: 28:44)

You can also have other shapes such as a spindle. In the case of a spindle you have a
middle range that is larger and then that is followed by a smaller portion. For instance, in
place of having these parasites, so, we remove the parasites and the hyper parasites that
were there in our example and now you only have these birds that are supporting a
population of hawks.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:12)

And these are say frugivorous birds. Frugivorous means that these birds are living on fruits
- frugi is fruit; vore is eating, and they are supporting say 10 hawks. Here we have a

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pyramid of numbers that looks like a spindle which is this shape. Another such example
could be from, one of the lakes or maybe from the seas.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:42)

So, now in the oceans what we have is we have the phytoplanktons. Phytoplanktons are
microscopic organisms that are able to sequester carbon. They perform photosynthesis and
they act as the producers in this case. These phytoplanktons support the zooplanktons.
Now zooplanktons are again microscopic organisms and these are animals. These are
microscopic animals that are feeding on the phytoplankton. These are microscopic plants
and these are microscopic animals.

It is possible that in a certain situation where the rate of reproduction of the phytoplankton
is very high. You have phytoplanktons that are able to multiply themselves very quickly.
They multiply themselves and then they also get eaten by the zooplanktons. These
zooplanktons are getting a sufficient source of food, because of the phytoplankton. You
have a large number of zooplanktons, but you can have a situation in which the
phytoplanktons are much lesser. Why much lesser? Because they are able to reproduce
very fast.

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(Refer Slide Time: 31:05)

Even though you have a very small number, in this case, suppose you have 1000
phytoplanktons and suppose they are able to duplicate themselves every hour. So, in that
case in 1 hour from 1000 they will become 2000, in 2 hours from 2000 they become 4000,
in 3 hours from 4000 they become 8000, in 4 hours they become 16000 and so on.

If this is the rate of propagation, we will find a situation in which the population increases
exponentially. Here you have the number of phytoplanktons and this is the time. Because
nature is not able to support such a huge rate of growth; so, it is possible that at this level
their population is being consumed by those zooplanktons. Even though you have a lesser
number of phytoplanktons they are able to multiply themselves very fast and then they
multiply themselves fast they become much more. When they become much more they are
eaten up by the zooplanktons. In that case the number of phytoplanktons are again goes
down and the number of zooplanktons increases.

When you look at a snapshot of this ecosystem, we will find that you have less number of
phytoplanktons more number of zooplanktons. And then these zooplanktons have been
eaten up by the fish. So, the number of fishes is less and then suppose these fishes are eaten
up by a sea lion then that gives the number of sea lion is also less. Here again we are
observing a pyramid of numbers that is looking of this shape, so, this is the shape of a
spindle.

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(Refer Slide Time: 33:01)

Or we can even have a pyramid of numbers that looks like a dumbbell. So, one such
example is grass, rabbit, flea. So, you have grasses, so there are quite a number of grasses
in your ecosystem and those grasses are supporting a small number of rabbits. But then,
because each rabbit can support a multiple or a large number of a these parasitic fleas. So,
the total number of fleas that will be found in this ecosystem will be greater than the
number of rabbits. And in that case the pyramid of numbers will look like a dumbbell.

Another pyramid is the pyramid of energy. We looked at the pyramid of numbers in which
each trophic level is showing how many individuals are present at that particular trophic
level. In the case of pyramid of energy, we look at the energy that is contained in organisms
at each trophic level. And in this case, the energy generally looks like this. You have a
pyramid that is a flatter or wider at the bottom and that goes on tapering to the top. The
amount of energy that is present at each trophic level goes on decreasing as we move up
the food chain or the food web.

The third kind of a pyramid is the pyramid of biomass which is the biomass of organisms
that is present at each trophic level. Here as well, in most situations we observe a pyramid
of biomass that looks like this. It is wider at the bottom and it goes on tapering as we move
to the top.

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(Refer Slide Time: 34:35)

But another example is that of an inverted pyramid of biomass. An inverted pyramid of

biomass for example, can be the example of, again an oceanic ecosystem. Here again you
have planktons and these planktons are supporting small fishes. But then, because these
planktons have a faster rate of reproduction or a faster rate of multiplication, so a smaller
number of planktons can support a larger number of fishes. And because each of those
fishes are having the large amount of biomass, so if you look at the amount of biomass
that is being supported by the planktons, it will be less than the biomass that is there in the
fishes.

And then, from a small fish to a larger fish to an even larger fish. For instance, if we look
at a large sized shark. A shark will be having a huge amount of biomass that is stored in
its body and that might be much greater than the total biomass that is present in its prey
species. We can have a situation in which we have an inverted pyramid of biomass.

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(Refer Slide Time: 35:50)

Now, in these pyramids we can also define the standing crop. A standing crop is the total
dried biomass of the living organisms that are present at each trophic level. In this case,
we are looking at the dried-out biomass. For instance, in the earlier situation we were
looking at a total amount of biomass that was present in the grasses for instance. Let us
say that we had 1 million tons of biomass and that was the green biomass. In the case of
standing crop, we will look at the dried out biomass after removing all the water.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:37)

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The next concept is that of ecological efficiency. Ecological efficiency is the efficiency
with which energy is transferred from one trophic level to the next.

When we are looking at any pyramid, so, here we have a pyramid, and here we have grass
that is eaten up by insects, that is eaten up by insectivorous organisms, and that is eaten up
by the top carnivores. Now in the case of ecological efficiency we are asking the question;
when energy is being transferred from one trophic level to the next, how much amount of
energy is getting transferred? and how much amount of energy is getting lost? Now, why
do we see a loss of energy?

(Refer Slide Time: 37:20)

Because if we have any organism, say a human being that is eating food. Now if we eat up
say 1 kg of food, we will not increase our mass by 1 kg. So, if we are eating 1 kg of food
it does not mean that our weight will go up by 1 kg. Why because, we are using that energy
for movement, both outside and also for moments inside the body, such as the moment of
blood inside our blood vessels, the motion of the heart and so on.

We are also using energy for respiration and in the process of respiration, we are also
releasing quite a lot of energy in the form of heat. Then, that food is not completely getting
digested, because for instance if we are eating a plant based material, if you are eating see
carrots so some portion of that carrots gets digested and absorbed and assimilated into our
body. But, we also lose quite a lot amount of those carrots in our feces , because it contains
a number of plant materials such as the cell walls, cellulose that is not digested.

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So, all of that bio-material is getting lost in this process of being moved from one trophic
level to the next trophic level. Then we will also use some amount of energy in getting the
food. So, there are a number of processes in which we are losing the energy. And
ecological efficiency asks the question; what is the efficiency with which energy is getting
transferred from one profit level to the next? How do we compute that?

(Refer Slide Time: 39:12)

We first define some sub parts of this ecological efficiency. The first one is the exploitation
efficiency. Exploitation efficiency is the amount of food ingested divided by the amount
of prey production. For instance if you go to Kanha national park and if you have say
10000 kg of biomass that is available in the form of chital. And in a year out of that 10000
kg of biomass that is being produced by the chitals, if our tiger is eating up say 100 kgs.
So, the amount of food that is ingested, that is 100 kg divided by the amount of being of
food that is being produced in the pray, that is 10000 kg will give us a certain amount of
efficiency which goes by the name of exploitation efficiency.

So, I in this case is showing the amount that is ingested at the nth trophic level. So, we can
define it at any trophic level; we can even define it for the grasshoppers that are feeding
on the grass, in that case how much amount of biomass is being eaten up by the
grasshoppers divided by the amount of biomass that has been produced in the previous
trophic level. So, which is why we have (n-1) and P is the rate of production, that is the
exploitation efficiency, how much of the biomass are you able to exploit.

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Now, once you have exploited that biomass, you now need to assimilate that biomass into
your own body. So, in that case we define the assimilation efficiency which is the amount
of assimilation divided by the amount of food ingestion. So, in case you have eaten, say 1
kg of food, how much of that food gets assimilated into your body. So, it is An divided by
In which is the assimilation efficiency.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:08)

Next we have the gross production efficiency. Gross production efficiency is the consumer
production divided by the amount of ingestion. Let us first look at the net production
efficiency. Net production efficiency is the consumer production divided by the amount of
assimilation. Once you have assimilated say 100 grams out of the 1 kg that you had; that
you had ingested. So, out of that 100 grams, how much is the amount that you are using it
for production in your own body. So, that production could be in the form of increase in
the weight of your own body or in the form of more number of offsprings and their increase
in weight.

So, that is Pn divided by An, the amount of production at the nth trophic level divided by
the amount of ingestion at the nth trophic level. And that is the net production efficiency.
And in if we use In, the amount ingested at the nth trophic level in place of the assimilation,
then we have the gross production efficiency.

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(Refer Slide Time: 42:14)

And from all of these, we come to the ecological efficiency. Now, ecological efficiency is
the exploitation efficiency that is (In)/(P n - 1), that is the amount that was produced in the
previous trophic level and here In is the amount that is ingested at this trophic level. You
multiply that by the assimilation efficiency which is the amount assimilated divided by the
amount ingested, you multiply that by the net production efficiency which is Pn divided
by An and you get to this amount of (Pn) /(P n - 1).

Which is the amount that is being produced at the previous trophic level and you have the
amount that is being produce at this trophic level. So, the amount that is being produced
at current trophic level divided by the amount that has been produced in the previous
trophic level gives you the ecological efficiency.

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(Refer Slide Time: 43:17)

Essentially, if you have grass that is being fed by grasshopper. If grasses increase in weight
by say 10 kg, how much is the increase in the weight at this trophic level of the
grasshoppers; grasshoppers and the other primary produce; primary consumers is what the
ecological efficiency would be asking.

(Refer Slide Time: 43:44)

We have a rule of thumb in this case which goes by the name of the 10 percent rule. Now,
10 percent rule says that during the transfer of energy from one trophic level to the next,
only about 10 percent of the energy gets stored as biomass. So, that is, the ecological

338
efficiency is close to about 10 percent, the remaining is getting lost during transfer, lost
during incomplete digestion and broken down in respiration.

For example, the efficiency of plants in capturing the sun’s energy is only about 1 percent.
Now this is not 10 percent, this thing needs to be remembered; the plants efficiency is
close to about 1 percent. So, if you have say 1000 calories of energy that is being absorbed
from the sun, so out of that 1000 calories, only 1 percent, that is 10 calories will get
assimilated or will be used in the production of the grass.

In this food chain, grass to grasshopper to frog to snake to hawk, if 100000 joules of energy
from the sun was intercepted by the grass, the amount of energy assimilated at each stage
would be: so, you have 100000 joules from the sun, out of that only 1 percent that is 1000
joules will be made available at the level of the grass. And then we have 10 percent rule
from all of these trophic levels.

If you have 1000 joules that is available at this trophic level, at the next trophic level we
will have only 10 percent of that available which is 100 joules. From that, you move on to
the next trophic level and you again have 10 percent that is 10 joules. Then say, the snakes’
trophic level will only have 1 joule and the hawks’ trophic level will only have 0.1 joule.
Which also gives us an indication why these chains cannot be very long, because the more
is the length of these chains the lesser is the amount of energy that is available at the apex
predator level; trophic level. And that small amount of energy may not be sufficient for
the survival of those species at that level.

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(Refer Slide Time: 45:41)

We can also a say that the 10 percent rule in the terms of an equation. If we consider plants
at level 1, we have ,

Energy at the nth level = (Energy intercepted from the sun) /10(n+1)

If you have plants as level 1, so at the level of the plants that is at the level of the producers,
you will have

Energy at the 1st level = (Energy intercepted from the sun) /10 (1+1)

= (Energy intercepted from the sun) /100

So, you have one hundredth of the energy or 1 percent of the energy that is being
intercepted from the sun is made available at the level of the producers. And from the next
trophic level onwards you have only 10 percent of that energy that is available.

This is about the ecological energetics. But one other rule of understanding the trophic
levels is the case of the trophic cascades.

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(Refer Slide Time: 46:46)

What is a trophic cascade? It is an ecological phenomenon that is triggered by the addition

or removal of top predators and involving reciprocal changes in the relative populations of
predator and prey through a food chain, which often results in dramatic changes in
ecosystem structure and nutrient cycling. So, you have this ecological phenomenon that is
occurring because of the addition or removal of the top predators.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:19)

If we have this ecological pyramid and you have different trophic levels; you have
producers, primary consumer, secondary consumer and so on and here you have the apex

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predators. If you remove the apex predators; so for instance if you have a forest in which
you have tigers and tigers are the only apex predators that available there and you have
chitals and you have the grasses. Now if you remove tigers from this ecosystem, what will
happen is, you will have a very less amount of predatory pressure on the chitals. So, with
these tigers gone, there will be nothing to regulate the population explosion of the chitals.

So, the population size of the chitals would increase, when that happens, they will be eating
up much more of the grass and even the smaller saplings of the of different trees that are
available. And so the impact of removal of the predators would come down as a cascading
effect to the bottom of this food web. In this case by a removal of tigers you will have the
removal of grasses.

So, coming back to the definition; “An ecological phenomenon triggered by the addition
or removal of top predators”. Now we looked at removal of top predators; similarly if you
do not have any top predators, if you add those top predators, you will also find a very
different impact. And involving the reciprocal changes in the relative populations of
predator and prey through a food chain. Why reciprocal changes? Because you are
removing one predator that leads to an increase in the number of their preys which leads
to a decrease in the number of their preys and so on. So, you have a reciprocal relationship.
You have reciprocal relationships and which often results in dramatic changes in the
ecosystem structure and nutrient cycling. We will look at one such example.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:36)

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This is the case study of wolves which I have taken from a video, Let’s have a look at the
video.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:45)

(Refer Slide Time: 50:07)

“One of the most exciting scientific findings of the past half century has been the discovery
of widespread trophic cascades. A trophic cascade is an ecological process which starts at
the top of the food chain and tumbles all the way down to the bottom.

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(Refer Slide Time: 50:24)

And the classic example is what happened in the Yellow Stone National Park in the United
States when wolves were reintroduced in 1995. Now, we all know that wolves kill various
species of animals, but perhaps slightly less aware that they give life to many others.
Before the wolves turned up they are been absent for 70 years that the numbers of deer,
because there were nothing to hunt them had built up and built up in the Yellow Stone
Park and despite efforts by humans to control them that managed to reduce much of the
vegetation there to almost nothing there just grazed it away.

But as soon as the wolves arrived even though there were few in number, they started to
have the most remarkable offense. First of course they killed some of the deer, but that
was not the major thing, much more significantly they radically changed the behavior of
the deer. The deer started avoiding certain parts of the park the places where they could be
trapped most easily; particularly the valleys and the gorges and immediately those places
started to regenerate. In some areas the height of the trees quintupled in just 6 years. Bear
valley sides quickly became forests of aspen and willow and cottonwood.

As soon as that happened the bird started moving in, the number of songbirds of migratory
birds started to increase greatly, the number of beavers started to increase; because beavers
like to eat to the trees and beavers like wolves ecosystem engineers, they create niches for
other species. And the dams they built in the rivers are provided habitats for otters, and
muskrats and ducks, and fish, and reptiles, and amphibians. The wolves killed coyotes.

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And as a result of that the number of rabbits and mice began to rise which meant more
hawks, more weasels, more foxes, more badgers, ravens and bald eagles came down to
feed on the carrion that the wolves have left. Bears felling it too and their population began
to rise as well partly also, because there were more berries growing on the regenerating
shrubs. And the bears reinforce the impact of the wolves by killing some of the calves of
the deer. But here is where it gets really interesting.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:54)

The wolves changed the behavior of the rivers. They began to meander less, there is less
erosion the channels narrowed more pools formed more riffle sections all of which were
great for wildlife habitats; the rivers changed in response to the wolves. And the reason
was that the regenerating forests stabilized the banks so that they collapse less often, so
that the rivers became more fixed in their course.

Similarly, by driving the deer to some places and the vegetation recovering on the valley
sites there is a soil erosion, because the vegetation stabilized that as well. So, the wolves
small in number, transform not just the ecosystem of the Yellow Stone National Park this
huge area of land, but also its physical geography”

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(Refer Slide Time: 54:06)

In this example what we are observing is that earlier we had a patch of forest that had some
grasses and that had some trees. If you do not have any herbivores here, so these plants
would be able to survive. But then if you only have some herbivores in the form of deer
and you do not have anything to control the population of deer what would that deer do is,
they would eat up all the grass and also any of the small saplings that are coming up
because of these trees; so, these all get eaten up. Once that happens the regeneration of the
forest stops, because you do not have any new saplings that will later on become trees.

In the case of Yellow Stone National Park what had happened was that these wolves had
been cleared off; they had been hunted away. In that case there was nothing to stop the
deer and they were eating up everything and so in this situation the amount of biodiversity
had reduced to a very great extent, because you only had these barren lands and you only
had these forests that were not regenerating themselves.

Now in this situation when you bring wolves into the system and even though these wolves
are small in number, but once they create a negative impact on the deer, by killing of these
deer and by changing their behaviors so that they avoid certain locations. In those
locations, now these saplings have a chance to grow. Now, you have these saplings that
are coming up and you have these grasses that are coming up.

Once that happens, these grasses and these saplings can now support more number of
organisms. For instance, when say you have these grasses you will also have a number of

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insects that will feed on these grasses which will also support a number of birds that will
feed on these insects. So, by bringing in wolves you are increasing the population of insects
and birds. Similarly, once you have these saplings and once these saplings grow to a certain
stage they would support some other organisms. For instance earlier, because we did not
have any shrubs, so there were no berries.

Because these shrubs are able to survive so you have berries that are growing up on a
number of shrubs. And these berries are then supporting bears. These bears would also
have some other impacts, because they would be killing off some other organisms like the
coyotes; the bears and the wolves kill off the coyotes. When the when these coyotes are
killed off, that increases the population of rabbits. Because rabbits were being eaten up by
coyotes, once you reduce the population of coyotes, the population of rabbits would go up.
Rabbits and mice would increase; once rabbits and mice population increases that would
further increase the population of those organisms that feed on these animals.

So, things such as snakes would increase or things such as eagles would increase or owls
would increase or hawks would increase and so on. Just one organism, just one top predator
that can produce so much of impacts on the ecosystem and this is what is known as trophic
cascade.

(Refer Slide Time: 57:36)

(Why is it called a trophic cascade? Because if we look at a river, a cascade is a series of

small waterfalls. So, each of these small waterfalls will be called a cascade.)

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In this case the wolves are impacting some other organism, they impacted the deer, which
then impacted the shrubs and the herbs of that area and the grasses of that area, which then
impacted the bears in that area, which then also impacted something else the coyotes in
that area and so on. The impacts are moving up and down in the food web. That is why we
call these as tropic cascades, and they play an extremely important role not only in the
ecology, but also in the geography of the region.

In this lecture we looked at food chains and food webs. We looked at different trophic
levels, we looked at different pyramids and how do we make sense of this data; and why
is that important in the case of ecology. And a very important implication of understanding
of these food chains food webs and trophic levels is the knowledge about the trophic
cascades, what is the impact of a top predator in any ecosystem.

So that is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

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 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 11
Primary Production

(Refer Slide Time: 00:20)

“Namaste”,

Today, we move forward with our discussion on ecological energetics, and look at primary
production. We look at some definitions. Primary production is the synthesis of organic
compounds from atmospheric or aqueous carbon dioxide, through the process of
photosynthesis or chemosynthesis. Here we are looking at the autotrophs or the organisms
that are responsible for primary production, as we have seen in one of our earlier lectures.
And these are of two kinds they are photo autotrophs or chemo autotrophs.

Photo autotrophs are those organisms that use light; photo is light, auto is self, troph is
nutrition. With the help of light, they are doing self-nutrition which means that they are
fixing up carbon dioxide into organic molecules. These organic molecules such as
carbohydrates or fats or proteins, and so on, then make up the bodies of these organisms.
And these organic molecules are not only required to make up the bodies of these
organisms. When these organisms are eaten up, by other organisms which we call as
consumers, so in that process these organic molecules move up in the food chain.

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And with those the energy that was fixed up by the primary producers is also moved up in
the food chain. Primary production which is the synthesis of organic compounds from
atmospheric or aqueous carbon dioxide. Atmospheric carbon dioxide in situations, where
we have the photo autotrophs; that are exposed to the air. And in the case of those photo
autotrophs that are or in the case of those chemo autotrophs that are not exposed to the air,
but are residing in an aqueous environment or water environment in that case, they also
use the aqueous carbon dioxide.

Examples would be organisms that are living in the oceans, in the rivers, in different water
bodies, ponds, lakes, and so on. So, synthesis of organic compounds from atmospheric or
aqueous carbon dioxide through the process of photosynthesis or chemosynthesis; and the
organisms that are doing primary production are autotrophs which are of two kinds, we
have photoautotrophs, and the chemoautotrophs. The examples include trees, plants, algae,
and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:29)

Why that important to learn about the primary production? It is important for three main
reasons. The first reason is that the plants form 99.9 percent of the earth’s living mantle.
There is this report from Whittaker, which says that 99.9 percent of the earth’s living
mantle or all the organisms that are living, so, 99.9 percent of those is made up of the
autotrophs or the plants, so because they form a very major portion of the ecosystem. So,
it becomes extremely important to know about those.

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This is also evident if we go to any of our forested areas, so if you visit any forest, you
will see so many trees around, but so less number of animals that are there which makes
this ratio of 99.9 percent. The second reason is that primary production is responsible for
the conversion of the ultimate source of energy, which is the sun to biological energy
which fuels the complete ecosystem.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:34)

In the case of any food chain, if we talk about sun and the energy goes to the plants, from
there it goes to the herbivores, from there it goes to the carnivores. Now, in such a food
chain, the primary source of energy is the sun. And if this portion is not there, if plants are
not there, so the rest of the food chain will also collapse.

Now, even in the case of the detritus food chains. So, when we talk about detritus, which
is then fed by detritivores, which is then fed upon by carnivores, and then the next higher
level carnivore and so on. So, in this case when we talk about this detritus, this detritus is
coming from the plants or the herbivores or the carnivores or other parts of this food chain.

In this case also, we can trace the ultimate source of energy to the sun. Except in those
very few instances in which the source of energy is chemical reactions, when we are
starting a food chain through the process of chemo synthesis, through chemo autotrophs.
Even in that case, the conversion of the energy into the biological molecules in the very
first place occurs through the action of autotrophs, which is the same as talking about the
primary production.

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And the third importance is that it releases oxygen as a by-product. Oxygen is required by
most of the other organisms to convert these biological molecules into energy, and because
this is a by-product of primary production. There also it becomes extremely important to
learn about primary production.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:28)

When we are talking about these reactions, there are two processes that are happening in
tandem or at the same time. In the case of a plant; a plant is doing photosynthesis, and it
is also doing respiration. In the process of photosynthesis, you have carbon dioxide and
water which are being acted upon through the action of enzymes, which are present in the
chloroplast. Chlorophyll is also important here, and they are fixing up solar energy into
these sugars. Here we are talking about glucose, so it is converting carbon dioxide and
water into glucose, and is releasing oxygen as a by-product.

Most of the cells of the plants, and most of the cells that are present in animal bodies are
also doing respiration. Respiration is a reverse process. In the process of respiration, these
molecules that were made by the plants are then burnt to generate energy. When we talk
about respiration, you just can invert this arrow. So, you will have this glucose plus oxygen
in the presence of metabolic enzymes, it is giving you carbon dioxide and water. And the
solar energy that was fixed in the process of photosynthesis is then released in the form of
energy molecules such as ATP.

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(Refer Slide Time: 06:53)

When both of these reactions are act are acting at the same point, we can define three
terms. First is the gross primary production. Gross primary production is the energy or
carbon that is fixed by photosynthesis per unit time.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:09)

What we are asking here in the case of gross primary production is when we are talking
about this reaction. When we have this reaction, when we are talking about gross primary
production, what we are asking is how much of this carbon dioxide is getting fixed? or
how much of this energy is getting fixed? or how much of these biological molecules are

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getting formed? or how much amount of oxygen is getting released? When we ask this
question that this reaction is happening, but what is the rate at which this reaction is
happening, then we are talking about the gross primary production. The energy or carbon
that is getting fixed via photosynthesis per unit time is the gross primary production.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:14)

Now, as we saw before, there are two reactions happening in tandem. Now, in any plant
cell or in those cells that have chloroplast, we are having this process of photosynthesis.
And at the same time we are also observing respiration in the whole of the plant. So, when
we talk about photosynthesis some amount of carbon is getting fixed, but then when we
talk about respiration some of that carbon is again getting released back.

When we are talking about the gross primary production, we are asking about the rate of
photosynthesis. But, when we subtract respiration from this, so photosynthesis minus
respiration. In that case, we are talking about the net primary production. Net primary
production is the gross primary production or the energy or carbon that was fixed by
photosynthesis minus the energy or carbon that is lost via respiration. When we express it
per unit time, we are talking about the net primary production.

In some of the books we say that, when we are talking about gross primary production, it
is the energy or carbon that is fixed. When we talk about gross primary productivity, in
that case it is fixation per unit time. This is a semantic difference that we see in some
literature.

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(Refer Slide Time: 09:43)

When we say production that is amount of CO2 or energy fixed and when we say
productivity, that means, production per unit time, but then there are some books that use
these terms interchangeably. When we talk about gross primary production, we can also
say that we are referring to the energy that is being fixed per unit time. There is this third
term called compensation point. Compensation point is the equilibrium point for plants,
where photosynthesis equals respiration.

(Refer Slide Time: 10:35)

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What is compensation point? Suppose you have this plant, and when you have the sun,
then you have two processes that are happening. One is photosynthesis, and the second
process is respiration, now this is during the daytime. Now, during the night time, we do
not have the sun, and so the photosynthesis stops, and we only have a respiration that is
going on.

In this case, we can say that respiration occurs at all times, whereas photosynthesis happens
only in the daytime, only when light is available. If we look at the amount of carbon or the
amount of carbon dioxide that is getting fixed, we will find that in the case of respiration,
you will have a constant amount. So, this is fixed or released.

Here we have respiration, because that is happening at all times whereas, in the case of
photosynthesis, so on the x axis here we have the time. Let us say here you have from 0
hours 6, 12, 18, and 24 hours. Now, 24 hours is midnight. Now, suppose the sun rises at
around 6’o clock in the morning, so in that case the photosynthesis reaction would start at
this time. And then, let us say that the sun sets at around 6’o clock in the evening , and
then this would peak at some time. So, this is the amount of carbon dioxide or oxygen that
is getting absorbed. And in the case of respiration that would be somewhere below this or
something like this. So, here we have respiration.

Now, if we look at this curve, we can divide it into these three regions. Now, region 1, 2,
and 3; now, in the first region from 0000 hours, till say around 0615 hours. So, 00:00hrs
to 06:15hrs. Here we have a time where the where the carbon dioxide that is released
because of respiration is greater than the carbon dioxide that is getting fixed by the process
of photosynthesis. So, here we have a net release of carbon or net release of carbon dioxide.
In this stage, from 06:15 hrs to say around 17:45 hrs here we see that the amount of carbon
that is released in the process of respiration is less than the amount of carbon dioxide that
is getting fixed because of photosynthesis.

In section-2 we will have a net absorption of CO2. And in this third stage that is from your
17 45hours to 2400 hours, here again we have a net release of carbon dioxide. In this curve
we can delineate two points; one is this, and the second one is this. At both of these points,
we have the amount of carbon dioxide that is getting released because of respiration is
equal to the amount of carbon dioxide that is getting fixed because of photosynthesis. And
both of these points go by the name of compensation points.

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Compensation point is the equilibrium point for plants, where photosynthesis equals
respiration or the amount of carbon dioxide that is getting fixed by photosynthesis is the
amount of carbon dioxide that is getting released because of respiration or in terms of
energy the amount of energy that is getting fixed because of photosynthesis is equal to the
amount of energy that is being released through the process of respiration.

At these two points, the plant is neither absorbing carbon dioxide nor is giving out oxygen.
Let us say, it is neither absorbing carbon dioxide nor is it releasing carbon dioxide, and it
is neither absorbing oxygen or it is release of oxygen. These two points as they normally
occur during early mornings and late evenings, these two points are known as the
compensation points.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:46)

Now, how do we measure the gross primary production or the net primary production? So,
here we have three different methods through which we can measure the amount of energy
that is being fixed or the amount of carbon that is being fixed. When we write this reaction,
6 CO2 + 6 H2O in the presence of chlorophyll enzymes, and solar energy is giving you
glucose + 6 O2.

So, in terms of energetics we can ask this question, how much amount of solar energy is
required in this process. So, if we compute the amount of solar energy that is required, it
comes to around 2966 kilo joules, when you have one mole of glucose that is being
produced. So, for each mole of glucose that is being produced, you have 2966 kilojoules

357
of energy that is getting absorbed. 6 moles of carbon dioxide that is getting utilized and 6
moles of oxygen that is getting released.

Now, when we say 6 moles of carbon dioxide, it means 134.4 liters at the standard
temperature and pressure, which is defined as 0 degrees Celsius, and a pressure of 1 bar.
Now, when we have these values, we can measure the amount of carbon dioxide that is
getting fixed by either measuring the rate at which this carbon dioxide is getting utilized.

So, for instance you have a plant, you cover it with a glass jar, and you measure the amount
of carbon dioxide that is present in the air there. And then throughout the day, you try
measuring the amount of carbon dioxide at different points of time. And when you come
to this conclusion that this ‘x’ amount of carbon dioxide has been utilized, so we can say
that x moles divided by 6 moles is the amount of glucose in moles that has been produced
or in place of measuring carbon dioxide, we can even measure oxygen.

So, we can measure the amount of oxygen that has been released by the plant to make an
estimate of the amount of carbon dioxide that is getting fixed or the amount of these
biological molecules that are getting synthesized. So, this is a way of measuring the gross
primary production or productivity. Now, in this case, if we also include the amount of
carbon that is getting released because of the process of respiration, we are measuring the
net primary production or productivity.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:04)

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Now, another method is this. So, here we see that in place of carbon dioxide, if we replace
it with radioactive carbon dioxide. So, if we replace carbon-12 with carbon-14, then this
carbon 14 will also get incorporated in these sugar molecules that are being produced. So,
we can put this plant into a chamber in which it is not having our normal CO2, but all the
carbons in the CO2 have been labeled. So, they are all carbon-14.

In that case we can measure the amount of carbon-14 that is getting incorporated in the
plants. And then we can use it to make an estimate of the amount of carbon dioxide that
has been absorbed by this plant in the process of photosynthesis. Now, even in this case,
because the plant is also doing some amount of respiration, so some amount of carbon-14
will also be lost. And so in that case, we are measuring the net primary production or the
productivity.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:17)

Now, one other variant could be that we are not replacing all of CO2 with carbon 14, but
what we are doing is that we have a mixture of carbon-12 and carbon-14. And then, if we
know the ratio that was there in the beginning, we can use this ratio as well to figure out
the amount of sugars that are getting produced by looking at an amount of carbon-14 that
has been fixed in this process.

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(Refer Slide Time: 19:39)

Now, the third method which is the easier method and is the most widely utilized method,
it says that the amount of plant material that is being produced can be measured as delta
B, where B is the biomass. So, delta B is the change in the biomass between two time
periods t2 and t1. And B2 is the biomass at time t2, and B1 is the biomass at time t1 .

(Refer Slide Time: 20:11)

So, if we take this difference, so what we are doing in this case is that, suppose you have
a forest, now in this forest we go there at say time t1, and we measure the total amount of
biomass that is there in the system. Now, how do we measure the biomass, well we can

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make an estimate of the total amount of wood that is present, the total amount of leaves
that are present. And we can also make an estimate of the total amount of biomass in the
form of roots that is present in this forest. So, you add the leaves from this plant, this plant,
this plant, and so on.

And also you can make an estimate of the amount of litter that has gone down. So, litter
consists of the dead wood or the decaying wood or the dead leaves that have come down.
Now, at time t, when you make this measurement of the total amount of biomass that is
present in this forest. And you measure that it is B1. Now, you go back to this forest, after
say one year, and at time t2, you measure the amount of biomass and that is B2.

Now, in this period of t2 minus t1, you have a total change of biomass of B2 minus B1, so
that is the amount of biomass that has been produced or destroyed depending on whether
it is a positive or negative, in time t2 minus t1. So, this is the amount of biomass that was
produce were destroyed, and divided by that the time period of measurement. So, from
this as well we can make an estimate of the net primary productivity of this particular
forest.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:11)

Now, we can also define the efficiency of production. The efficiency of gross primary
production is defined as the energy that is fixed by gross primary production divided by
the energy in this incident sunlight.

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(Refer Slide Time: 22:33)

What we are asking here is, suppose you have a plant, and this plant intercepted say 1000
calories from the sun. Now, when it intercepted this amount of calories, how much was
the amount of energy that it was able to fix in the form of the biological molecules, because
in this process as well, this will not be a 100 percent efficient process. You will also be
losing out some amount of energy. Suppose this tree got 100 calories of energy, and it was
say able to fix 40 calories through the process of photosynthesis.

In this case we will define the efficiency of gross production as 40 calories divided by
1000 calories into 100 percent. Here we will have a 4 percent efficiency, which is the gross
efficiency. Now, in place of using this term energy fixed by gross primary production, if
we remove the amount that was released back because of respiration. We are using the net
primary production, so in that case we can define the net efficiency. So, suppose out of
this 40 calories, we have a situation in which 30 calories are lost due to respiration.

The net amount of energy that gets fixed is 40 calories minus 30 calories is 10 calories.
And in that case, we define the net efficiency as 10 calories divided by these 1000 calories
in to 100 percent, which is a 1 percent efficiency of net primary production.

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(Refer Slide Time: 24:34)

We can also define another term which is productivity. And productivity is defined as
production per unit time. If we say that net primary production for a particular forest was
say 1 ton of biomass that was produced, and that amount of biomass was produced in a
period of say 2 years. So, we will say that productivity is 1 ton divided by 2 years, which
is 0.5 tons per year, so that is productivity; production divided by time.

We can define or we can try to compute net primary productivity using this equation. The
net primary productivity is given by APAR multiplied by LUE, where APAR is the
absorbed photosynthetically active radiation multiplied by the light use efficiency.

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(Refer Slide Time: 25:28)

In this case, what we are saying is that we are talking about the net primary productivity
is given by APAR into LUE. Now, APAR is the absorbed photosynthetically active
radiation. So, essentially how many joules of energy or how many mega joules of energy
was absorbed per square meter of area, and per unit time, say into x hours.

If we have say y mega joules of energy that was absorbed by the plants, now this energy
is coming from the sun. So, out of the incident radiation, there was y mega joules of energy
that got absorbed by the plant, and this is the photosynthetically active radiation. What do
we mean by photosynthetically active radiation? When we talk about the whole of the
spectrum the VIBGYOR, then the wavelengths that are mostly responsible for
photosynthesis come in the blue region, and in the red region. And the other radiations say
green, yellow, orange, they are mostly reflected by the plants, they are not used for
photosynthesis.

Now, because green is mostly reflected, so this is why the leaves look green in color. So,
green is not being used for photosynthesis, whereas the red and blue are being used for
photosynthesis. So, we are only considering that portion of the spectrum that is being used,
because in the process of photosynthesis, so that is photosynthetically active radiation.

Out of that photosynthetically active radiation, the total amount that gets absorbed is the
APAR. Now, that photosynthetically active radiation is given in terms of how many mega

364
joules of energy was there per unit time, per unit area, so which is why we have mega
joules per unit time, per unit area.

Light use efficiency is the efficiency of the plants to use this light. In this case what we are
asking is the plant was able to absorb, these many mega joules of energy and when these
many mega joules of energy were converted into carbon that was fixed. Here we have the
grams of carbon per mega joule of energy. In this case, you will have mega joule and mega
joule that will get canceled out, and we will have an estimate of the grams of carbon that
are being sequestered or that have been converted in the form of biomass per unit area,
and per unit time, which is an estimate of the net primary productivity.

So, net primary productivity, we had defined it as x amount of carbon or x grams of carbon
that was getting generated per unit time. So, per unit time is say in 1 hour. And in the case
of net primary productivity, we can define it for a forest or for any area or we can define
it per unit area. So, in this equation, this was there in an area of say square meters. So, in
that case we have the net primary productivity that is given by the multiplication of
absorbed photosynthetically active radiation multiplied by the light use efficiency. Now,
this gives us a way of estimating the net primary productivity for any area on earth, because
the absorbed photosynthetically active radiation will depend on how much amount of
radiation is actually made available at that particular area.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:47)

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For instance if we consider the earth, and in this case this is the equator. If we have the sun
here, so in this case, if you consider a point here, so this point is getting much more amount
of sunlight as compared to a point here, because this point is receiving a light that is
incident at a very flat angle. So, the amount of photosynthetically active radiation that gets
absorbed can be figured out by looking at the latitude of the place that can also be looked
at by looking at the aspect of that place.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:37)

So, for instance in the case of India, if we have a hill and because India is in the northern
hemisphere, this is north and this is south. So, in this case the southern aspect gets more
amount of sunlight as compared to the northern aspect. So, if more amount of sunlight is
getting incident on the southern aspect, so more amount of light is made available to the
plants and so more amount of light will be absorbed by the plants.

APAR can be discerned by looking at the location of that place, it will also depend on the
amount of cloudiness in that area, because clouds are able to block the sunlight. So, if there
is an area that has more amount of clouds in a year, so in that case the APAR will be less.

Similarly we can compute the light use efficiency, light use efficiency will depend on
different species for instance, it will also depend on the fertility of that area or the amount
of water that the area has or the amount of nutrients, mineral salts that are there in the soil
in that particular area, so, that makes it possible to model the APAR, and the light use
efficiency to make an estimate of the net primary productivity.

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(Refer Slide Time: 31:57)

Using that we can compute the net primary productivity. Net primary productivity can also
be computed using satellite data. In the case of satellite data, what we are trying to measure
is the amount of chlorophyll that is there per unit area. The amount of chlorophyll that is
present here if you have more amount of chlorophyll and you know what kind of species
are there, so you can figure out, what is the amount of productivity that we can expect from
that area. We can make an estimate of the net primary productivity of different areas of
the earth. And we can also compute the net primary productivity and the gross primary
productivity using modeling.

(Refer Slide Time: 32:40)

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This is the gross primary productivity of different areas. And here we can observe that it
starts from 0 and goes to 2400. And so these areas are the most productive areas. So, like
this area is the Amazonian rainforest. These rainforests have a very high amount of gross
primary productivity. In comparison these areas so like this is the Sahara desert. Sahara
desert will be having a very less amount of gross primary productivity, because you have
less number of plants, and you have a dearth of water in that area. Now, most of the areas
of Europe will come in a moderate amount of productivity. In comparison India has a
much higher level of gross primary productivity and so is the Southeast Asian nations.

(Refer Slide Time: 33:37)

We can also compute the net primary productivity or we can also compute the things such
as the light use efficiency for gross primary productivity and the net primary productivity.

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(Refer Slide Time: 33:39)

(Refer Slide Time: 33:41)

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(Refer Slide Time: 33:46)

Now to recap, what does productivity depend on? Productivity depends on the solar
constant; the rate at which energy reaches the earth’s surface from the sun. And this is
usually taken to be 1388 watts per square meter. This is the amount of energy that the sun
is giving. We know how much amount of that energy is photosynthetically active radiation.
We can figure out a proportion of photosynthetically active radiation using the solar
constant. This is the energy that is being received by the sun on average, but different areas
would be receiving different amounts of energy, depending upon the latitude of that place,
the cloudiness of that place.

Also the dust and water that are there in the atmosphere, because dust and water will also
occlude or block the photosynthetically active radiation that is reaching the plants. The
amount of sunlight that is received by the plants will also depend on the area of leaves that
the plant has, and the arrangement of leaves.

The plant needs to have an arrangement that maximizes the amount of radiation that is
being intercepted by the leaves. It will also depend on the amount of carbon dioxide that
is there in the atmosphere as will be the amount of water that is being available in that
area. Using all of these different factors, we can model different factors of productivity.

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(Refer Slide Time: 35:10)

This is once such simulation exercise that we had done, and this was to understand the
impact of global warming on the carbon sequestration potential and stand dynamics of
Chir Pine forests.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:30)

What we did here was that we considered in area and this area was Almora district of
Uttarakhand. And in this Almora district we were considering the pine trees. If we have
pine trees, and they are at the current ambient conditions. The current ambient conditions
means the amount of carbon dioxide that we have in the air at present, and also the location

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of this place, what is the latitude of this place, how much is the amount of cloudiness that
is there in this place, how much amount of water is there that this area is receiving, what
is the level of fertility that the soil have, so those are all the ambient conditions.

We wanted to understand if in the process of global warming, now when we have global
warming, there are two things that are happening. One is that we have an increase in the
carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. And because of that and because of the
greenhouse effect, we will observe an increase in temperature. Now, for most of the plants
if you increase carbon dioxide, so because in the process of photosynthesis you have
carbon dioxide plus water is giving you the sugars and oxygen.

If you increase the amount of carbon dioxide, then the amount of production of your
glucose or the sugars will increase. This will have an impact of fertilization on the plants.
Whereas, an increase in temperature might be useful for the plants or it might be harmful
for the plants that would depend on the existing conditions. For instance, if you have a
banyan tree that is there in Uttarakhand, now banyan tree is normally found in the tropical
area. It is a tree that wants to have a higher temperature, but then you have planted it
somewhere in Uttarakhand, where it is very cold.

In that case if you increase the temperature, so this plant will be more comfortable and it
will be much more efficient in absorbing carbon dioxide or sequestering carbon dioxide.
On the other hand, if you consider say a pine tree that is planted in Madhya Pradesh. So,
in that case, your pine tree which is a tree of cold areas has already been put in an area that
is extremely warm.

If you increase temperature further, its efficiency will go down even further. We wanted
to ask, because we have these two processes, carbon dioxide fertilization and an increase
in temperature, how would that impact trees in different locations?

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(Refer Slide Time: 38:04)

For that we began with, by looking at different data. Here we have data of the amount of
precipitation that we have, the maximum and minimum temperatures that we have, the
level of cloudiness that we have in the Almora district and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:19)

And then we looked at different factors of productivity for the pine trees.

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(Refer Slide Time: 38:26)

Then we made our model and then we calibrated it with the existing data. Now, our data
is available in the form of yield tables. In the case of a yield table what people have done
is that they have gone to the forest, and looked at different trees at different stages of their
life.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:49)

So, for instance, you have an area that is completely free of any plants, and then you plant
some pine saplings here. With time, these saplings will grow up. So, they will start
becoming larger and larger. Once that happens, these plants will start competing with each

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other, and so maybe some of the plants would die off to reduce the density or the number
of trees that are available per unit area in this particular piece of land.

At the same time, when these plants are growing then their height would increase. So, the
height increases; the number of plants reduces, the height increases, the diameter also
increases, the total amount of wood that is there in the plant also increases and so on. All
these measurements have been done for such stands of pine for different time periods. In
this case, for instance, here we have the stand volume. This stand volume is the total
volume of all the trees that are present in that particular area. And then this stand volume
is given as cubic meter of wood per hectare.

If you look at the stand age, so at zero age, you do you have only saplings. So, these
saplings make up for a very small volume of timber, so that is 0. And then with increasing
age this amount increases. These crosses are showing us the actual field values. This is
from the yield table. And this straight line is showing our modeling results. In this case
what we are trying to do is that we are calibrating our model, so that it best represents the
existing field situations. So, from here we see that there is a very good correspondence
between both of these till say around 110 years, then this one is showing you the number
of stems that are there or the number of plants that are there.

When we increase their stand age because different plants are competing against each
other, so there would be a number of deaths of plants. The number of plants that are there
per unit area would decrease. Here again, this is what the model is predicting, and the
crosses are what is the actual field situation. Here also we see that there is a very good
correspondence; this is about basal area, this is about the leaf area index. Once we have
calibrated the model, we can then ask the question, what is the impact of global warming
on volume?

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(Refer Slide Time: 41:22)

If we look at the volume of this stand and here we differentiated it in two parts. So, the
first part is in this case you have an increase in carbon dioxide concentration. So, this is
360 ppm which is the ambient concentration of carbon dioxide that we have considered,
so from 360 ppm, 421 ppm, 538 ppm and so on. If you increase carbon dioxide, and you
keep everything else constant, so you keep temperatures constant. If you only increase
carbon dioxide, you can see that the stand volume increases. So, this is 360, this is 421,
this is 538 and so on.

With increasing carbon dioxide concentration, the stand volume will increase. This is an
impact of the carbon dioxide fertilization. Whereas, if you keep the carbon dioxide
constant and you only increase the temperatures, so in that case, the stand volume goes on
decreasing with different levels of global warming. These are the standard scenarios that
have been used. They go by the name of representative concentration pathways, and these
representative concentration pathways are the standard scenarios through which we model
different levels of global warming.

And then, if you do both of these things together, you increase carbon dioxide, so that is
the fertilization effect, and you increase the temperature which is harmful to the plants, if
you do both of these, so in this particular case, we can see that the stand volume increases.
So, the increase between the current representative concentration pathway, and RCP of
2.6, which means an effective global warming of 2.6 watt per square meter.

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In that case, the difference is negligible, but then with increased amount of global warming,
there would be an increase in the stand volume. By using these modeling equations, we
can discern what would be the impact of different scenarios. The impact of increasing
carbon dioxide, the impact of increasing temperature and the combined impact.

(Refer Slide Time: 43:30)

We can also look at things such as the mean annual increment of the plants or things like
the leaf area index that is there in the stand or the gross primary productivity or the amount
of carbon sequestration that we have.

(Refer Slide Time: 43:34)

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This curve is important, because it is showing us that as the stand progresses in its age, the
total amount of carbon that has been sequestered it increases to a maximum and then it
starts decreasing.

Why does it start decreasing after a while? Because your stand has become so old that
there are a number of trees that are dying off, they are shedding off their leaves, they are
shedding of their branches. When that happens these branches, and these leaves get
decomposed they get they get degraded, and the carbon dioxide is released back into the
atmosphere. We see that dry matter reaches a peak and then it starts decreasing.

Essentially if you are managing your forests for maximum amount of carbon sequestration,
this is the point where you should cut your trees, so that you have the maximum amount
of carbon that has been sequestered away. In this case, we can observe that currently, if
we should cut our forests at say around 105 years because that is the point where your
amount of carbon sequestration has reached the maximum point, now with global warming
that would reduce. This is a very significant finding. In place 105 years, we will have to
say cut your trees at around 70 years. So, all these kinds of predictions can be made through
modeling because we are using all these equations of production and productivity.

(Refer Slide Time: 45:11)

Moving forward, now we move at some other definitions. Any area would be productive
when it is providing all the necessary conditions for the plants to thrive. For instance, in
the case of Almora, when we were looking at these Chir Pine forests, so these plants

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require water, they require carbon dioxide, they require different amount of mineral
nutrients, they require some amount of fertilizers that are available naturally, they will
require concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and so on.

Now, does an area provide these nutrients, and to what extent is one way through which
we define the trophic status of a particular place. For instance, in the case of lakes, we can
have an oligotrophic lake. Oligo is less and trophic is the level of productivity. So,
oligotrophic means you have a lake that has a low primary productivity as a result of low
nutrient content.

Because you do not have these minerals, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium or because your
lake is in a place where it is not getting sufficient amount of sunlight or if it is in a place
that is so cold that it does not allow any plants to thrive. You will have a situation of
oligotrophic lake.

But in most situations, we observe that this is because of a low nutrient content. A low
nutrient content can happen if you have for instance a glacial lake. Now, in the case of a
glacial lake, you have a glacier that is melting. How do glaciers form? The glaciers form
because of snow deposition. Now, snow is practically pure water. When you have snowfall
in an area, when you have a glacier, it does not have a very high amount of mineral salt
content inside it, because it is practically pure water. And when this glacier melts and it
forms a lake, so that lake also has a very less amount of different minerals. It has very low
amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and so on. If that is the situation, the
lake will not be able to support a heavy plant growth. So, you will have a an oligotrophic
lake with a low amount of primary productivity. These are characterized by low algae
production, and often have very clear waters with high drinking water quality.

From oligotrophic, we move to mesotrophic lakes. So, ‘meso’ is something that is ‘in
between’. So, a mesotrophic lake is a lake with an intermediate level of productivity. These
lakes are often clear water lakes and ponds with bits of submerged aquatic plants and
medium level of nutrients.

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(Refer Slide Time: 48:00)

We have low nutrients which is an oligo trophic lake, you have medium nutrients that is a
mesotrophic lake.

(Refer Slide Time: 48:16)

This is an example of an oligotrophic lake, Tso Moriri lake in Ladakh. In this case, you
can observe that there is hardly any plant growth or hardly any algae growth that we are
observing here. Why is this lake an oligotrophic lake? Because it is getting its water from
the glaciers. Now, from oligo and mesotrophic lakes, then we have high amount of

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nutrients. If you have a high amount of nutrients, then you will have a eutrophic lake; ‘eu’
means good.

(Refer Slide Time: 48:45)

Eutrophic means good productivity. A lake with high biological productivity due to
excessive concentrations of nutrients especially nitrogen and phosphorus. Essentially you
have a lake and you are putting in more amount of nutrients and so you have more amount
of plant growth. Now, why do we have more amount of nutrients there? This is possible
if, for instance the lake is getting waters that are coming because of runoff from
agricultural fields.

In the agricultural fields, you have put a very heavy dose of fertilizers and when there is a
rain, so these fertilizers are getting washed down and they are also reaching the lake. So,
in that case you have a lake with a high concentration of the nutrients because of which
there is a high productivity. So, we call it a eutrophic lake.

And then, if we have a very high level of nutrients, then you will have a hyper eutrophic
lake; hyper is excessive. So, this is excessive good productivity lake. An extremely nutrient
rich lake that is characterized by frequent and severe nuisance algal blooms, the amount
of algal blooms is so high that it is becoming a nuisance. Low transparency and low oxygen
levels, why low oxygen levels because once you have these heavy number of plants they
will also die after a while, and when they die off, their tissues will get decomposed, and
during this process of decomposition you will have oxygen consumption by the

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microorganisms. So, you will have very low oxygen levels. And the oxygen levels are so
low that this lake now does not support any amount of animal life. It often creates dead
zones beneath the surface. This lake only has algae, it does not have anything else.

(Refer Slide Time: 50:37)

Here is an example. This is a portion of the Potomac River which is in the eutrophic state.
In this case there is so heavy algal growth here that it has become a hyper-eutrophic lake
or a eutrophic lake.

(Refer Slide Time: 50:51)

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We can also look at different other characteristics of these lakes. We can have a look at
trophic index. Trophic index is the amount of productivity that we have in this lake. When
we move from oligo to meso to eutrophic to hyper eutrophic, the amount of productivity
increases. The amount of chlorophyll also increases because you have more number of
plants, so more amount of chlorophyll.

The amount of phosphorus is typically also large which is supporting these heavy plant
growth. And the secchi depth; now secchi depth is an indication of the amount of turbidity
that is there in the lake. Secchi depth is a measurement of transparency or turbidity in the
water body. The more the depth, the clearer is the water.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:40)

What happens in the case of a secchi depth is that, you take a disk which is around 30
centimeters in diameter, and then this disk is having these four portions, both of these are
black in color. So, this is black portion, and then there are two areas that are white in color.
So, you have this disc. You attach this disc to a rod, so it will be attached like this, and
then you lower this disc in the water.

When you are lowering this disc in water, you are now wanting to measure what is the
depth at which you are not able to see this black part as a black part and the white part as
a white part, so that if this disk is there on the surface, you can very clearly see the black
and the white portions. But then as you increase the depth and if there is turbidity in the

383
water, so in that case it will become more and more difficult to see black part as black and
white part as white.

The depth at which you are unable to make out which part is black and which part is white,
that is known as the secchi depth. If you have more amount of turbidity in water, so if you
have this water column and if you have say very less amount of turbidity. If you have very
less amount of turbidity, you have put your secchi disc at this depth as well, and you are
able to see white as white, and black as black. But then if you have a heavy amount of
turbidity in this water, in that case you will bring your secchi disc till this depth and you
would not be able to see black as black and white as white.

In this case what we are observing is that, in the case of an oligotrophic lake because this
is a clear lake with very low turbidity so secchi depth is very high it is greater than 4
meters. And as you move onto hyper eutrophic lakes it becomes as less as 25 centimeters.
These are the differences between these different lakes. The next question is, when we talk
about these levels of productivity and these amounts of nutrients that are available, how
do these nutrients get into the lake?

(Refer Slide Time: 53:46)

The sources of nutrients can be many and of these some are rivers that are bringing
sediments. When we say sediments if you have a rock, a rock has a number of mineral
salts inside. When that rock breaks apart and when it converts itself into sediments, and

384
these rivers are bringing sediments, so all those mineral salts are also brought along with
the water. So, rivers that are bringing sediments are one source of nutrients.

The second source is bird droppings. Now, what happens is in the case of birds, if you
have birds that are feeding on fishes for instance. So, they eat fishes and the nutrients that
were there in the fish, they are getting absorbed during the process of digestion, but not all
the nutrients get absorbed. When that happens, some amount of nutrients are then released
along with the fecal matter, so that also becomes a source of nutrients. At the same time
when we look at bird droppings they also have a heavy amount of uric acid. Uric acid is
also nitrogen rich, so there, that also becomes a source of nutrients.

(Refer Slide Time: 55:00)

Upwelling in oceans; now what is upwelling? If you have an ocean, so let us consider that
this is a column of the oceans. The bottom portion of water is at a greater density; greater
density because it is cooler, and also because it is very much rich in salts. If you add salt
to water, the density increases. And if you add that water in a water column, then this salt
rich water will get to the bottom.

You have rivers that are bringing sediments, and when these rivers are reaching the seas,
so these sediment rich waters are now getting to the bottom. Upwelling is a situation in
which because of some process this water rises up. If this water rises up, so it will bring
all these different sediments and all these different mineral salts along with it to the top,
so that becomes a source of nutrients that is made available to the plants.

385
Now, why was it not available to the plants at this depth? It was not available to plants,
because in the case of an ocean, only the this top layer is able to get light from the sun, and
this bottom portion is dark. When it is dark, then plants are not able to survive there, they
are not able to use these nutrients. But only when these nutrients come up to the top, and
they reach this zone that is photosynthetically active, so in that case they are able to use
these nutrients.

Another source of nutrients is dust or cloud and so on. For instance, here we are observing
an area that is close to Africa. And here we see that there is wind that is taking all of this
dust to the ocean. When this happens along with the dust, quite a lot amount of nutrients
also gets passed into the oceans.

(Refer Slide Time: 56:53)

It is important to note which nutrients are there in a water body because that permits us to
engineer these water bodies. For instance, here we have a graph where the x-axis is
showing the phosphorus concentration, and the y-axis is showing the chlorophyll
concentration. In a number of lakes it has been observed that with an increased amount of
phosphorous, the amount of chlorophyll-a increases, which means that in these lakes
phosphorus is the limiting nutrient. If you increase phosphorus, you will move this lake
from an oligotrophic lake to a eutrophic or a hyper eutrophic lake.

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(Refer Slide Time: 57:30)

And this was also shown in one of the experiments. In this experiment, there was a lake
that was divided into two portions with a barrier here. And then, in both the regions you
added nitrogen, you added carbon, and nothing happened and in one portion you added
phosphorus; and in the other portion you did not add phosphorus. The portion where you
have phosphorus you see a very heavy algal bloom which is telling us how we can increase
the productivity of this particular lake.

(Refer Slide Time: 57:59)

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In the case of oceans, iron is a nutrient that is available in less quantities. There was this
experiment which goes by the name of Southern Ocean Iron Release Experiments,
SOIREE. In the case of SOIREE there were ships that released iron salts. This is the route
of one such ship. And here we can see that the amount of chlorophyll has increased in the
these regions. Why is that important? That is important, because if you have more amount
of chlorophyll, if you have more amount of primary productivity, so along with primary
productivity this is also acting as a source of carbon sequestration.

So, if we want to circumvent global warming, in that case we can seed the oceans with
some amount of iron, so that the algae increase in their numbers, the phytoplanktons
increase in their numbers, and more and more amount of carbon dioxide gets sequestered
from the atmosphere and is dumped into the oceans. So, this makes these experiments tell
us that we can also engineer ecosystems to our advantage.

In this particular lecture we looked at primary productivity, we defined gross primary

production, net primary production (productivity), light use efficiency and so on. And we
looked at how all of these concepts can be made use of in modeling to understand the
current situation of different ecosystems and also to predict what is going to happen
because of global warming. And then we also looked at how we can engineer ecosystems
to our advantage. If we say, want to increase the amount of plants that are there in an
ecosystem, how we can put in nutrients? How we can seed it with nutrients? and so on.

So, that is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

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 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Indian Forest Service, M.P
Indian Institutes of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 12
Nutrient Cycles

“Namaste”,

Today, we move forward with our discussion on ecological energetics and look at some
Nutrient Cycles.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:22)

As always we begin with a definition, what is a nutrient? A substance used by an organism

to survive to grow and reproduce. Essentially when any organism is having food it is
getting a number of nutrients, those nutrients in our parlance we say that we are getting
proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and so on. But, then if we look at these minerals
more fundamentally so, we are getting some elements out of these nutrients.

When are talking about say carbohydrates or fats we are getting carbon, hydrogen and
oxygen; when are talking about proteins we are getting nitrogen; when are talking about
other mineral salts we are getting say iron or we are getting copper or we are getting
selenium and all of these are different minerals or all of these are different nutrients when
we talk about in the parlance of ecology as well.

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When we talk about say plant nutrition, a plant is not getting carbohydrates or fats or
proteins from somewhere else because a plant is a producer; it is producing it is own food.
But even when it is producing its own food it will require some nutrients, those nutrients
will be say carbon dioxide or water or some mineral salts that will use to make out of these
different food items. All of those substances will be called as nutrients.

A nutrient is a substance that is used by an organism to survive, grow and reproduce that
is to carry on its life functions, survival, growth and reproduction.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:59)

If we talk about nutrients there are certain nutrients that an organism requires in larger
concentrations or larger amounts and there are some nutrients that are required by the
organisms in the smaller amounts. For instance, if we talk about ourselves, we require
much more amount of carbohydrates, proteins and fats, then say we a requirement of say
sodium in the form of sodium chloride which is our common salt. So, for us, we will that
carbohydrates, proteins and fats are the nutrients that we require in larger quantities and
substances such as sodium chloride or may be some amount of selenium or some amount
of say magnesium is something that will require in very smaller quantities.

Similarly when we talk about the nutrition of plants and in this particular lecture, we will
be mostly concentrating ourselves with the nutrition of plants because once the plants have
made their food products, then those products get moved on with the different food chains
and food webs.

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In the case of plants, when we talk about macro nutrients or nutrients that are required in
larger amounts we can talk about primary nutrients that is nitrogen, phosphorus and
potassium N, P, K. So, for instance whenever we are talking about fertilizers, we always
talk about the N, P, K fertilizer; the fertilizers that provide you nitrogen, phosphorus and
potassium. These are the primary nutrients. Or they can include the secondary nutrients
such as calcium, magnesium or sulphur. These are the nutrients that the plant require in
larger amounts.

Micro nutrients or trace elements are the nutrient that are needed in small or trace amounts
and in the case of plants it could include things like boron, copper, iron, chlorine,
manganese, zinc, molybdenum and so on and when we are talking about nutrients one
definition is about macro and micro nutrients. The second one is the about essential and
non essential nutrients.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:06)

Essential nutrients are those nutrients that are required by the plant and that cannot be
substituted by anything else. There are three criteria for data mining whether an element
is essential or not. The first one is that in the absence of the element, the plant should be
unable to complete their life cycle.

If you say that, suppose carbon is an essential element so, in the absence of carbon the
plant will be unable to complete its life cycle because all of its parts are made of carbon.
The second criteria is that the deficiency of an essential element cannot be met by

391
supplying some other element. Suppose in place of providing a plant with carbon dioxide,
we try to provide it with say sulphur dioxide or maybe you try to provide it with say
ammonia so, anything that does not have carbon.

Now, if you provide a plant with anything does not have carbon the deficiency of carbon
cannot be met by supplying some other element. So, it is a ‘sine qua non’ for the growth
of plants. It is an extremely essential thing and the plant cannot live without it. And, the
third one is that the element must be directly involved in the metabolism of the plant. These
are the three criteria to determine whether an element is an essential element or not.

Now, let us look at some essential elements and their rules.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:42)

Let us begin with nitrogen. Nitrogen is a essential element because if you do not give
nitrogen to a plant it would be able to complete its life cycle. Nitrogen cannot be replaced
by other element and the nitrogen is essential for the metabolism of the plant. Why?
Because nitrogen is a constituent of proteins so, different amino acids; so, when we say
the amino, the amino growth is the nitrogen growth. It is the constituent of different
proteins, it is there in the nucleic acids; so, when we talk about DNA or RNA that also
contains nitrogen. It is a constituent of several vitamins and hormones in the case of plants
and also in the case of animals as well.

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Nitrogen is an essential element because it is a constituent of proteins, nucleic acids,
vitamins, hormones and so on. Another essential element is phosphorus. Phosphorus is a
constituent of nucleic acid again in the case of DNA or RNA we have phosphorus. It is a
constituent of ATP; ATP stands for adenosine triphospate which is the energy currency in
a cell. When a cell needs to move energy from one place to another or when a cell needs
to use energy for some particular purpose, it will be using the energy that is stored in the
ATP molecules. The ATP will get converted to ADP and it will release out energy for
some chemical reactions. And, phosphorus is essential part of ATP.

Phosphorus is also a constituent of the cell membrane of a cell. Cell membrane is the outer
layer that contains all the constituents of the cell inside the cell. It separates what is inside
the cell and what is outside the cell and phosphorus is a constituent of the cell membrane
and it is also a constituent of certain proteins. Here again phosphorus is an essential
element because the plant cannot live without it. You cannot replace it or substitute it with
anything else and it is involved in the metabolism in the plants because of it is role in
nucleic acids and ATP, cell membrane, proteins and so on.

Another essential element is potassium. When we talk about N, P, K this is N, this P, this
is K, the potassium is called kalium and we look at it is deep roots and kalium is presented
by K. Potassium is a part of cation-anion balance that is needed for maintaining cell
turgidity, opening and closing of stomata, activation of certain enzymes and so on. When
we say turgidity it is an expression of the pressure that is being contain inside a cell. So,
for instance if you have a cell and you take out the water that is inside so, the cell will
become placid. It will look like a balloon that is now not inflated. Turgidity is when you
take up balloon and you inflate it, then we say that balloon is turgid. In the case of plants,
in the case of a number of cells, this turgidity is not governed by the movement of air, but
by the movement of water.

And, for that case the amount of osmolarity in the cell is essential. If you more amount of
salt inside a cell. The salt will attract more amount of water from outside and will result in
the increase in the turgidity of the cell and potassium plays a key role there because it is
involved in the cation anion balance. And, the cell to turgidity in turn regulates the opening
and closing of the stomata and stomata are the pores in the leaves through which the
gaseous occurs in the case of plants and potassium is also involved in the activation of
certain enzymes.

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Another essential nutrient is calcium; and calcium is used in the formation of calcium
pectate in the cell wall. And, calcium pectate especially plays a role in the cell division.
When you have a plant cell that is dividing into two cells. Calcium pectate will form a
layer that will separate the two cells or the two daughter cells. It is a part of the calcium
pectate in the cell wall, it is also involved in the activation of the certain enzymes and it
also plays a role in the calcium channels in the cell membranes.

We have magnesium; magnesium is a constituent of chlorophyll. So, just like our

haemoglobin contains iron inside it similarly chlorophyll contains a magnesium iron inside
it. Magnesium is important because it is involved in a formation of chlorophyll. It is a
constituent of chlorophyll plus it is required in the activation of certain respiration
enzymes. If you remove magnesium from the cell you would not have any chlorophyll and
the cell will not be able to respire.

Next is sulphur; sulphur is a constituent of amino acids cysteine and methionine and it is
also constitute of several vitamins and coenzymes. So, here are some of the essential
elements that the plant requires and this is not an exhaustive list, there are also a number
of other essential elements that are required by the plant.

So, we looked at essential and non-essential elements; we looked at macro nutrients and
micro nutrient. Macro nutrients is something that you require in large amounts, micro
nutrients is something that you require in smaller amounts. Let us now have a look at what
are things that a plant need.

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(Refer Slide Time: 11:42)

We will divide this list into two parts one is the macro nutrient and the second one is the
micro nutrients. In the case of macro nutrients we can divide it into again three sub
categories; the first is the macro nutrients that are derive from air and water and this
includes carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:07)

Now, carbon is derived from the air in the form of carbon dioxide. Here you have carbon
and you have oxygen and hydrogen is derived from the water H2O. So, here you have
hydrogen and oxygen. Essentially the requirements of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, these

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are the three macro nutrients that the plant needs in very large amounts and these are met
from the air and water.

The second is primary macro nutrients and primary macro nutrients are nitrogen,
phosphorus and potassium N, P, K. We can remember it by N, P, K and these N, P, K, they
come from the soil. They come from mineral salts that are there in the soil or are added to
the soil in the form of fertilizers and the plant takes these macro nutrients along with the
water that gets absorbed by the roots. These are the primary macro nutrients.

Then, we have secondary and tertiary macro nutrients which includes sulphur calcium and
magnesium. Here again sulphur and magnesium are required in large quantities, but not as
large as N, P, K or as large as CHO. So, these are the macro nutrients that a plant needs.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:22)

Next we have a list of the micro nutrients. Now, remember again micro nutrients are
required in smaller quantities. In the case of plants it includes iron, molybdenum, boron,
copper, manganese, sodium, zinc, nickel, chlorine, cobalt, aluminium, silicon, vanadium,
selenium.

All of these micro nutrients, they play an important role in the activation of certain
enzymes, in the functioning of certain proteins as coenzymes in certain cases or in the case
of things like sodium and chlorine this also plays an important role in the water balance
inside the cell. In the case of water balance we are talking about the turgidity. If we have

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more amount of sodium chloride or say potassium chloride inside the cell, so, it will absorb
more amount of water and so, it will become more and more turgid.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:20)

Then you have the situation that all the plants require all of these nutrients, but then these
nutrients are not present in an infinite quantity on earth. There is a certain repository of
these nutrients, but then the plants have been growing for ages. In that case how do they
get these nutrients if you have a certain nutrient stock? It is through the biogeochemical
cycles.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:50)

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What we are saying here is that if you have a plant and this plant is growing in the soil and
the soil has certain amount of nutrients and then these plants get eaten up by animals, they
get eaten up by other carnivores animals and so on. Ultimately these nutrients that are
taken up by the roots of the plant, they should ultimately come back to the earth. So that,
if there is another plant that is growing, then it should have access to these nutrients.

The movement of the nutrients will occur in a cyclical manner. So, it moves from the soil
through the plants into the animals and then through the animals and the decomposers it
will move back to the soil. This forms a cycle and we call these cycles as biogeochemical
cycles. Because these involve biological process, they these involve geological process
and these also involve chemical processes. These are biogeochemical cycles.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:55)

They can be defined as a pathway by which a chemical substance moves through biotic
and abiotic compartments of the earth. It is a pathway, it is a route through which chemical
substances are moving through biosphere and abiotic components that is lithosphere,
which is the rocky portion of the earth, atmosphere that is the airy portion of the earth and
hydrosphere which is the watery portion of the earth; compartments of the earth. This is
essentially a biogeochemical cycle.

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(Refer Slide Time: 16:30)

In general we can represent a biogeochemical cycle like this. You have a nutrient pool.
When we say a nutrient pool, it is a repository of the nutrients you can have this repository
either in the soil or maybe in the water or maybe in the air. One instance, if we are talking
about carbon, so, the pool of carbon is there in the air in the form of carbon dioxide and
then this pool is then utilized by the producers or the plants which also gained energy from
the sun to use these nutrients from the nutrient pool and then they make food or they make
certain biological molecules.

Now, from these plants it goes to the herbivores and then it goes to the carnivores and from
all three of these it moves through the decomposers back into the nutrient cycle. For
instance you have a dead leaf, so, this dead leaf will be eaten up by say earthworms and
after the earthworm has eaten it, they have increase the surface area. So, number of bacteria
and enzyme will act on it and ultimately they will all convert it back into carbon dioxide.

Whether it is a dead leaf or may be a dung of an animal or may be the carcass of an animal,
so all of these will be decomposed back into carbon dioxide or if we are talking about a
pool that is present in the soil, let us talk about say calcium that has been derived from the
soil. This calcium is taken up by the plants through their roots then it gets into some
biological molecules, from there it goes to the herbivores to the carnivores and then when
the decomposes are decomposing that dead and decayed parts of these animals or the dungs

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and excreta of these animals. After that all that calcium will be then release back into the
nutrient pool which in this case will be the soil.

In this lecture we will have a look at certain biogeochemical cycles in more detail.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:36)

Let us begin with the nitrogen cycle. Now, in the case of nitrogen cycle, we do not one
pool, but we have two pools. The first pool is the atmospheric nitrogen. More than 70
percent the air that is surrounding us that is nitrogen and the second pool is that of the soil
nitrates which are present in the soil.

A plant is unable to use the atmospheric nitrogen directly, so it has to take up the nitrogen
in the form of nitrates which should come into the soil. How does this atmospheric nitrogen
reach the soil? It is through same biological fixation. We had talked about a mutualistic
relationships between these by bacteria by the name of rhizobium which like in the root
nodules of certain leguminous plants. These bacteria are able to fix this atmospheric
nitrogen. They convert the atmospheric nitrogen into a form that the plants are able to use.
Biological fixation is one way in which nitrogen moves from the atmospheric pool to the
soil pool.

The second one is lightning. When you have lightning, there is an intense amount of heat
and electrical discharge and in that case nitrogen and oxygen both the gases that are present

400
in the atmosphere, they can react together and they can form nitrates and nitrites which
then come down to the soil through rain. That is the second way.

And, the third process is industrial fixation. These days because we want to put more
amount of nitrates into the soil so that the plants can use them, especially for agricultural
production so, we are artificially converting the nitrogen that is there in the air into the
nitrates. That is the other way in which the atmospheric nitrogen can move, can get
converted into the soil nitrates. Here we are seeing that this pool is the nitrogen this pool
is moving into the, this pool.

But, then again because we are talking about cycles, so, if nitrogen can move from the first
pool to the second pool, it also be able to move from the second pool to the first pool. So,
if you have soil nitrates, so, there can be denitrification and volcanic activities that can
convert the nitrates that that are there in the soil or that are there in the rock back into
nitrogen and through both of these processes denitrification and volcanic activity, nitrogen
can move from the this pool of the soil into the atmospheric pool.

Now, that is the movement of the nitrogen between both of these pools, but then how does
it move through the biological system? These soil nitrates can be taken up by the plants
and then these nitrates can be used to form different components such as the proteins.

When the plant has formed certain proteins, the plant gets eaten up by the animals and then
plants and animals, when they are dead and decaying they are decomposed further by the
decomposers and then, so, nitrogen has moved from the soil nitrates to the plants, plants
to animals, and plants and animals to the decomposers. These decomposers can now
further break down these proteins and covert them either into ammonia or they can convert
into nitrates and in this process which is known a ammonification or nitrification, it can
then come back to the soil nitrates pool.

Here we are talking about the two things, one is the pool(s). So, these are the two pools
that we have and the second is fluxes; the fluxes are the rate at which the nutrient is moving
from one pool to another or from one pool into some other organic substance. If we talk
about the rate at which soil nitrates are taken up by all the plants on the earth, then we are
talking about the flux of nitrogen that is moving from the soil pool into the plants. That is
the generalised nitrogen cycle and we look at the sub processes in more detail now.

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(Refer Slide Time: 22:57)

When we talk about nitrogen fixation, it is the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen into
ammonia and this occurs through biological fixation or lightning or industrial fixation. It
can be converted into either ammonia or it can be converted into nitrites and nitrates, but
mostly we say that the first stage is the conversion into ammonia. This is the conversion
of atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia which occurs through these three processes.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:28)

Now, the first one is called is biological nitrogen fixation. Biological nitrogen fixation is
the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia and it occurs in the biological

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organisms. So, in this case you have this nitrogen which is acted upon in the presence of
this enzyme called nitrogenase and it converts it into ammonia and it is done by rhizobium.
Rhizobium is a bacterium that lives in the root nodules in the leguminous plants, or it can
done by certain free living bacteria which is azotobacter or it can be done using some
cyanobacteria. In cyanobacteria, the prefix ‘cyano’ refers to blue. So, these include nostoc
and anabaena as well. So, these can also perform biological nitrogen fixation.

(Refer Slide Time: 24:21)

We can also get ammonia by the decomposition of organic nitrogen in the dead plants and
animals through the process of ammonification. In the process of ammonification, you
have the organic molecules that are rich in nitrogen and in this process of ammonification
they are converted into ammonia.

Ammonification generally happens because of the action of decomposers. If you have say,
a piece of egg that is lying around, you will have some bacterial growth and then it will
convert proteins, especially the albumin that is there in the egg and that will convert it into
ammonia and it will release it back. This is the process of ammonification.

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(Refer Slide Time: 25:08)

Next, we have the process of nitrification. In the process of nitrification, the ammonia that
has been produced; now, ammonia is typically a toxic substance for most of the organisms.
So, it needs to be converted to something else so that it is gotten rid off. Nitrification is a
process in which there is a biological oxidation of ammonia into nitrites and nitrates.

In this case we have ammonia that is reacting with oxygen and it can be done through
organisms like nitrosomonas and nitrococcus and they will convert this ammonia into
nitrites. And then, these nitrites can be further oxidized using nitrobacters and converted
into nitrates. So, you have nitrites that are converted into nitrates and these nitrifying
bacteria, those that are converting ammonia into nitrites and nitrates, they are
chemoautotrophs. They are autotrophs, they are making their own food using chemical
reactions; so they are chemoautotrophs.

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(Refer Slide Time: 26:17)

Now, in the industrial process, we have the Haber process. In the Haber process, we have
nitrogen and hydrogen that are reacted together. These two gases are reacted at high
temperature and pressure in the presence of catalyst to form ammonia and once we have
ammonia, it can then be further convert it into the nitrates using the Oswald process.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:41)

In the case of Oswald process, we have ammonia that reacts with the oxygen in the
presence of catalyst to form NO. Then NO is further oxidized in the presence of catalyst
to form NO2 and then NO2 is in further oxidized in the presence of catalyst to form NO3

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and it is also reacted with water, so, it gives you HNO3. So, that is the nitric acid. Once
you have the nitric acid you can combine it with any base to get nitrate salt. So, if you add
HNO3 with NaOH you get NaNO3 which is sodium nitrate. So, that is all about the nitrogen
cycle.

(Refer Slide Time: 27:20)

Let us have a look at the carbon cycle. In the case of carbon cycle the main pool is the
carbon in the atmosphere, but then carbon is also stored in other pools especially like pools
like oceans or pools like soil carbon or pools like the biological carbon in the form of
forest. But, in this case when we are talking about the carbon cycle will mostly focus on
the atmospheric pool because that is the largest pool.

Here you have carbon in the atmosphere and then this carbon can be utilized in the process
of weathering and it can form carbon in the rocks.

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(Refer Slide Time: 28:11)

What we are saying here is that, if you say have a rock that has calcium hydroxide, it can
react with carbon dioxide or carbon dioxide plus water because carbon dioxide normally
comes down with rain in the form of H2CO3 and in this case it will form CaCO3 + 2H2O.
Now, in this process what is happening is that the calcium hydroxide that is present in the
rocks, it is been acted upon by carbon dioxide and water to form calcium carbonate and
with the release of water. So, it was coming from H2O plus CO2. So, here we have CO2 in
the atmosphere that is been converted into CO2 in the rocks and in this process which is
known as weathering, so in the process of weathering when the reaction is happening, this
rock will also break down. Once it breaks down then further internal minerals will be more
and more available for weathering. In the process of weathering you can have carbon in
the atmosphere that becomes logged into rocks in the form of calcium carbonate.

And, then in a number of tectonic process, which is the process in which the plates of the
earth collide against each other, move past each other, move into the mantle or may be
give rise to volcanic activities, you can have the release of these carbon. So, if you say
have the CaCO3 and then it is heated up. So, it will form calcium oxide plus CO2. So, this
CO2 gets released into the atmosphere and this calcium oxide, in the presence of water, it
can act with water then it can form Ca(OH)2, once again.

So, what we are saying here is that carbon can very easily move from this one pool, which
is carbon in the atmosphere, to carbon in the lithosphere. So, that is the second pool.

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Another pool is carbon that is present in the ocean water. In this case, we have that carbon
in the atmosphere can get dissolved in the water to form carbon in the ocean.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:30)

So, what we are saying here is that you have CO2 that is reacting with H2O to form H2CO3.
In this case, this carbon that was there in the atmosphere has now reached into the oceans.
This is the process in which, through dissolution the carbon can reach into the third pool
of carbon which is the ocean water and then from the ocean water it can come back to the
carbon pool through the release of carbon. In this process it is nothing, but you have the
reverse process. You have H2CO3 that can give rise to CO2 and H2O.

Now, once you have carbon in this pool, carbon in the atmosphere, it can be taken up by
the producers through the process of photosynthesis and converted into biomass. Once you
have this carbon in the form of biomass, in the form of say cellulose or different
carbohydrates or say protein molecules or fat molecules, once you have it in the biomass;
so, this biomass can get consumed by the other organisms, the herbivores and then from
herbivores into the carnivores and predators and so on and so, this biomass is converted
into different kinds of organic matter like food webs or it can reach into the soil and in all
of these processes, this biomass can also be used by the plants themselves. During
respiration it can be released back into the atmosphere or once it is reached in to the
animals from there it goes into the decomposers, it can then again release back into the
atmosphere or when the animals are respiring there also they are releasing carbon dioxide

408
back into the atmosphere. This is the process in which the carbon will move through the
different food chain and food webs.

But, then we can also convert this organic matter or rather they can also see the conversion
of this organic matter into one another pool which is the fossil fuels. In this case, this
process is known as lithification in which you have these plants and animals that get buried
inside the earth and slowly and steadily they get converted into things like petroleum or
coal.

This is the process in which carbon will reach this pool, which is the pool of the fossil
fuels and then these fossil fuels when they are burnt they release carbon back into the
atmosphere. In that case, this fossil fuel will release carbon back into the atmosphere
through the process of combustion. So, that is the carbon cycle.

(Refer Slide Time: 33:14)

Another cycle is the water cycle, because water is also an essential nutrient that is
providing two essential elements, hydrogen and oxygen. Now, water cycle is something
that we all know. There is water in different water bodies, it gets evaporated and forms
water vapour because of the heat that is given out by the sun and when then this water
vapour condenses it forms clouds; when these clouds are then further cooled down, so, all
these water forms a droplets, it falls down in the form of rain which you called as
precipitation.

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Now, this rain can fall either into these big water bodies or it can fall into the land. Now,
on the land this water will be absorbed into the soil, it should percolate down or it will
move through run off. In the process of runoff, it is getting into the streams and rivers and
then ultimately reaching into the big water bodies like oceans and seas so, that is runoff,
or it can get accumulated in some terrestrial water bodies such as ponds or lakes.

And, here again you can have the process of evaporation that is happening or you can have
these plants that are absorbing the ground water and then in the process of transpiration
they are releasing it back into the atmosphere or you can have the situation in which the
percolated water, it moves below the ground and then it also reaches into the oceans.

Here again we see a cyclical process. You can start from any point and then, it will move
a complete cycle. So, this is the water cycle.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:55)

Another cycle is the phosphorus cycle. Now, in the case of the phosphorous cycle, the
main pool is the rock phosphates. The rock phosphates that is the phosphorus that is present
in the rocks. When these rocks undergo some amount of weathering, so, these phosphates
will be converted into the soil phosphates. These are more or less soluble forms of
phosphates that are there in the soil. And, this is a two way process. The rock phosphate
can convert into the soil phosphates and these soil phosphates can precipitate down and
then they can become incorporated into the rock phosphates.

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Once the phosphorus has reached into the soil, it can be taken up by the plants, from the
plants it moves to animals, and from plants and animals it moves to the decomposers and
from there it comes back into the soil. So, this is a small cycle that is happening here.

Now, the other cycle that is happening is that, when you have these soil phosphates and
there is rain fall. Some amount of phosphate can get dissolved in the water, move along
with this streams and rivers, move in a runoff and with this runoff it can go into the oceans
and in the oceans it might get start precipitating out. When it starts precipitating out it gets
to the bottoms of the oceans and then through tectonic forces or tectonic processes it might
again get converted into some rocks, so that it forms a rock phosphate again.

And, this rock phosphate, later on become exposed again through the tectonic processes
like earthquakes. So, in these processes these rocks are exposed into the air and in that case
they will again start weathering and the process will start continue. So, that is phosphorus
cycle.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:46)

Another cycle is the sulphur cycle. Now, in the case of the sulphur cycle you have a number
of sulphur compounds that are there in the air and then when there is rain fall. So, these
sulphates, SO2, SO3 molecules, they can react with the water and then they will come down
into the earth; once they have come down into the earth in the form of sulphate they can
taken up by the plants, from plants to animals, from plants and animals into the
decomposers, from there back into the soil; plus there can be these processes like release

411
of H2S or release of SO2 that is happening in the oceans or may be through the action of
the decomposers.

And, also the these days a very important portion is they release of sulphur through the
fossil fuels combustion. In this case, we have these industries that are spearing out our
sulphur and if the sulphur is very high, these sulphur dioxides are very high in
concentration so, nearby you can have acid rain which will then further come down into
the soil. And, in this process increase the acidity of the soil, may be, lead to the deaths of
a number of plants and so on. Thus sulphur is also released in huge amounts through the
volcanoes.

So, the large releases are the industrial release and the volcano release, then when sulphur
is there in the air, so, it might react with oxygen and converted into sulphur oxide or
sulphur trioxide, then it will come down with water again in the form of acid rain, from
there it will get absorbed by the plants, it will move through the bio biosphere and then
again come back to the soil and then get released back into the atmosphere. So, that is the
sulphur cycle.

Once we have looked at all of these different cycles, the next question is, so, what? If all
these cycles just work as they should; in that case, there would be hardly any need to
understand this cycles. But, then these days they are also saying a number of impacts of
human interventions on all of these different cycles. Now, what kinds of impacts are we
facing? Say in the case of the carbon cycle we are spearing out huge quantities of carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere by the burning of the fossil fuels. So, because of that the
concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been rising.

Now, if that happens, it might lead to global warming or it is already leading to climate
change and things like that. That is one aspect. The second aspect is that, in the case of
sulphur cycle, we are seeing a huge amount of release of sulphur dioxide into the
atmosphere because of different industries that are again using up the fossil fuels or that
are involved in the processing of different metals. So, in the processing of or conversion
of ores into metals, quite a huge amount of sulphur dioxide is also released if the ore is a
sulphur rich compound.

Or in the case of nitrogen cycle, we are seeing a huge change because of the industrial
nitrogen fixation. Now, when we are using the Haber process, when we are using the

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Oswald process, we are making these fertilizers, but in the same process we are tinkering
with the flux rates that should be there in the environment or that should be a part of the
ecology. Suppose, in the normal biological cycles you have x amount of nitrogen that is
present in the form of nitrates in the soil because you are adding more nitrates in the form
of industrial nitrogen fixation it converts from x to say x + y.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:47)

What we are saying is that earlier we had this x amount of nitrogen that was there in the
soil and from there we have converted it into x + y. Now, this extra portion of y might lead
to n number of consequences in the whole of the eco system. So, it will increase the growth
of plants, it will increase the number of say, planktons or algae that are there in the water
bodies, but then it can also lead to situations such as eutrophication.

Similarly when you have this nitrogen in the soil so, with water it also gets into the water
bodies. Now, the water bodies are not only home to the plants, but then, these water bodies
also provide source of water to different animals. If there is an animal that is getting a huge
amount of nitrites from it is water, it might also lead to severe health consequences such
as methemoglobinemia.

When we are looking at these aspects, any change that is brought about by the human
beings can lead to a plethora of changes in the ecosystems.

Now, let us look at some impacts of human interventions.

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(Refer Slide Time: 42:02)

Let us begin with the water cycle. If you have a rain fall in the forest, what happens to this
rain? Some of this rain, it directly gets to the soil and from there it might either get into a
run off or it might infiltrate into the soil and become a part of the ground water or start a
subsurface flow. So, that is one portion.

The second position is that it gets intercepted by the trees and from these trees, it will start
dripping off in the form of the ground dip or in the form of stem flow and again come back
and in this direct through-fall, it was coming at a very high speed, in this case it is coming
down at more of a trickle speed because it has been intercepted here. And, then you also
have quite a lot of litter, quite a number of small plants that are there and so, the water also
gets percolated and it also gets absorbed by these litter.

Now, that is about the water that is coming down. What about the water that can go up?
When you have these plants that are intercepting the rain water, so, there can be some
amount of evaporation because of interception; there can be some amount of transpiration
in which the plants are taking water from the soil and then releasing back into the
atmosphere or you can have some amount of evaporation that is directly coming because
of the litter or because of the soil. This is basically what happens when it rains in the forest.

Now, what happens when you cut a forest?

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(Refer Slide Time: 43:39)

Now, the changes in the stream flows are given by the Kuczera curve. Now, in the case of
Kuczera curve, there are some forest in Australia that got burnt and once you have a forest
that does not have any more trees, what are the impacts into the stream flows that you will
observe?

On the y-axis here you have average annual yield in terms of millimetre in the streams and
you will find that the stream flow will reduce drastically; within say 20 years, you will see
a peak decline. Now, it appears a bit counter intuitive because if you have trees in a forest
so, those trees are taking out water from the soil and they are releasing in back into the
atmosphere. So, that much amount of water will not be able to reach back into the streams.

Whereas, if you remove those trees, all the water that is falling down, it will become a part
either the runoff or it will get percolated into the water table. But, then here we are
observing that when you cut the trees, the amount of water that is available in the streams
it also reduces and we will look the reasons in a short while.

So, in a period like 20 years you will see that the amount of water that is available in the
streams it moves from 1200 millimetre upto 600 millimetre. So, it has roughly halved. A
number of streams that were being provided water because of those forests, they would
dry off. Then there would be this process of recovery that will take a very long period of
time, even say around 150 years. In this long period the forests are gradually growing up

415
and after a while you will see that the stream flow comes back to the normal value of 1200
millimetres.

But, then the question is, what is happening in between? Why do we see a dip in the stream
flow? If you have a forest that has been cleared. In that area you have nutrients that are
available in the soil, you have water that is coming in the form of precipitation. So, there
will be some growth of plants. Let us see what happens because those plants are growing
because remember that when a plant is growing so, it is converting a lot of nutrients into
its body parts. So, it is making a lots of cellulose.

When it is making of those cellulose, where is it getting the hydrogen from? Because
cellulous is also a carbohydrate. It has carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Where does this
hydrogen coming from? And then, when there is a plant that is growing up, what is the
amount of water that it is going to give out ( or through transpiration)?

(Refer Slide Time: 46:37)

So, if you look at these forest and the amounts of water that were been used up by different
components of the ecosystem, when they were studied, we see that in the case of this stand
age. So, if you have a forest that has plants that are roughly 15 years of age. In that case
this the overstorey transpiration is very large. Now, overstorey transpiration is the amount
of water that is being released because of these plants, and the second portion, the runoff
is very less. Runoff is the amount of water that will get into this streams.

416
So, the runoff is less; more and more amount of water has been lost because of overstorey
transpiration; some amount because of understorey transpiration, then there is a huge
amount that gets intercepted, then there is some amount that is released because of the soil
and litter evaporation, and you can see that roughly the amount that is released in the soil
and latter evaporation it will remain same with the age of the stand. But, as the forest
matures, you see that the amount of overstorey transpiration get reduces significantly.

Because your plants are already grown very large, they do not have to make more amount
of cellulose, they only have to make cellulose to maintain themselves. The amount of water
that is required or the amount of water that is being lost because of transpiration it reduces.

At the same time the understorey transpiration increases a bit because now, you have plants
that are very tall and you have plants that are there in the bottom canopy or in the ground
cover and these plants are now using up more and more amount of water to sustain
themselves. And because you have these losses that are reducing, so, the amount of runoff,
it increases. Once you have a mature forest you will have this much amount of water that
is coming out into the streams if you have another forest that is a very young forest, you
will have a very less amount of water that is coming out into the streams.

(Refer Slide Time: 48:50)

Other changes that happen are things like changes in the pH because of deforestation. So,
once you have a forest that is matured and if you look at the stream water, so, you have
this pH value of say around 5.5 to 6. So, here we have two watersheds that have good

417
number of trees and then here we have this third watershed that is down here and this is
the watershed that was deforested.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:25)

In this case you had these hills and in these hills also there were two patches that were
created. So, something like this, because the water that is falling here, so, when it rains, so
all these water gets into this particular stream. All these area was deforested, the area that
was draining into this stream was deforested and the rest of the area was left as such.

If you perform this deforestation in a watershed so, you are clearing off all the trees that
were there in this area. Once that happens you can observe that the pH of the water lowers
and it lowers significantly. When you have a pH that is close to 6 that is more or less a
normal water or neutral water, a completely neutral water will have a pH of 7, a pH 6 is
slightly acidic water, but if you have a pH that is close to 4 that is highly acidic water.
Now, if you have water that is highly acidic then probably a number of organisms will not
be able to survive in it.

Deforestation not only changes the amount of water that is available in this stream it also
changes the pH of water that is coming into the streams.

418
(Refer Slide Time: 50:43)

Let us look at the changes in other ionic concentrations. The most important is the nitrate
concentration. If you have a forest in which you you are not cutting out your trees, so, the
amount of nitrates that is available in terms of milligrams per litre is say close to around 2
milligrams per litre; now, which is shown in this bottom curve, which is representing a
watershed that was not deforested.

In the case of this second watershed that was deforested, you see that the nitrate
concentration; so, this is the point when the deforested was complete and in a short while
it increased as much as 60 milligrams of nitrates per litre of water. Now, if you have a
water that is containing a say 2 milligrams of nitrates per litre. So, it is a potable water; it
can be had for drinking by not only the animals, but also the human beings.

But, if you have a water that is having as high as 60 milligrams per litre of nitrates, so, that
is a very high concentration of the nitrates. If you drink that water, you will suffer from a
number of diseases, such as methaemoglobinaemia. Not only that, if you have such huge
concentration of nitrates in water then it might also results in some amount of algal bloom.
As we had seen in the case of Potomac river in one of the lectures that this whole river was
covered with algae.

Now, we are seeing the change in the nitrate concentration of as much as 30 times from 2
milligram to 60 milligram. So, there is a 30 fold increase in the amount of nitrates that is
now available in the water. Similarly, if you look at the amount of sulphates; the amount

419
of sulphates reduces drastically. So, from around seventh it becomes halved; so, it becomes
around 3 milligrams per litre.

In the case of chloride there is a slight increase, in the case of silicates there is a slight
increase, but then what we are seeing here is that once you are cutting of your trees, once
you are deforesting an area so, that is changing not only the plants that are there in that
particular area, but then because it is changing the concentration of different nutrients that
are there in the water. That will have an impact throughout the ecosystem because even
this, even the areas which are very downstream, but because they are getting water from
this areas. So, they will also start suffering some impacts.

Now, other impacts are these. Here we are looking at the concentration of calcium in the
water. In the normal conditions you have a calcium concentration of around 10 milligrams
per litre. Once you have cut your forest it increases from 10 milligrams per litre to as high
as 110 milligrams per litre.

Now, all of these calcium is not coming from the biological entities, but what is happening
here is that the plants were able to hold to the soil and the soil also as a huge amount of
calcium inside. So, because the plants roots are able to hold to the soil, so, this calcium
just remain there in the system. But, once you have cut these plants, so, once the soil is not
exposed, it is now getting converted into an unbound form, so all of these calcium have
now started to leak into the water streams and all of these calcium then will start flowing
downstream.

If we look at the magnesium concentration; it also increases more than double. In the case
of potassium concentration, the potassium concentration becomes as much as four times;
the sodium concentration, it nearly doubles; the aluminium concentration, it also increase
up to around say three times. So, if we look at just one process that is deforestation that is
been done by the human beings, it is leading source so many changes in the water quality
in the amount of nutrient that is available in the water. Now, that changes not only the
water quality for drinking by the animals, but that also changes the rate of growth of plants
down the stream because those plants are getting the nutrients from this water source as
well.

Now, this is just one process. Now, let us consider another process, the incorporation of
nitrates in the form of fertilizers or the or the use of fertilizers that have all these N, P and

420
K into the farm lands. Now, when that water gets released out when along with the runoff,
when all those nutrients are able to reach into the streams and into the water bodies that
will lead to an immense amount of algal bloom, and because of that immense amount of
algal bloom in a very short period of time the water quality will deteriorate so much that
will have very less amount of oxygen and your water body will not be able to support any
further life form.

So, just because the activities of human beings are changing these nutrient cycles, so it
becomes very important these days to understand what are the impacts of our activities
into different nutrient cycles, so that we are able to reduce our impact on the eco system,
especially the negative impacts.

In this lecture we started by looking at what are nutrients; then we classify the nutrients
into macro nutrients and micro nutrients; we looked at different nutrients what are their
roles; we looked at the essential elements, the conditions or the criteria essentiality; then
we looked at a generalized nutrient cycle, how nutrients move from one pool to another
pool or from one pool into the biosphere and then back again and then we looked at
different nutrient cycles in more detail.

And, finally, we looked at the consequences of some human activities such as deforestation
and these activities can have a large impact on a number of nutrient cycles because the
amount of nutrients that are present in different pools, it changes a lot. And, similar is the
impact when we are using industrial nitrogen fixation or when we are using fertilizers or
when we are spearing out sulphur dioxide because of our activities in the mining sector or
in the ore sector or maybe when we are releasing out carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide
when we are burning out the fossil fuels.

So, that is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

421
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 13
Population parameters and demographic techniques

“Namaste”,

Today, we begin a new module which is Population Ecology.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:18)

In this module we will have 3 lectures. The first one is population parameters and
demographic techniques, the second one is population growth and regulation and third one
is population studies and applications of population studies.

Let us begin with Population parameters and demographic techniques. Here we want to
understand what are the parameters through which we can describe a population. How do
we measure those parameters? What are the demographic techniques that we have?
Demography - demo means people, graphy means to write.

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(Refer Slide Time: 00:54)

When we say demo graphic. So, demo is people as in the case of democracy which is the
rule of people, graphic is to write. Here we want to ask the question what are the methods
through which we can write about the population; so, that is a demographic technique.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:22)

We begin with the definition of population. As we had seen before, all the organisms of
the same group or species; which live in a particular geographical area and have the
capability of interbreeding. These are organisms of the same species, they are living
together and they are able to interbreed.

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(Refer Slide Time: 01:40)

A good example is this picture which is showing us a population of impala. Here we have
this deer which go by the name of impala. These are found in Africa. Here we have a
population of impala and if we remember these are some cheetahs that we had seen before
and so, this is also showing us a population of cheetahs that are living together.

Why do we need to understand the population parameters? That is important because we

want to regulate certain species and also because we want to understand more and more
about certain phenomena that are happening in nature.

For instance if we need to increase the population of impalas in this area; now why would
we want to increase the population of impalas? Well impala are a very important prey
population and so if you have more number of prey you will also, with time increase the
population of the predators.

If for instance you are managing this area for cheetahs or you are managing this area for
say lions; you would want to increase the impala population. Similarly in our case in India
we want to increase the population of chitals and sambars so, that there is more food
available for tigers.

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(Refer Slide Time: 02:58)

Now, if that is our aim we want to understand how this population will move with time.
So, this is the equation that regulates the growth or decline of a population.

So, we have Pn+1 which is the population at a time that is n+1 years is equal to Pn that is
the population at the nth year. So, here we are saying that this was the population in the
nth year; what is the population in the next year that is Pn+1. Now Pn+1 is given by Pn plus
natality. Now natality is the birthrate; how many number of animals increased because of
birth in the existing population.

How many animals were added; now addition can be because of natality or it can be
because of immigration. Immigration is when you have animals that are coming from some
other area into this area. If you look at the definition of population again; here we have,
which live in a particular geographical area.

425
(Refer Slide Time: 04:05)

Now if we have say two populations; so here we have a population that is P1; this
population called P2. And then there is some number of animals say Pi that move from P1
area to the P2 area.

So, they are moving from the first population to the second population. So, for the first
population we will see there that there is an emigration that is there are individuals that are
leaving this population and going somewhere else. But in the case of P2, we are observing
immigration that is there are animals that are moving from some other place into this
population.

So, in this equation what we see that Pn +1 is given by Pn plus the addition; addition is
because of birth and because of immigration, minus the number of animals that are
removed from this population. Now why do we have removals or how do we have
removals? We have removals because some animals die off and then there are some
animals that move away from this area.

426
(Refer Slide Time: 05:11)

So, essentially what we are saying is that Pn+1 is Pn plus the number of additions minus the
number of subtractions. So, you have some animals that are getting added addition can be
because of births or they can be because of immigrations and subtractions similarly can be
because of deaths. So, some organisms are dying off or they can be because of emigrations.
So, this is the basic equation through which we can understand how a population is
moving. Now why do we need to make these assessments, why do we need to understand
how much is the population, what are their parameters and how is it going to change?

(Refer Slide Time: 06:02)

427
It is important because numbers are essential at every stage of management. So, basically
any management goes through these 4 stages which go by the name of the PDCA cycle.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:16)

Here we have P, D, C and A; so this is planning, so you plan something. So, essentially
for instance we are planning that we want to have more number of tigers in our area. So,
for that our plan would say for instance that you need more amount of protection, you need
more amount of preys, you need to control diseases that are there in this population and so
on.

Once you have made this plan, what are the things that you are going to do? Next you do
those acts. From plan we move to the doing stage. So, in doing you actually implement
those plans. Doing is the stage of implementation. Once you have implemented something;
next you want to check whether those implementations are having those impacts or not.

For instance you increase the population of chitals, but then the population of tigers did
not increase; that could be a situation because tigers are getting poached up, they are
getting removed from this system because of hunters. After the doing stage you need to
move to the next stage which is the checking stage. Next you do checking. Are your
interventions having the desired impact or not and based on the results of your checking
stage the next stage is acting.

428
Acting is if suppose your tiger population is increasing do you further substantiate the
number of chitals so that you further increase the number of tigers. Or if the number of
tigers has increased to a level that you are satisfied with, now, should you stop increasing
the number of chitals or for instance the number of tigers is still decreasing what do you
do so that you are able to have a grasp on the situation. So, that is the acting stage and from
that act, we come up to the next stage of planning again. For instance in this case suppose
we figured out that you have tiger numbers that is reducing because of poaching. You will
make another plan you will say that now we need these steps to reduce the poaching that
is there in this population. It goes by the name of the deming cycle and at all of these stages
planning, doing, checking, acting we require numbers.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:31)

Why do we require numbers? Because if we do not have these numbers, if we are not able
to measure how much population do we have; how are we going to manage that
population?

Because the first question that we are asking is we want to increase tiger numbers; if we
want to increase tiger numbers the first thing that we should know is what is the current
population of tigers and what is the population of tigers that we want? If we are doing
something to the system we want to ask is this doing having an impact or not? So, at every
stage you require numbers, which is by population assessment becomes extremely
important.

429
(Refer Slide Time: 09:04)

Probably assessment is also important because numbers are crucial inputs for decision
support. For instance we need to make these decisions; do we want to increase the number
of tigers because the numbers are getting low or the numbers are already low or do we
want to reduce the numbers because you have you have too many tigers and that are
leading to conflicts or maybe your system is not able to support so many tigers.

Do you want to reduce the number of tigers or do you want to maintain a status quo? Do
you want to maintain the equilibrium state that this many number of tigers is good for the
system; so, we should have these same number of systems. However, we remain ignorant
of the actions required of us till we actually know the numbers.

Do we want to increase, reduce or maintain status quo is something that we will only know,
if we know the number of tigers that are existing and the number of tigers that we want.
So, this makes assessment of the animal populations extremely important.

430
(Refer Slide Time: 10:03)

And we also require to assess the population status to assess the risk of a population decline
or a crash. For instance if you have a very small population; you have say 4 tigers in any
area and these 4 tigers turn out to be all males. If you have 4 males in an area the population
is not going to increase any further. With the death of these 4 individuals the whole
population would collapse down to 0.

(Refer Slide Time: 10:45)

431
To avoid such a scenario; you need to assess what are the probabilities that if you have
alone female in your area or if you have very few number of individuals in your area what
is the possibility that all the offsprings turn out to be males ?

What is the probability that all the offsprings are males? So, you want to have an
assessment of the probability of having such a scenario. Or for instance you want to
understand if demographic stochasticity is going to have any impact. Demographics
stochasticity is one example what we have already seen; the second example is a chance
variation in births and deaths.

For instance every population is suffering from some births, some deaths. What will
happen now, is that you have say a death rate of say 20 percent and a birth rate of 30
percent; if this is the scenario your population is going to increase.

But then by chance it is possible that this year in place of having 30 percent a birth rate;
you only have a 10 percent birth rate and your population is going towards a collapse. So,
you want to make an assessment of what is the probability that you might have such a
situation or to understand if there is a possibility of an environmental stochasticity.

Now environmental stochasticity means a chance event in the environment that may lead
to a population crash such as you want to understand if any drought or any flood or a
famine or a disease is going to have an extremely negative impact on the population; now
why is that important?

432
(Refer Slide Time: 12:26)

Suppose you have a population of say 100 individuals. Now, out of these 100 individuals
say 99 die out and only 1 remains. Now you have these 99 that are dying out because of
say a forest fire.

Now if you only have 1 individual that remains then you will have a population crash
because you do not have any further births in this population. Now this happened because
you already started with a very low population of only 100 individuals. Now in place of
having 100 individuals say we have 10000 individuals; let us start with 10000 individuals
and because of this forest fire which was an environmental stochasticity; you have a
situation in which there is a massive number of deaths and as many as 9000 individuals
die out.

Here we only had 99 individuals that were dying out here you have 9000 individuals that
are dying out, but still you will have 1000 that will remain in the population and so the
population will persist. Now to understand if we have the same scenario in both the
situations; we have a forest fire that is clearing off a very large area of the forest. Now
what is the impact of any of these environmental stochasticities can only be understood if
we know the size of the original population.

With this we can make an assessment of the probability that you will have a population
crash or a survival of the population.

433
(Refer Slide Time: 14:16)

Or you can even try to understand what is the possibility that you will observe genetic
problems in your population. So, if your population size is very less that you have a very
high amount of homozygosity in this population; you might even see situations of
inbreeding depression or genetic drifts or loss of heterozygosity or if you have a very small
population you can also start seeing behavioral problems, behavioral problems and Allee
affect.

For instance, in the case of pack hunting animals where individuals are less efficient and
may not be able to hunt alone. A very good example is the case of the wild dogs; now in
the case of wild dogs when the group goes out for hunting some animals remain back with
the young ones, to protect the young ones.

434
(Refer Slide Time: 15:08)

Now, for instance if we are considering the wild dogs and suppose you have a pack size
of 50. Now, if you have 50 adults and say you have 10 young ones; now when these
animals have to go out for hunting, then out of these 50, you will have 40 that go out for
hunting; for instance then you will have 10 that remain for protection and you have these
10 young ones that also remain in the cave.

So, you have these 10 young ones that also remain in the cave. So because you are able to
spare these 10 individuals to take care of the young ones; so this population is able to
persist; so in this case the population is able to persist because the young ones are getting
a protection. On the other hand if you have a very small size; so, you have a pack size
which is say 10 individuals.

So, you have 10 adults and say you have 8 young ones. Now because these wild dogs hunt
using a pack strategy; so all of these individuals they have been evolved in such a manner
that when all of them go together and attack or they go together in a large number and
attack a prey; then they are able to kill that prey. But then if you have only a single dog
that might not be able to kill the prey. So, to have a possibility that you have some amount
of food that you can bring back to the young ones all these 10 adults will have to go out.

So, all 10 go for hunting and you have all the 10 young ones that remain in the cave. Now
in this case you do not have any amount of protection for these young ones. So, what
happens is some other predators; say, leopards might come into this area and hunt these

435
puppies. So, once that happens the whole population is going to collapse. So, this is an
impact that is known as the Allee effect; in which you have a very small number of
organisms that are not able to perform their biological functions properly.

So, they are either not able to hunt properly or they are not able to find their mates properly
and so on; so, we start seeing behavioral problems and Allee effects. Now these problems
only occur when you have a very small population, if you have these 50 individuals you
would not have an Allee effect, but if you have these 10 individuals you will have an Allee
effect; now to understand whether your; whether your population is at a scenario where it
can suffer from these behavioral problems or Allee effects or genetic problems or so on;
the first thing that you need to know is how many individuals are there in the population,
which makes population assessment extremely crucial.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:19)

Now, population assessment also helps us to plan scenarios and take steps.

436
(Refer Slide Time: 18:29)

When we say planning of a scenario; what do we mean? We ask this question that suppose
this is your number of animals of any species that you are interested in and this is time.
And suppose we have this many number of individuals and you have a probability of say
drought of say 25 percent.

Once out of every 4 years you will see a drought; probability of a disease is say 33 percent.
So, one out of every 3 years you will see a disease; probability of say a forest fire is say
around 40 percent which means 4 out of 10 years you will see a disease. Now you can
make scenarios you can ask; what is the possibility that this population is going to persist
or not? So, for instance this is the first year and suppose in the first year you suffered a
drought; so, because of the drought the population collapsed.

Then the next year you got a situation where you had a drought as well as a forest fire. So,
your population decreased even further maybe the next year was a good year. The
population started to increase, but then you had another year in which you had a drought
a disease and a forest fire and the population collapsed.

Such a scenario is highly likely if you have a very small population size. So, you can make
an assessment; you can ask this question what is the scenario that is possible because you
have these many probabilities of having a drought, a flood or forest fire or disease and so
on and in all of these scenarios, what is going to be your action point?

437
So, for instance if we see that our starting population is so less that all of these impacts are
going to crash this population; say 10 percent is our probability that this population is
going to crash within 10 years; so, that is a very high possibility. In that case to overcome
this possibility we might want to substantiate our population, we might want to put in more
number of individuals or maybe we would want to protect our individuals from the
common diseases; maybe we would want to vaccinate our animals or maybe we would
want to avoid any situation of forest fire.

So, maybe we will go for a very intensive protection in that area, but that is only possible
if we have the scenarios and scenarios is only possible, when we have the numbers.
Assessment of a population is extremely important and once we have these numbers, once
we have the scenarios we can go for adaptation or mitigation. In the case of adaptation you
try to make your population supple enough to respond to changes.

So for instance, if you have a disease you would want to give more amount of nutrition to
the animals so that they are able to fend off these diseases or you would want to give them
some amount of vaccinations. On the other hand, you could you even go for mitigation
where the causes of the change are analyzed and addressed. In the case of disease you
might want to kill off all the parasites or kill off all the vectors and so on. So, essentially
an assessment of a population size or the numbers is extremely crucial.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:49)

438
Now, when we are talking about a population assessment; the next question is do we want
to see the numbers or do we want to see the trends?

So, numbers and trends means last year we had say 2500 tigers; so that is a number. And
when we say trends we are saying that this year the number of tigers is greater than what
it was in the last year. So, do we need numbers? or do we need trends? We will actually
we need both of these. Trends are helpful when we need to analyze and address the gross
movement of population numbers; whether the population is increasing, decreasing or
remaining constant. And this is especially important for prey species such as chital or
sambar where exact numbers are hard to compute due to their large population sizes.

For instance in the case of prey species you do not want to know whether there are 10000
chitals in your area or whether there are 10010 chitals in your area. But as long as you
know that the number of chitals is same or is increasing you are happy. So, in that case
you do not have to go and count each and every chital.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:52)

Whereas for some other organisms such as your critical species like tigers or dugongs you
would want to know the exact numbers; now numbers give us finite data then trends. So,
if you know the number of animals that was there this year, last year and so on, you can
compute trends from these numbers, but you cannot go the other way.

439
So, if we just know that this year the number of tigers is greater than what we had last year
and last year was greater than what we had previous to last year and that was less than
what we had the year before. From that information you cannot figure out the number of
tigers that we have today, if we have the number of tigers we can very easily compute the
trends.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:40)

So, when we are talking about a population, what are the population parameters what are
the demographic information that we are trying to assess in this study.

So, we require a number of parameters. The first one is the population size. Population
size is the number of individuals in a population. When we say that Panna Tiger Reserve
has say 35 number of tigers what we are referring to is the population size that we have,
of tigers in the Panna tiger reserve. Now in place of population size, we could go for the
population density; population density is the number of individuals of the population per
unit area. So, if say Panna tiger reserve has an area of 350 square kilometers.

440
(Refer Slide Time: 24:28)

In that case we would say that we have 35 tigers in 350 square kilometers. That would
mean 1 tiger every 10 square kilometers or 10 tigers per 100 square kilometers.

When we put the numbers in terms of per unit area or per hectare or per square kilometer
or per 100 square kilometer; what we are referring to is the population density. Now
population density can vary a lot between different organisms.

(Refer Slide Time: 25:01)

441
For instance if we look at density in say; numbers per cubic meters or per square meters;
so things such as diatoms, now diatoms are small animals that are found in the oceans and
their numbers are represented in per cubic meter.

You have 5 million diatoms per cubic meter. When you talk about soil arthropods; so you
have this number of 500000 per square meter. But if we look at other organisms; so here
we have these numbers of 500000 for arthropods. In the case of trees this goes down to
something like 0.05; in the case of people it can go even down to something like
0.00000003 per square meter.

You have a very large diversity in these numbers; so for instance in the case of our tiger
reserves the density of chital or the density of sambar is going to be much higher than the
density of tigers. Now it is important to know this fact that you have a large variation so
that you can discern the best technique that you will use to measure the population density.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:15)

When you talk about population density we can look at absolute density or relative density.
Absolute density is the number of organisms per unit area and relative density is only
asking the question whether in area x has more number of organisms than area y or does
area y have more number of organisms than area x.

442
In that case we are not interested in the actual numbers, what we are interested in is only
which area has more number of individuals; so, that is the relative density. Now we look
at both of these population densities.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:52)

When we talk about the absolute densities; we can measure absolute densities in three
methods. The first one is total count. Total count is you go and measure each and every
organism. For instance, census of India is the total count.

The census officials will go to every household and ask how many males are there, how
many females are there, how many children are there and so on.

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(Refer Slide Time: 27:20)

The second method is a sampling method. Now if you have a large area; so, you have this
large area that is a forest and you cannot measure the animals everywhere. So, what you
can do is you can take some samples out of this area, measure your animals, or count your
animals get a density and then extrapolate that density to the whole of the area; so, that is
the sampling method. In place of doing our total count you are doing a sampling in some
area and this sampling can be in the form of quadrats or in the form of capture-recapture
method and we will look at these in greater detail in a short while.

And the third method is removal method; in the case of removal method you have put up
traps, you kill the animals and you look at the rate at which these animals are getting
removed from the system. This method says that if you have more number of animals; then
more number of animals would die off and if you have less number of animals less number
of animals would die off. So, with that you can make an estimate of the number of animals
that are actually present in your area. Now this is not very useful in our Indian scenarios
because we do not kill animals, but then this is also one method. So, we should know that
this method exists.

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(Refer Slide Time: 28:27)

Now, when we talk about quadrats; so in the case of sampling we were talking about
quadrats; in the case of quadrats you can have a square quadrat. These areas that we are
using they can either be a square or they can be a rectangular area or they can be a circular
area or we could even go for some irregular areas; so, all of these combinations are
possible. But, when you are using this quadrat method, the question is how many samples
do we need? where to set up these samples? and so on.

So, for that it is important to know the process of sampling.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:03)

445
Now, sampling goes by the objective to secure a sample which will represent the
population and reproduce the important characteristics such as the population under study
as closely as possible.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:21)

For instance if we have this area and in this area the right side has a much greater density
of animals than the left side; so in this case when you are taking a sample, you would want
to have a sample that is representative of the whole area.

For instance if you take with just one sample here and you take this density and you
extrapolate it to the whole of the forest; then your final estimate would be a very gross
underestimation because you will say that here you have a very less density of animals.
So, you are extrapolating and you are saying that the whole area has a very less density.
On the other hand if you are taking quadrat only here then you might overestimate;
overestimate the number or the density of animals.

So, the sample has to be chosen in such a way that it represents the population and
reproduce the important characteristics. In this case what you should do; is you should…
if you have this information ab initio, that this much area say 40 percent of the area is
having a high population density. In that case you will take samples in a way that 60
percent of your samples fall in this area and 40 percent of your samples fall in this area;
so, that it will becomes a representative of the whole population.

446
(Refer Slide Time: 30:36)

Next, we have sampling units. Sampling units may be administrative units or natural units
like topographical sections and sub compartments or it may be artificial units like strips of
a certain width or plots of a definite shape in size.

The unit must be a well defined element or group of elements identifiable in the forest area
on which observations on the characteristics under study could be made. The population
is then subdivided into suitable units for the purpose of sampling and these are known as
sampling units.

(Refer Slide Time: 31:12)

447
Essentially if you have an area; you can make use of natural sub units or administrative
sub units or artificial units. In the case of our forest we might go for say compartments;
compartments are management units or we could go for beats which are administrative
units. So, a beat is an area that is being managed by a single forest guard or we could go
for natural units.

(Refer Slide Time: 31:45)

So, natural units for instance, if this is the forest and then you have a river that is dividing
it into two parts; so we can say that these are natural units or we would even go for artificial
units in which case we can define certain in grids and we can say that these are what we
have defined as our sampling units. Next we defined a sampling frame.

448
(Refer Slide Time: 32:12)

A list of the sampling units is called a frame. In this case if we say that we have all these
grids 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and so on; when we make a list of all of these
then we call it as a sampling frame and from this sampling frame we pick up a sample.

(Refer Slide Time: 32:33)

Now, a sample is one or more sampling units that is selected from a population according
to some specific procedure to constitute a sample. So, for instance in this case we had 14,
15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38,

449
and 39; so, we have these 39 subunits and if we say that we are selecting this unit 9 and 19
and 29 and 39.

So we are just taking these 4 out of these 39; so these 4 will form a sample. So, these are
one or more sampling units that are selected from our population according to some
specified procedure and here our procedure was that any subunit that ends with a 9 is part
of our sampling.

(Refer Slide Time: 33:34)

Next, we have sampling intensity; sampling intensity or intensity of sampling is defined

as the ratio of the number of units in the sample to the number of units in the population.

In this particular case our number of units in sample is 4 and the number of units in
population is 39. So, in this case sampling intensity is given by 4 by 39. So, more the
number of subunits that we take into our sample, more is the sampling intensity and if we
take all the subunits that are there in our sampling frame as part of the sample, then you
have a sampling intensity of 100 percent in which case your sample turns into a census.

450
(Refer Slide Time: 34:30)

Now next we have the kinds of plots; so plots can be of any shape, they can be circular,
rectangular, strips or they could even be topographical units. So, when we say
topographical units, what we have is that you have a hill and then this hill you can say that
you are dividing this hill into different area or different heights.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:39)

So, you say that this portion is one topographical unit because it is lying at a height of say,
between 100 and 150 meters. These kinds of topographical units are used as plots in the

451
case of hills. Now the next question is, once you have decided on the number of samples
that you need to take; how do you decide which samples need to be taken?

(Refer Slide Time: 35:19)

For that we defined different kinds of sampling. These are the most popular kinds of
sampling; you have simple random sampling, systematic sampling, stratified sampling,
multistage sampling and probability proportional to size sampling.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:32)

452
We begin with the simple random sampling. A sampling procedure such that each possible
combination of sampling units out of the population has the same chance of being selected
is referred to as a simple random sampling. Example is lottery or random numbers.

In the case of simple random sampling, what we are asking is, we have to choose say 5
units out of the sample; so we remove these. In this case you have to select 5 subunits.
What you can do is you can make chits or you can make 39 chits, you can write these
numbers from 1 to 39, mix all of those chits and then pick up 5 different entities of out of
those.

The 5 numbers that you would get they have been selected in a process in which all of
these 39 units have an equal probability of being chosen; all of these have a 1 in 39
probability of being chosen. Now such a sampling goes by the name of a simple random
sampling. So, that can be through lottery or that can be used using random numbers.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:44)

The second one is systematic sampling; systematic sampling employs a simple rule of
selecting every kth unit starting with a number chosen at random from 1 to k as the random
start. So, for instance in this case we can say that every 5th unit will form a part of the
sample.

453
(Refer Slide Time: 37:07)

So, every 5th unit is a part of the sample and the first unit will be chosen at random. So, 1,
2, 3, 4, 5 you can choose any of these at random.

So, this can be through a lottery and suppose you have chosen the 3rd one. So, in this case
we will say that the 3rd one is a part of the sample now the 5th one; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; 8th one
becomes the part of the sample. Next 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 the 13th one becomes a part of sample;
then 18th becomes a part of sample, then 23rd becomes a part of sample, then 28th
becomes a part of samples, 33 becomes a part of sample and 38 becomes a part of sample.

So, this method in which you are selecting every kth unit; so, in this case every 5th unit is
getting selected as part of a sample and the first one is being chosen at random from the
first to the kth unit. So, in this case this kind of a sampling process goes by the name of a
systematic sampling; A simple rule of selecting every kth unit starting with a number
chosen at random from 1 to k as the random start.

454
(Refer Slide Time: 38:09)

Next you have stratified sampling; now the basic idea in stratified random sampling is to
divide a heterogeneous population into sub populations, usually known as strata each of
which is internally homogeneous in which case a precise estimate of any stratum mean can
be obtained based on a small sample from that stratum and by combining such estimates a
precise estimate for the whole population can be obtained.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:39)

455
Now, in this case we are saying if this is our forest area and we know that this area has a
very high population density; this area has a very high population density and this area has
a low population density.

In this case the stratified sampling would say that in place of taking the samples randomly.
Earlier in the case of random sample we would have chosen samples randomly anywhere.
But in the case of your stratified sampling it says that because both of these areas are
different from each other so, we cannot take single set of sampling, but we should divide
this area into these two parts which are homogeneous in themselves. So, the first part; this
part is homogeneous and then this part is also homogeneous and then in both of these parts
we take random samples.

Here we take say 4 random samples, in this case we take 5 random samples. Now once
that is done then these random samples will be we used to take out a mean that is
representative of this part. And these 4 samples are used to take out a mean that is
representative of the right half and in that way the number that we achieve through this
computation will be a very close approximation of the total population; so, that is the
stratified sampling.

You are dividing the heterogeneous population into sub populations. So, you divided your
whole population into right half and the left half which are known as strata each of which
is internally homogeneous. So, the right half is much more homogeneous the left part is
much more homogeneous, but right and left together without heterogeneous populations.

And in which case a precise estimate of any stratum mean can be obtained based on a small
sample from that stratum. And by combining such estimates, a precise estimate for the
whole population can be obtained.

456
(Refer Slide Time: 40:42)

Next you have multistage sampling; in multistage sampling, the procedure of first selecting
large sized units and then choosing a specified number of subunits from the selected large
units is known as sub sampling.

For instance if you wanted to know the population of chital in your area; you could say
that the first level of sampling is states. So, you put all the states of India in a list 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, and so on and then you selected say 5 states randomly; so, that is the first stage of
choosing 5 states. And then, out of those 5 states then you are doing a second stage of
sampling in which you are selecting say 5 districts out of all of these 5 states; so, 5 districts
from each states.

So, in this case you are first selecting large sized units which are states and then choosing
a specified number of sub units from the selected large units in the form of districts which
become a part of the sub sample. So, this is known as the multistage sampling. So, you are
first selecting large sized samples and then selecting smaller sized samples from each of
these large sized samples.

457
(Refer Slide Time: 41:52)

And the 5th one is probability proportional to size sampling or PPS sampling. When units
vary in their size and the variable under study is directly related with the size of the unit,
the probabilities may be assigned proportional to the size of the unit. This type of sampling
where the probability of selection is proportional to the size of the unit is known as PPS
sampling.

(Refer Slide Time: 42:20)

458
So, in this case suppose we are asking this question, what is the amount of biomass that is
available in a forest? So, you have large size trees you have medium size trees and you
have some very thin trees.

You have this large size tree, you have this medium size tree and you have a very small
tree. Now if you did not include the largest size tree; so, in that case your estimate would
become very wrong. But if you say that you missed out this tree; then there estimate of the
actual population parameter would not be very off.

In this case we need to ensure that the larger the tree the more should be its probability of
getting incorporated as part of the sample; when you go for such a method it is known as
a probability proportional to size; so the probability that your unit becomes a part of the
sample is proportional to the size of that unit; so that is PPS sampling.

(Refer Slide Time: 43:15)

So, we were looking at the measurement of absolute population density; the first one is
counts, the second one is sampling method where we just looked at quadrats. Another
sampling method goes by the name of a capture-recapture method; What is the capture-
recapture method?

459
(Refer Slide Time: 43:36)

Suppose you want to make an estimate of the number of fish that are there in a pond; so
here you have this pond and this pond has a number of fishes and you want to know; what
is the number of fishes that is there in this pond?

What you can do is you can first put up a net and you take some fishes out of this pond.
Suppose you were able to take say 50 fishes out. You are taking these 50 fishes out and
then you are marking all of these fishes. How do you mark these fishes? Probably you take
these fishes out and then you put them into a dye that is coloring them red in color. Now
you have 50 fishes that are red in color.

So, this is the first stage and then once you have marked your samples; then you put all of
these 50 fishes back into the pond; all of these are live fishes. Once you put all of these
back into the pond. So, they will then mix up with the other fishes. Now, you will have a
red fish here, you will have a red fish that is here, you have a red fish that is here. Now,
they have mixed up with the population completely. Next you take another sample out of
the pond.

So, again you are taking out 50 fishes; now out of these 50 fishes it turns out that 10 are
marked that are red in color and then there are 40 that are unmarked. Now in this case, we
would say that because all of these fishes have completely mixed up in the population; so,
we say that one out of every 4 fishes is marked.

460
The number of marked fishes; marked upon unmarked or marked upon total is the same.
Here we have 1 out of every 5 fishes is marked; now total number of marked fishes is 50.
You multiply it by 50 and divide it by 50 and so you get that 50 out of 250 fishes are
marked. So, by this way we can say that the total number of fishes in this pond is 250.

(Refer Slide Time: 45:58)

Now, to summarize the first stage is at time t1; you captured some fishes you marked those
fishes in red in color and then you release them back. Then you wait for some time; so that
all these fishes have mixed together and then at another time you captured these fishes and
then you check for the marks again. So, this is the experiment that you are doing.

461
(Refer Slide Time: 46:15)

And then you come up with this formula, number of marked animals in the sample divided
by number of animals caught in the sample is the same as the number of marked animals
in the population divided by the total population size. And by using this equation we can
make an estimate of the number of animals that are there.

(Refer Slide Time: 46:34)

This method makes use of some assumptions, the marked and unmarked animals are
captured randomly.

462
You should not use a method in which you are preferentially catching the unmarked fishes
or preferentially catching the marked fishes; it has to be a random mix. Next mortality rate
in the marked and unmarked animals is the same. So, if it so turns out that of the 50 fishes
that you have marked input inside 40 fishes or say 49 fishes die out and out of the unmarked
fishes there was no mortality.

In that case you would not be able to reach a correct estimation. So, there is this assumption
that mortality rate in marked and unmarked animals is the same and then marks are not
lost or overload.

It should not happen that you put your fishes you colored your fishes in a die that when
you put it back then all of these dyes got mixed with water and the fishes lost their mark;
so, because in that case you would not be able to make a correct estimate.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:29)

So, that was the second sampling method. So, we have these two sampling methods
namely quadrats and capture-recapture method.

463
(Refer Slide Time: 47:44)

The third method is the removal method in which you are killing or removing animals
from the total population. Now this method makes these assumptions, there is no
immigration or emigration of animals.

In the time where you are removing these animals; there is no influx, there is no out flux
of animals then there is no birth or no death during this time. So, the death rate and the
birth rate are negligible during the period of experiment during which you are removing
the animals. The trapped animals are permanently removed from the region.

So, even if you are capturing these animals, even if you are not killing these animals; you
should not release them back into the environment. A trap can be occupied by only one
animal at a time, there is no interference from animals of a wrong species.

Essentially if you are say, if you are removing rats from a system it should not happen that
you are also capturing mice together. The probability p that a specified free animal will be
caught in a trapping period remains constant; the same for all animals in periods, so these
are the assumptions.

464
(Refer Slide Time: 48:49)

So, in this case what this method says is that the number of animals that you are removing
per unit time or per unit effort is proportional to the number of animals that are present.
So, suppose you are removing 10 percent of animals at all times.

So, if you have 1000 animals; so you will be able to catch 100 animals with the same
effort. Now if you only have 100 animals you will only be able to catch 10 animals. So,
the rate at which the animals get removed from the system is proportional to the number
of animals that you have in the system.

And from this we can integrate this equation to get,

N = No𝒆−𝒂𝒕

So, here a is a constant, t is time, N is the number of animals and No is the number of
animals at the beginning of the experiment. So, so if we go for a regression method we can
compute the values of a and we can compute the values of No. And No is the number of
animals that you have in the population before you started killing them off and removing
them. So, these are the methods of estimating the absolute density of animals.

465
(Refer Slide Time: 50:00)

Next we look at some relative population density methods; now in the case of relative
population density you should remember that we are interested in knowing which area has
more number of animals whether its area x or area y.

So, we can put up traps and see how many animals are captured in x; how many animals
are captured in y. More number of animals, more number of animals that are caught or we
can look at the number of faecal pellets that are there in these two areas; if one area has
got more number of faecal pellets, more amount of dung, then it should have more number
of animals. Or if you go to one area and you hear, say, 10 sounds of tiger and in another
area you go and you hear 1000 calls of tiger.

So, the area that has 1000 calls of tiger has probably many more number of tigers as
compared to the area that has 10 calls of tigers. Or things such as pelt counts or the skin
counts that are used by trappers or catch per unit fishing effort. So, you put a net in one
pond and you are able to catch 10 fishes; you put the same net in another pond and in the
same time period you are able to catch see 70 fishes. So, 70 fishes pond is having more
number of fishes.

These are the ways in which we are able to estimate the relative population density.
Number of artifacts, how many nests do we have in an area? or you can ask the field staff
how many animals have you seen? or you can go for the percentage of plant cover, the
more amount of cover that you have, the more number of animals you will have; a

466
frequency of quadrats where the species is found or the feeding capacity. So, you put some
amount of feed in these two areas and in one area most of the feed gets eaten up; so, that
should be having more number of animals.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:39)

Now, apart from population size and density; we are also interested in knowing the age
pyramid. Age pyramid is the distribution of various age groups in the population; is your
population young? Does it have more number of adult individuals? Does it have more
number of old individuals? is what we are asking here.

Next is crude birth rate, annual number of life births per 1000 individuals. Crude death
rate, number of deaths per 1000 individuals or things like general fertility rate, the annual
number of live births per 1000 females of reproductive age.

467
(Refer Slide Time: 52:08)

Here we are talking about the females of reproductive age or the age specific fertility rate;
the annual number of live births per 1000 females of a specific age class in a reproductive
age. So, for instance in the case of tigers you are asking that if you have females of say 6
years of age; then in that case out of every 1000 females of 6 years of age how many
number of cubs will they produce.

Or total fertility rate the average number of life births per female individual completing
her reproductive age if she followed the current age specific fertility rate of population.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:53)

468
So, you are integrating the whole values. Or replacement level fertility. So, if you have
two individuals one male and female, how many children or how many offsprings are they
producing to be able to replace themselves. So, if you have say a male and a female and if
they are only producing one offspring so, in that case the population is going towards a
decline; if you have one male and one female they are producing 10 offsprings, so, the
population is increasing, but if they are producing around two individuals; so, there are
two individuals in the parent generation and there are two individuals in the offspring
generation. So, the population is able to replace itself. So, what is that replacement level
fertility? Or juvenile mortality, rate number of deaths of juveniles per 1000 live births or
life expectancy, the number of years that an average individual in the population at a given
age could expect to live at the present age specific mortality levels. So, what is the life
expectancy of your animal?

(Refer Slide Time: 53:50)

Now, when we talk about life expectancy there are two different variables; we could be
talking about physiological longevity or ecological longevity. Now physiological
longevity is the average longevity of individuals of a population under optimum conditions
where organisms die out of an old age.

So, you are allowing all the animals to live till the end of their lives. But in the case of our
ecological systems we are more interested in ecological longevity because when an animal
becomes old; it might be preferentially preyed upon. So, it gets eaten up by the predator.

469
So, what is the empirical average longevity of individuals of a population under given
conditions, under the conditions of diseases, under the conditions of predators and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 54:35)

We could also be interested in immigration, number of individuals that are coming into
from outside or emigration, the number of individuals that are going out or the net
migration which is immigration minus emigration.

Or say, natural increase in population which is the number of birth minus the number of
death or we could be in be interested in the population growth that is birth plus immigration
minus death minus emigration. Or the growth rate which is the population growth per unit
time in terms of percentage per annum or in terms of numbers per annum.

470
(Refer Slide Time: 55:07)

And when we are talking about any of these measurements; it is important to note that we
are interested in data that are precise and that are accurate.

Now what is the difference between precise and accurate; suppose you do a measurement,
suppose you went forward and you measured the length of this pen. Now suppose those
measurements were say 10 centimeters, 10.1 centimeters, 9.9 centimeters, 10.2 centimeters
that is one set of measurements we have 10, 9.9, 10.1 and 10.2.

(Refer Slide Time: 55:37)

471
So, that is one set of measurements; there is another set of measurements. So, another
person goes and he or she measures this pen and he or she figures out that these lengths
are say 10 centimeters, 9.5 centimeters, 11 centimeters and say 11.5 centimeters.

So, in the first case, we see that all of these values are close together so, 10, 9.9; 0.1
difference 9.9, 10.1; 10.1, 10.2. So, there is a very little difference between all of these
measurements; whereas, in this case the range is very large.

So, we say that these measurements are precise and these measurements are imprecise;
how close are the values to each other? Now the second thing is what is the accuracy?
Suppose it turns out that the length of this pen is say 12 centimeters. So, there is one person
who is measuring it as this value; the second one who is measuring it like this and then
there is a third one who is measuring it like; 12.1, 12.2, 11.9, 11.8.

So, in this case these values are precise and these values are also accurate. Accurate is how
close is your measurement to the actual value. When we are talking about population
parameters what we are asking is, how close is your value to the actual value that is out
there in the field. Suppose there are 1000 individuals and suppose your measurement is
giving you not 1000 individuals, but it is giving you only 500 individuals then we will say
that the measurements are not accurate.

But if you are having 1000 individuals and you are able to say by your method that you
have say 1005 individuals. So, your method is much more accurate than compared to the
other method and when you repeat your observations how close are the observations to
each other? Do you measure 1000, 1001, 998, 1002 and so on or do you measure 1000,
500, 1500, 2000 and so on. So, we need measures that are both precise and also accurate.

472
(Refer Slide Time: 57:50)

Now, in this case we can use this analogy; so this is a shooting board and then there are
shooters that are shooting here. And here we see that in the case of this shooter all the shots
are close together. So, we will say that this measurement is precise or this shooter is very
precise; this one is also very precise, but both of these are not precise. However, this one
is not accurate because he or she needs to go to the center, but it is at a distance; so, this
one is not accurate.

This one again is not accurate; this one is accurate because it is close to the center. This
one again can be called as accurate even though it is imprecise because the average would
come to the center. So, by this way we can define accuracy and precision; how close are
the values to each other and how close are the values to the correct value.

473
(Refer Slide Time: 58:45)

And if the values are close to each other, but they are not close to the correct value, then
we define this difference as the bias. So, bias is when your values are very close to each
other, but they are at a distance from the actual value.

(Refer Slide Time: 59:04)

So, that value is bias and to correct for bias, we go for calibration of the measurement. So,
in place of say, going for capture-recapture method, if that is giving us a large amount of
bias; maybe we could go for a total census that would reduce the amount of bias that we
have in the case of our measurements.

474
So, in this lecture, we looked at different population parameters, we looked at why
measurement of a population is essential not only for ecology but also to understand how
to manage all of these population; how to conserve these populations and then we looked
at different techniques of measurement. We looked at sampling methods, we looked at
different points of quadrats that are there, we looked at capture-recapture method and so
on.

So, all of these methods become extremely important to know the current status of the
population and also to understand how that population is going to function in the future.
And also to make this decision regarding whether or not do we want to put any
interventions to manage these populations.

So that is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

475
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 14
Population growth and regulation

“Namaste”,

Today, we will carry forward our discussion on population ecology. We will look at some
numerical examples of different population parameters and then we will move forward to
look at the theories of Population growth and regulation.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:31)

This is the first problem that we look at. A park manager conducts a population estimation
exercise within a protected area. He samples 18 quadrates with line transects and obtains
the following density estimates for sambar. So, here you have 18 different transects 18
different areas.

476
(Refer Slide Time: 00:52)

We will consider that all of these beats have the same area and the sambar density, then
all of these areas is figured out and the number per square kilometer is given here. Now
the question is what is the average sambar density that is found in the park?

(Refer Slide Time: 01:11)

We will make this assumption that these 18 beats are all the beats that we have here and
the area is more or less homogeneous. And this case the average density of sambars will
be given by some of these different densities that we have in the table, we have 8 + 5 + 6
+ 5 and so on till the last value which is 5 to till the 18th value which is 5.

477
We make a sum of all these different densities divide that by 18 and then we get the average
density is 101 divided by 18 of 5.61 animals per square kilometer. So, this is a simple
example of how we use sampling to get one estimate for the whole of the population. So,
we took 18 different samples and for all of these samples, we computed the sambar density
is using line transect.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:12)

Now line transect is a method in which we move along a straight line. So, this is how we
are moving and every time we spot an animal and suppose we are here. When you spot
this animal we find out this distance and we find out this angle. Once that is done we can
find out the perpendicular distance. So, if this is d, this distance will be dsin𝛉.

So, this is the first distance then we saw an animal here and this was our location to
probably this distance, this one is d1 this one is 𝛉1. So, this one becomes d1sin𝛉1 and so
on. And by all of these different perpendicular distances we can compute the area that we
have walked in total; so, with all of these different distances. So, let us call these as D1,
D2, D3, D4 and so on. With all of these we will find out a mean distance of the animals
from this area.

So, suppose this mean distance comes to be say this value of D. So, this distance of D to
the right and this distance of D to the left. And in this case we have observed 4 animals
and with this mean distance we compute the area that has been covered by us. So, this is
the area that has been covered. So, suppose this length is L. So, the area is L x D and from

478
this we get the density of animals per square kilometer. So, this is what we have done and
we have computed all these different densities and we can take a simple average of all of
these different densities to find out the average density of sambars in this area.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:12)

Now, such computations can then be extended. So, this is the second question. The group
sizes of chital in the core and buffer zones of Corbett Tiger Reserve, Uttarakhand were
recorded during winter of 2009 and the data is given. Estimate the mean group size,
standard deviation, standard error, range and coefficient of variation; comment on the
results obtained.

479
(Refer Slide Time: 04:43)

So, similar to what was done before, here we have group the sizes of different groups. So,
earlier we had densities in different areas, here we are looking at different groups and the
sizes of all these different groups.

So, in the core zone we saw so many groups and these were the number of animals in each
group 26, 24, 25, 27; so, these are all close together. Here are the values in the buffer zone.
So, this is 26, 11, 7, 3, 15 and so on, so, there is a very large amount of variation. Now
what kind of inferences can be make out of such a data? So, we begin by looking at the
mean group size; now for the mean group size what you do is, you take a total of all of
these. So, for the core you make a sum of all of these and then the number of groups is 1,
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. So, in these 10 groups this was the total number of animals that
was seen. So, what is the mean group size?

480
(Refer Slide Time: 05:44)

So, the sum of all the group sizes and the core divided by total number of groups. So, that
comes to 252 by 10 which is 25.2 animals per group in the core area.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:58)

And similarly you can repeat this process for the buffer area. In the buffer area the number
of animals per group is 20.7. So, one thing that we can see here is that the number of
animals per group in the buffer area is less than the number of animals per group in the
core area. Now why could we have such a difference; we can then correlate this to the
ecological parameters that are found in these 2 areas.

481
(Refer Slide Time: 06:26)

So, typically if you consider any tiger reserve. We have this core area, the core area lies in
the centre and in this core area you have less amount of human disturbances and this area
is relatively left untouched. Now this area, on the outside goes by the name of the buffer
area. Now why is this area called a buffer area? Because you might have say a village here.
Now if you have a village there are situations that people might want to get into a tiger
reserve or into a forest and cut some wood for firewood or maybe you have some animals
that are living in the village and they are getting into the forest areas for grazing or maybe
you have some dogs that are living in the village and these dogs are also getting into the
forest areas. So, for all of these different influences whether it is for firewood, whether it
is for animals such as cows or for animal such as dogs or for things like pollution or the
amount of dust that is being released or the sounds that are released, we can define a zone
that goes by the name of, the zone of influence of this village. Now we want to have this
core area completely untouched. So, which is by we create a buffer region.

In the case of the buffer region, you can have some zones of influence, but then this buffer
region acts as a buffer. So, that the core is completely kept secluded. In the case of the
buffer region you will be having grasses, but then probably the chitals will have to compete
with the cows or maybe probably the chitals will have to remain vary of the dogs that are
coming to this area.

482
So, in that case it is possible that chitals tend to avoid this area which is something that we
can observe by looking at the numbers of chitals that are found in this area and also the
group size of chitals that are found in this area.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:30)

Now, from the group density, we can then move on to the standard deviation. Now
standard deviation for the population is given by the square root of sum of deviations. So,
in this case μ is the average value that we figured out earlier, x is all the different values.

So, in the case of core, we saw that the average is 25.2 and the values are 26, 24, 25 and
so on. So, when we are computing the standard deviation we will have these values 26, 24
and so on minus 25.2 you take a square of all of these, add all of these and divide them by
the total number of observation that you have made. So, here you have 10 number of
observations, you do this, you get to a standard deviation which is 1.249 animals per group.

Now, what does standard deviation tell you? It tells you what is the amount of variation
that we are seen in the group sizes. So, here the variation is 1.249 animals per group.

483
(Refer Slide Time: 09:36)

Whereas, in the case of buffer area when you repeat the same observation, you can see that
the standard deviation is much greater 11.385 which gets as an indication that in the case
of the core areas, all these different groups are much more homogeneous.

So, if you look at a group here or a group here or a group here all of these groups are
having the same sizes. But in the case of the buffer region if you are seeing a group here
probably it has a smaller size, a group here has a larger size, a group here has probably a
medium size and so on. So, the amount of variation in the group sizes is less in the core
and its more in the buffer regions in this particular example.

484
(Refer Slide Time: 10:22)

Now, from the standard deviation we can move on to find out the standard error, which is
another way of expressing the same thing. So, standard error is given by, ( σ / √n ). So, in
this case, for the core zone it comes to 0.395 and in the case of buffer it comes to 3.6.

(Refer Slide Time: 10:38)

So, here also we are seeing that in the case of the buffer zone, the standard error is much
greater than that in the core zone which is another indication that the group size is much
more heterogeneous in the case of the buffer.

485
(Refer Slide Time: 10:56)

Then we can compute the range of these values. Now range is given by the highest value
minus the lowest value. Now in the case of the core region, all the group sizes for nearly
the same the largest one was 27, the smallest one was 23, so, the ranges 4 animals per
group.

(Refer Slide Time: 11:17)

Whereas, in the case of the buffer zone groups, the largest size group had 40 animals the
lowest size group had 3 animals.

486
So, here the range is very large, so, we have 37 animals in the range. So, this is also telling
this the amount of heterogeneity that is there in the buffer groups.

(Refer Slide Time: 11:36)

From here we can move on to find out the coefficient of variation. Now coefficient of
variation is a term that helps us to look at these differences, these variations very easily.
Now in this particular example we had 10 groups in the core and we had 10 groups in the
buffer area. So, that makes comparisons very easily, but suppose in the core we had say
25 groups and in the buffer we only had 10 groups.

So, in that case when you want to make a comparison between both of these statistic. So,
we go for a coefficient of variation. Now coefficient of variation is defined by σ which is
the standard deviation divided by the mean which is given by μ into 100 %, so, it is asking
this question what percentage of the mean value is the standard deviation. So, in the case

487
of core, it comes to 4.956 %, or close to around 5 %, in the case of buffer it comes to
54.998 %, or close to 55 %,.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:38)

So, in the case of core we are saying that the standard deviation is just 5%, of the mean
value. In the case of buffer the standard deviation is as much is 55%, of the mean value.
So, in this way we can make comparisons between both of these groups even if they have
different sizes.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:06)

488
So, what do we infer out of these values? Now, the inferences that, the group sizes of chital
in the core zone are more or less similar as they shown by this small range value and the
small coefficient of variation of 5 percent. However, the group sizes of chital in the buffer
zone are extremely variable as shown by the larger range value of 37 and coefficient of
variation of 55 percent. The coefficients of variation also hint that the standard deviation
is very far from the mean value in the case of chital groups in the buffer zone, while the
standard deviation is close to the mean in the case of the chital groups in the core zone.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:47)

Now these numbers provide an indication of the habitats in the core and the buffer zones.
Now the core zones are mostly unfragmented and uniform. So, the group sizes of chital
show little variations from one group to the next. On the other hand since the buffer zones
are relatively fragmented and non uniform, showing also high anthropogenic influences,
each chital group in the buffer zone will show a difference from the other groups,
depending on the patch of habitat that was available to it. In this way we may utilize
statistical information to make sense of or even to predict the ecological information.

What we are saying here is that, if we considered the chitals in the core zone. So, this zone
and this zone and this area are all the same, there is hardly any difference. But then in the
case of the buffer zone, if there was a chital group that was residing here versus a chital
group that was residing here, that would make a very big difference. Because this particular
chital group is close to the core zone, it is away from the zone of influence of the villages

489
and so, it is having a much more protected environment in which to graze and in which to
increase its population. Whereas, in this particular chital group, it is so close to the human
influences that, it might be having a very different impact on the group behaviour.

In this case because the amount of variation is greater in the buffer area, and the amount
of variation is less in the core area so, that is also manifesting itself in the group sizes of
chital in the core area and the buffer area. So, just by looking at group sizes of animals in
different areas, we can make some inference about what is going on in the ecological terms,
which also makes it very pertinent to know different population parameters. In the last
lecture, we looked at different population parameters, in this lecture we are making a
correlation between what the population parameter said and what is the actual ecology of
that area. If we are seen differences it means that there is some ecological undercurrent
that is flowing there.

(Refer Slide Time: 16:05)

Next we look at sampling of rainforest herpetofauna. Now, in the case of larger animals,
it is easier to see the animals, to count the animals, to get to a density of animals, what
about this smaller animals? If you wanted to say know the number of snakes that are there
per unit area in a forest. So, how do you go about and catch a snake? A snake will not
make itself visible to you because you want to count this snakes. This snake would
probably lie beneath some rock or maybe it would lie in some tree, or so on.

490
What about other smaller animals, such as say, frogs. In the case of frogs you want to know
how many frogs are there per unit area. How do you make an estimate of the number of
frogs? You can very easily see the number of tigers that are there in an area, but frogs are
very difficult to see and count.

So, what are the methods that we make use of? So, in the case of rainforest herpetofauna;
Herpetofauna is basically reptiles and amphibians. These are the methods that are
available; one is opportunistic encounters. Opportunistic encounters with the species has
gleamed from the researchers encounters or information from locals can be used to
generate a list of species that is found in that area including some cryptic species that may
not be evident in directed service. This is applicable even to sampling in the rainforest.

So, there is a rain forest you want to know how many animals are there, what are all species
of animals are there.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:42)

So, we looked at the species discovery curve or the species accumulation curve in which
you have this time on the x axis and the number of species on the y axis. And we saw that
it increased and then it started breaking to a level of saturation. Now to know more and
more about the species that are found in a rain forest area, you could go for an opportunistic
encounter. Opportunistic encounter means that you went into the forest and there was a
chance encounter of some animal.

491
So, you went into the rainforest and you saw a frog that was red and yellow in color and
probably you had never seen this frog before. In that case, we will add 1 more species to
the species accumulation curve so, that is an opportunistic encounter. Now opportunistic
encounters can also be used to understand the relative population densities of different
animals in the rainforest. You went into a rainforest in say, January and you saw that there
were say 5 animals that you saw in the whole period of 1 day. You went again, you saw 4
animals; you went again you saw 6 animals. So, on an average you are seeing 5 animals
per today. You went to the same rainforest in the January of the next year and probably
you are seeing only 2 animals per day. So, that would give you an indication that the
population size is reducing. So, that is an opportunistic encounter.

The second method is complete species inventory; construction of complete species

inventory by combining data from opportunistic encounters and directed surveys is
feasible in rainforest. So, you are just increasing the amount of effort that you are putting
in to get to a very close approximation of the number of animals and the number of species
that are found this area.

Next is visual encounter survey. This involves directed surveys for visually seeing species
in an area, in a procedure that is constrained by time, area or both. Rock flipping or other
techniques may be employed and this is feasible even in rainforest. Now what do you do
in the case of a visual encounter survey? We will get into the rainforest and you will say
that you are going to survey this area for the next 1 hour. In this 1 hour you are putting all
your attention all your effort into seeing and counting this species. What you will do is,
suppose you are looking for frogs in that area; so, you get into this area.

492
(Refer Slide Time: 20:11)

So, this is a small area that you are looking and then in this small area you go and there is
a rock lying here. So, you lift this rock and suppose you saw 3 frogs there. You catch those
3 frog put them into a bag. Then you move to the next rock here also you upturn this rock,
probably you saw 1 frog, you take it put it into the bag; you go to another rock. And then
in this area for the next 1 hour you are just going to different rocks, flipping those rocks
and taking out all the animals that are there and now you are constraining yourself in terms
of area and in terms of time.

So, you are saying that this is the area that I am trying to investigate and I am going to
investigate only for 1 hour. And in that period you suppose collected 300 frogs. So, then
after 1 hour has elapsed, you will take out all the frogs one by one, you will see what
species they are, what is the number of animals that you have. Essentially you will make
a table. So, this is species, this is number of animals. Suppose first one is species 1 you
saw an animal, then a species 2 you saw 2 animals, then species 3 you saw an animal, then
species 1 use saw another animal then species 4 you saw 3 animals, then again you saw 2
animals of species 1, one of species 2, 1 of species 1 and so on.

So, for all of these 300 animals you will make this list of what all species are there and
how many animals did you see. At the end of this period you will see that this is 5, this is
3, this is 1, this is 3 and so on. And probably you will repeat this measurement at some

493
other point of time in some other area to make an estimate of the relative density of
different species and different areas.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:03)

Next is a quadrat sampling; so, quadrat sampling as we have seen before, fixed areas or
sample plots are extensively surveyed for presence of species. Next is distance sampling;
distance sampling is what we saw in the case of transact lines a short while back. So, you
can go for transact lines, you can go for point based samplings or you could go for a patch
sampling.

A patch sampling or an adaptive cluster sampling; in this method sampling begins at

randomly selected points; a patch is selected at that point and particular species of searched
for in that patch. If that species is found, adjoining patches are searched till a point reaches
where all the boundary patches are devoid of the particular species. This enables
discernment of area of presence of species and is applicable even in the rain forest areas.

494
(Refer Slide Time: 22:54)

What do you do in the case of a patch sampling is that, you will begin at a random point
and at this point you take this patch. A patch may be say 5 meters by 5 meters patch. In
this 5 meter by 5 meter patch, you are now looking, you are actively searching for the
animals. Now suppose you found the animals here. You count the number of animals, next
you go on surveying all the surrounding patches. These are the surrounding patches that
you have. Suppose you found an animal here, but you did not find animals in other patches.

So, then because you found an animal here, now you will go for the patches that are
surrounding this particular patch. Probably you found an animal here, an animal here,
nothing here. So, then for this particular patch, now you will look for the surrounding
patches. And you will continue this exercise till a point reaches where you do not find any
animals in the surrounding patches. So, in this case, we will say that this particular species
of animal is found in this much of area and in for this area, we can compute the number of
animals that are found in this area.

Now, the size of the patches will depend on which particular species you are interested in.
For some species you may go for a larger size patch, for some species you may go for a
smaller size patch. So, these are all different methods of estimating populations and their
parameters.

495
(Refer Slide Time: 24:19)

You would go for an audio strip transect. Now in audio strip transects, the sounds or calls
of various species such as male frogs are utilized to discern the relative abundance of all
adults of the species, the species composition of the area, the breeding habitat or
microhabitat use and the time of breeding for different species. This is even useful in rain
forest areas where some species can hide in the leaf litter may be identified through their
calls.

(Refer Slide Time: 24:51)

496
So, what we are saying here is that, you have some frog species; you have this big area of
the rainforest and then say there are some trees here, there is a small water body here
maybe the other areas have some grasses or maybe you have some shrubs somewhere.
Now you cannot go and search inside a shrub or you cannot go and dive into this water
body to search all the frog samples. You go to this area in the breeding season and in the
breeding season the male frogs will give out calls.

So, now what you can do is, you can put a tape recorder at this area. You can say, float 1
tape recorder here, put a tape recorder here, put one in the trees, put one in the shrubs and
so on and then you can record the voices of these male frogs. Now different species give
a different kinds of calls. We can even identify different species even though we are not
able to see them, but we can identify them through their vocalizations. We can identify the
species and the number of calls that are made give you an estimate of the number of
animals that are there in this area. So, this is another way in which we can locate the
population of different animals in an area.

Next is mark recapture method. So, what we saw a short while back. Mark recapture or a
capture recapture method works by capturing the species, marking them using dyes or pit
tags. So, pit tags are a small or are small are transponder tags that you can put beneath this
skin of an animal. So, that remains with a animal and you can use it you can scan those
tags later on to understand whether this animal is marked or not and what was the number
of this animal. Or by capturing natural body marks photographically, releasing the animals,
capturing them again and utilizing the data of the number of marked and unmarked
individuals to estimate the population size of this species.

So, in this case what we are doing is, suppose we get to know from our experiment that
the frogs are only found in this particular lake. So, in this case we will capture some frogs
from this area, we will mark them by say a dye or using a pit tag, we will release them
again, we will allow them to mix randomly with all the population of frogs that are there
in this pond and we will take out another sample and look at the number of marked
individuals that are there in the second sample. And use that data to make an estimate of
the total number of animals that are there in this particular pond.

497
(Refer Slide Time: 27:26)

Next you could go for pitfall trapping or funnel trapping. Now this method traps the
herpetofaunal species and this may be used in combination with mark release recapture
methods for estimating the population sizes. So, in this case what you are doing is, you
know that these frogs are there in this water body and probably they will come out after
sometime and probably they will go into the grasses. If this is the behaviour of such an
animal so, in that case you will set up a pitfall trap. So, in this case you set up 2 plastic
curtains and at this point you set up a bucket.

Now, when this frog comes to this area. You have this frog here, once it gets to a wall it
tries to move along the wall. So, that his behaviour of the animal. It becomes from here to
here, then it jumps from here to here and then in the next jump it falls into the trap. Now
in this case, you can capture your angles and then this pitfall trap is a method that can be
used to estimate the relative density of animals. Because you can set up a pitfall trap here
and you can say set up a pitfall trap at this location. Now in this bucket, you probably saw,
you probably were able to capture 100 frogs, in this trap you were able to capture only 2
frogs. Then you can say that this area that was being covered by this trap is having less
density of animals, than this area that is being covered by the first track. And then you can
use it in combination with the mark recapture technique because here you are able to
capture the animals in a live state. So, you can mark them and then you can release them
again for the mark recapture method.

498
Next you could go for a covered board survey. In this method cover boards are randomly
thrown in survey areas and the regions below the cover boards are then extensively
surveyed to look for species.

So, in this case what you are doing is, you are taking some cardboard boards. They are
around say this much in size and once you have those boards you just flip them over into
the forest area wherever the land you just go and you can look for the species below them.
This is one way of doing a random sampling in your particular area. Another one is survey
of the breeding sites, ponds and stream habitats that are breeding sites for several
amphibian and reptilian species can be surveyed in detail to estimate the presence relative
abundance and size of the species. So, this is also another thing that you can do.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:11)

Population estimation is such an important requirement for management of populations or

management of habitats, that we have figured out so many different techniques to measure
these population parameters. You could even go for a quantitative sampling of amphibian
larvae. For instance you are not able to capture the frogs, but when you go to the ponds,
so, you are able to capture the larvae. In that case you can do a quantitative sampling of
the larvae as well; or you can go for instrumentation. In the case of instrumentation, you
can put a camera traps. A camera trap is a device that has a sensor so that if an animal
comes near to it; it takes a photograph.

499
(Refer Slide Time: 30:55)

So, then camera trap is also way another way of getting data about these animals. Now, it
is important to note that the effectiveness and utility of these methods may depend upon
the prevalent conditions. In areas that have large number of water pools, surveys of all the
breeding sites may be difficult. Under these conditions audio strip transect may be easy to
deploy. On the other hand, in areas where a single breeding site and silent species.

So, in the case of silent species you cannot go for an audio strip transect. You can go for a
survey of breeding site and the relative utility of these methods must be carefully analyzed
and weight before actual deployment in the field. So, all of these are different methods of
surveying the herpetofauna.

500
(Refer Slide Time: 31:43)

What about if you want to survey for insects? In the case of insects a very a common
technique is that of using the pan trap. What is the pan trap? Pan traps are devices that are
used for passive collection of insects; they are made of coloured pans filled with a liquid
trapping medium and they are widely used due to their simplicity and efficacy.

Now, you might ask what is the need to know the population size of insects? They are
important because they are important pollinators or maybe they are also some vectors for
diseases. We need to know the population sizes of different insects; because they will give
us an indication of the amount of food that will be available to insects; to the animals after
the pollination season or they will give us an indication of the amount of food that is
available to the birds that are insectivorous or the level to which you might observe the
spread of some disease if these insects are vectors for those diseases and so on.

501
(Refer Slide Time: 32:42)

Now, a short history. Pan traps were discovered by the German entomologist, was working
on aphids and aphids are small insects and this guy found out that in the case of aphids
they respond different to different colours. And in the case of yellow colours they were
attracted to it. So, he thought why not make use of this phenomenon. Then he constructed
a pan trap and this pan trap was made from a tin pan, which is why it goes by the name of
the pan trap, it was painted yellow in colour and it was mounted.

So, the first pan trap had a size of 22 centimeters in diameter and 6 centimeters in deep,
and then he added a mixture of water and formaldehyde. How do these pan traps work?

502
(Refer Slide Time: 33:32)

Now, in this case you have this small pan. This pan is yellow in colour and then you add
water. Now in this water you can add a few drops of soap to reduce the surface tension
and this is the top view. So, in this pan you will be having this yellow coloured surface
and you have the water in the centre and then you could this trap onto a stick and then you
place it somewhere.

Now, if you have insects that come to this trap and they try to land on the surface of water
so, water has a high surface tension. So, there are a number of insects that are able to move
out of it, but then when you add soap to water, so, the surface tension reduces. And so, if
there is any insect they tries to land here as soon as it lands on the surface of water it drops.
So, it comes down, it dies, but then you can make an estimate of the number of insects and
that were caught in this trap, in the dead condition.

503
(Refer Slide Time: 34:27)

So, instead of formaldehyde, which is toxic, you could go for a mixture of soap and water.
These days, the pan traps are made of plastic and then you can use different coloured pan
traps. So, different colours because different insects respond to different colours. So, there
could be some insect that pollinates flowers that are red in colour. So, that will be more
attracted to red coloured pan traps.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:56)

Once attracted by the colour of the trap, an insect lands on water and gets trapped these
are checked daily and then you can take these insects out, you can wash them you can then

504
make a note of what species of insects are found in, what is the proportion of animals that
are trapped there.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:15)

What is the significance? Most pollinator insects utilize the colours of flowers. These traps
look like flowers and they are also coloured like the flowers and then in this particular case
you are capturing most of the pollinators. So, you are able to differentiate between
pollinating insects and non pollinating insects.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:38)

505
And then you can use this data and you can combine it with the data from those traps that
are not capturing only the pollinators that are more or less random in capturing the insects.
So, from that you can make an estimate of the total amount of pollinators that are there,
the total amount of non pollinators that are there. So, it all depends on the parameter that
you want to measure in this population.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:08)

Next is the mark recapture method.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:13)

506
So, in the classical example, you have this pond, you have some fishes and then you had
taken this fishes out and then you had mark them in red colour and then you had release
them back into the water and then you had taken out another sample and then try to make
an estimate of how many normal fishes and how many red colour fishes do you have?

Another modification of this mark-recapture method is that, you can use of the already
existing body patterns that are there in the animals. For instance in the case of striped
hyena, they have specific body patterns. You can distinguish one individual from the next
individual. So, you can just click a photograph of an individual, once you have this
photograph that is as good as trapping this individual and marking it.

Because in the case of capturing and marking you are capturing this animal you are
painting it say red in colour. In this case you can capture a photograph of this animal and
then you can see the body pattern that is prevalent in this particular animal. Now once you
release this animal, the next time you click a photograph that is as good as taking the next
sample. So, in the next sample; so, suppose in the first sample. So, you put your camera
traps for say 10 days, in those 10 days you are able to capture 50 photographs of 50 hyenas,
now you wait for some more time and then you take a second sample.

Now, in this second sample you are again able to capture 50 photographs. Now out of these
50 photographs it turns out that 20 are individuals that were photographed before. Now in
this case what we can say is that out of 50 animals that were captured in the second case,
you have 20 animals that were marked. And this ratio has to be the same as the total number
of marked animals in the population that was there in the first sample divided by the total
population size of the population. So, in this case we can calculate n is equal to 50 into 50
by 20 is 125.

So, even though in this case we are not capturing the hyena, we are not painting it in some
colour, but we are able to make use of the body colours, the body patterns to identify the
individual and just by taking a picture of the animal we can do the same experiment of
capture mark release recapture. And these kinds of patterns are prevalent in a number of
species. So, you have hyenas, you have leopards.

In the case of leopards, clouded leopards, snow leopard, they all have different patterns
of rosette in their body. You can identify a tiger using its stripes. Every tiger has a different

507
stripe. In the case of lions you can look at their whiskers and their whiskers have a specific
pattern that is specific for every individual.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:48)

You can look at toads and frogs, there are a number of toads and frog that have specific
body markings and every individual can be distinguished from another individual from the
body markings.

Cats such as leopard cat or marbled cat; here also you have different body markings;
spotted dear like the chital. So, chital also has spots on its body, you can identify different
chitals using their spots or some marine mammals such as humpback whales. So, in the
case of humpback whales, you also have the natural markings or you can even look at
crocodiles.

508
(Refer Slide Time: 40:20)

So, crocodile have different patterns of scutes on their body or you can even have markings
on the tails or you can have a look at the snakes. The different snakes have also different
patterns of the blotches or even in the case of those species that do not have a body mark,
you can look for those body marks that have naturally come up on body.

So, for instance you are witnessing a troop of monkeys and there is a monkey that has a
scar on its face, a probably there is another monkey that has lost one of its limbs or there
is another monkey that has lost a lot of fur off on its body because of some kind of disease.
Now using all of these different variations; you can have a monkey that is old and has
grown a bit paler in colour. So, with all of these different body patterns, you can identify
the animals and if you are able to identify the animals you can make use of the capture
mark release recapture method just using photographs.

509
(Refer Slide Time: 41:24)

Now, if you are using this method of mark recapture, how can you plan a population
monitoring of species? In this case you do not have any 2 individuals that have the same
body pattern. How can you make use of this data? We can plan this exercise using 2
criteria; the ecology of the species ecology and behaviour and the numerical abundance of
the species.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:49)

Since the species is known to have distinct marks, photographic capture of the species
either through camera traps or using cameras can be done. The placement of these cameras

510
or camera traps shall be guided by the ecology and behaviour of the species, those that
congregate to specific areas shall be captured there and those that walk on trails shall be
captured on trails.

For example, a good example of animal that walks on the trail is tiger. If you want to
picture a tiger, if you want to take photograph of a tiger, you put your camera trap and an
area that has a trail. A trail is the small road because a tiger does not want to move in those
areas, that are thorny or that are rocky so, that prefers a cleaned out area. So, you can put
a camera trap for the case of tiger on a trail or for those animals that congregate to specific
sites. An example is that of chital; so, chital congregates in the grasslands at night. If you
want to take those pictures, you can put a camera trap there as well.

Now, if the species has a low population size, we shall utilize the data to identify and
possibly name each individual of the species. So, for those population that have a small
size, you can go ahead and you can name each and every individual of the species, this is
what we do in the case of tigers. When we say that Panna Tiger Reserve has say 35 tigers.
So, we know each and every tiger by its name using its body patterns. And with adequate
effort they should provide us the absolute count of this species in sometime in accordance
with the collectors curve. The photographs will also be used to identify the males, females
and juveniles of the species.

Now, why do you want to know the males, female and juveniles? Because that gives you
an indication of how this population is going to perform in future. If you have a population
that is all full of males or all full of very old females in that case the population may suffer
a decline.

511
(Refer Slide Time: 43:56)

Next is monitoring. Monitoring can be done in 2 ways; one is by using the ratio of male to
female or juvenile to female or the age and sex ratios and pyramids to understand the
prognosis of the species. So, if you say go to forest area and you see that most of the
females are accompanied by juvenile, which means that the population is flourishing well.
So, they are getting enough food and so, they are reproducing well. On the other hand if
you go to a forest and you only observe males you do not see a female. So, it is possible
that the population might crash very soon. And second is by carrying out the exercise at 2
different times and recording whether the population has gone up, down or remained
constant.

So, for instance you went to into the forest and first time you measured 100 chitals per 100
square kilometers; the next time you went there and you measured only 20 chitals per 100
square kilometers. So, the population is suffering a decline.

512
(Refer Slide Time: 44:56)

Now, if the species has a high population size, then we shall make use of the mark capture
recapture technique. So, in this case capture data from 2 surveys is utilized to give an a
estimate of the number of animals that are there. For smaller population sizes, you can go
ahead and count and name each and every individual. In the case of larger populations,
you can go for the mark recapture technique.

(Refer Slide Time: 45:23)

Now that is all about this; now let us try to look the population dynamics, till now we
were interested in measuring the population parameters, the demographic parameters.

513
Now, we want to know that if you have n number of individuals today, what will be the
number of individuals in future. How does this population grow or how does this
population decline or how does this population remain constant and what can we do about
it. So, the first simplification is that we say that the rate of population growth is given by
this equation.

(Refer Slide Time: 46:00)

Now, in this equation you have the number of animals at t plus 1 time is given by Ro into
the number of individuals at the tth generation. So, the Ro is given by the number of
individuals at t+1 generation divided by the number of individuals in the tth generation.
What it means that, suppose if you consider my parental generation and during my my
parents’ generation, suppose the population of earth, the population of human beings on
earth was say 5 billion and in my generation it has increased to say 7 billion.

So, in 1 generation it has increased from 5 billion to 7 billion. So, Ro will be given by 7
divided by 5. Now if Ro is greater than 1, which means that the population is increasing,
if Ro is less than 1 then it means that the population is reducing and if Ro is equal to 1,
then it means that the population is constant.

514
(Refer Slide Time: 47:05)

But then if you look at one scenario in which we consider Ro is equal to 1.5 and let us
locate different generations and we start with an initial population size of 10. So, in the 0th
generation we had population size of 10.

In the first generation the population size will be Ro into the number of individuals in the
previous generation. So, 1.5 x 10 = 15. In the next generation it will be 15 x 1.5 = 22.5; in
the next generation it will be 22.5 x 1.5 = 33.75 and so, we see that in the 9th generation
we have moved from 10 individuals to 384 individuals or in other words what we are
observing is an exponential rise of the population.

515
(Refer Slide Time: 47:46)

Here we are looking at the generation time and here we are looking at the population size.
So, we moved from 10 individuals to around 400 individuals in a very short period of time.
Now, such a population growth is possible in certain circumstances.

(Refer Slide Time: 48:07)

For instance, you have an island and in this island you do not have any predators, you only
have say grass or you have some trees that bear fruits and then in this island you put in 10
rats and these rats do not have any predators to kill them. In this case, because the resources
are available in plenty so, the rats will be able to multiply themselves.

516
And when they multiply themselves, they will get into this population growth curve which
is an exponential growth curve like this or just before. But then will it continue till infinity.
Consider this curve, how does it end? Theoretically, if it had continued increasing, then
we would have a situation in which we have infinite amount of resources, but in reality,
we do not have infinite amount of resources. So, this curve should come to a decline after
a time.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:09)

So, Ro cannot remain constant and it has to do something with the population size. Because
in this island if you started in the beginning you have all the resources that are available to
the 10 rats. Now after their population has increased and suppose now we have 1000 rats.
So, in that case the resources that are available on this island will probably start becoming
limiting for the population growth. So, earlier we had unlimited resources when we only
had 10 rats, but in the case of 1000 rats now the resources are now getting limited.

So, whether the resources are unlimited or limited depends on the number of individuals
that you have in the population. If you have very less number of individuals, then the
resources are practically unlimited; if you have more number of individuals in the
population then practically the resources are becoming more and more limited.

517
(Refer Slide Time: 50:13)

Now, to put that mathematically, we use this curve which is known as the logistic growth
equation. If N is the population size at time t. So, the rate of increase in N that is (dN / dt)
is given by rN. So, r is the rate of growth or intensive growth rate multiplied by N. So, if
you have less number of individuals. So, the total growth in the population will also be
less. If you have only 2 mice they can only give rise to N number offsprings, if you have
200 mice they can give rise to much more number offsprings.

So, you have (dN / dt) is proportional to N, the rate at which the population will grow,
will depend on the size of the population and that is related to this growth rate which is
given by r. But then this factor is also modified by the resources that are available for this
population to grow which is given by this term [(K – N) /K], where K is the carrying
capacity.

So, carrying capacity says that suppose in the case of this island you had only resources
that are available to 1000 rats. It cannot support more than 1000 rats. So, in that case your
population will not just go on increasing exponentially, but as soon as it starts reaching
this stage of 1000 it will start declining and then when it declines, it will become more or
less constant at 1000. So, you will have an s shaped curve. So, this curve which is s shaped
goes by the name of a sigmoidal curve and this value that you will get at the top represents
K, which is the carrying capacity of the environment or the number of individuals that the
environment can support.

518
(Refer Slide Time: 52:13)

So, let us look at some example. A population follows the equation for logistic population
growth which we saw before; the carrying capacity is 100 the initial population size is 25
and the maximum addition of animals per unit time is 10; which is r is 10. So, the
maximum addition of animals per unit time that is (dN / dt), maximum rate is 10. So, what
is the value of the intrinsic growth rate? What is the value of r?

(Refer Slide Time: 52:44)

So, now, if we plot this equation this is how it look like. So, this is the time t this is the
number of individuals and we start with the very less number of individuals, then it goes

519
on increasing like this. Now this phase in which it is more or less flat, this phase, something
like this, it goes by the name of the lag phase. It is called the lag phase because the number
of animals is so less or the number of organisms is so less that their population growth rate
cannot be very large. Then after they have crossed a certain threshold, after they have
become a bit more substantial in size. So, then their population increase becomes even
greater. So, then it becomes this curve, something like this, which is known as the log
phase. So, lag phase, log phase. Then it tries to become more and more stationary. So, as
it reaches the carrying capacity of 100, it starts becoming flatter and it is known as the
stationary phase.

(Refer Slide Time: 53:41)

So, in this case we are given that (dN / dt) maximum is 10. So, we can say that this value
is less than or equal to 10.

After substituting all the values, we see that r ≤ [ (10 x 100) / (25 x 75) ],

which tells us that r ≤ 0.533.

520
(Refer Slide Time: 53:58)

So, with this we can say that the maximum value of r is 0.533 which is the intrinsic rate
of growth.

Now, y is that the maximum value of r because that is the value of r that will observe in
the beginning, that will observe here and then this value will start getting modulated
because of the sizes coming close to the carrying capacity of the environment.

(Refer Slide Time: 54:29)

521
Now there is this other set of equations that goes by the name of the Lotka Volterra
equations that helps us understand the relationship between 2 different species. So, in this
case we are trying to look at, if we have a community in which you have a predator
organism and a prey organism, let us see tigers and chitals. So, if you have a certain number
of chitals, a certain number of tigers, how will their population vary when they are
interacting with each other.

So, in this case the Lotka Volterra equation says that, if we say that V is the prey population
or the chital population how does chital population change with time? So, the rate of
change of chital population is dependent on the size of the chital population. Because if
you have more number of chitals they give rise to more number offsprings, so, it is
proportional to V. So, this proportionality constant is r. So, ( dV / dt ) = ( r x V ), but then
this is also modulated by the number of tigers that we have in the system. If you have more
number of tigers, if you have more number of capital P, then dV / dt will be lesser.

So, it varies as dV / dt = ( r V ) – ( α V P ).

Now this is also dependent on the value of V because if you already have a very large
population size, then the rate of growth will be lesser because, that will be reaching the
carrying capacity whereas, the rate of growth of the predators dP / dt will be given by the
expression, ( β x V x P ). Now it is dependent on the number of predators, but it is also
dependent on the number of preys because if you have more number of preys then you are
getting more food for the tigers, if you have more number of chitals you have more food
for the tigers and so, the rate of growth of population of tigers will be more and you have
minus q into P.

So, this q is telling you the death rate of the tigers and p is the number of tigers. So, here
you have the Lotka Volterra equations,

dV / dt = ( r V ) – ( α V P )

dP / dt = ( β V P ) – ( q P )

Now you do not need to get into very intricacies of this equation, but then we just need to
understand how these equations help us understand the population dynamics.

522
(Refer Slide Time: 56:59)

Now let us look at this example. Suppose that tiger and chital populations are governed by
Lotka Volterra dynamics with the following coefficients. So, we are given the values of r.
q, α and β and the initial population sizes are given.

So, you have 14 tigers and 1000 chital. So, what are the short term population dynamics
that predicted by the model?

(Refer Slide Time: 57:21)

In this case, if you plot these equations with the values of α, β, r and q and the initial
values of V and P, this is what we will find.

523
(Refer Slide Time: 57:29)

So, in this case, the top one is showing you the chital population and the bottom one is
showing you the tiger population. What is happening in this case is that you started with
1000 chitals, but you already have a very large size population of tigers, you have 14 tigers.
These 14 tigers now start preying upon the chitals. So, the population of chitals decline to
a certain extent because they are reproducing, but at the same time there also getting
predated upon.

When the chital population reduces because they are being eaten by the tigers and contrast
the tiger population will increase. This will increase because it is getting ample amount of
food because of the chitals. But then after a while we will observed that the number of
chitals is now less, now if the number of chitals is less. So, you have less amount of food
that is available for the tigers. If less food is available for tigers so, their growth rate will
reduce; when that happens this population will start declining. Now when this population
starts declining, if you have less number of tigers so, chitals are not predated upon that
much. So, the population of chitals will grow up again.

In this manner we will find that you have chital population is high. So, it will increase tiger
population and reduce itself, now when chital population is less. So, it will reduce tiger
population. So, this will increase and then this process will go on again and again. So, we
see these cyclical situations because of the Lotka Volterra equations.

524
(Refer Slide Time: 59:02)

(Refer Slide Time: 59:04)

And similarly we can look at interactions of 2 different species, 2 different herbivore

species. In this example we are looking at the intrinsic growth rates for 2 species are given,
the carrying capacity is given 2000 and 2200 and the effect of species that is α or β is given
as this and the starting population is given. Now here you observe that in the case of species
1, you have 800 individuals you can have maximum 200 individuals. In the case of species
2 you have only 250 individuals and you can increase it to 2200 individuals. What will
happen if you plot these curves?

525
(Refer Slide Time: 59:43)

So, remember that species 1 has 800 individuals in the beginning. Now when both of these
species are interacting together. So, from 800 it starts increasing, but then it is not able to
reach to its maximum; the maximum value was 2000, but then it never reaches 2000; it
starts decreasing even before it has reached 2000. Why? Because you have this other
species that is also competing.

(Refer Slide Time: 61:08)

And if you look at the values after a few more generations, we will find that this species1
that had started with 800 individuals it goes to around 1400, then its reducing and then it

526
becomes constant whereas this second species which started with a very low value of 250
it increases and then it becomes constant at close to around 1200.

We can observe here that none of these species is able to reach the carrying capacity; it
does not reach 2000 or 2200 individual because both of these species are competing against
each other. But then, by looking at these mathematical analysis we can make an estimate
of what is going to happen in future. So, for instance you have these 2 species, you wanted
to conserve these species and you said this population is going to increase till 2200, but
then that will never happen because of the population dynamics.

(Refer Slide Time: 60:59)

So, equations such as these; the Lotka Volterra equations, the logistic growth rate
equations help us understand the population dynamics and can help us understand the
prognosis of a population, how is it going to behave in future? And, how can we tinker
this population? If you have a species of chital, if you do not give it any predators it will
go on increasing and then it will eat up all the grass and then the whole population will
collapse.

527
(Refer Slide Time: 61:28)

In that case we will have a situation like this, the population increases then it becomes
steep and then it collapses, but then if you have a tiger here, so, the your tiger will keep
the population in check and will allow this system to remain steady for a very long period
of time.

So, that is all for today. Thank you for your attention.”Jai hind”.

528
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 15
Population studies and applications

“Namaste”,

We carry on with our discussions on population in ecology, and today we look at some
case studies of how the population studies are actually done in the field.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:25)

So, if you have any population study it begins with defining the problem, because if you
have any population there are n number of things that you can learn about the population.
Your problem could be say why is this population growing, or not growing, or if you have
two different populations what are the factors that are leading to different growth rates in
different populations. Or for instance if you have a population, why does it grow in a
particular season, why does it not grow in other seasons? There can be a number of
problems. The first thing that we need to do is to define the problem. What are we trying
to study in this case?

And secondly, to define the population because if you have a very large population then
maybe you could take a small subset or maybe you could look at some sub populations or

529
meta populations. You have to be very clear about what is the areal extent, what are the
animals that you are, or organisms that you are considering as part of your population?
And what are those organisms that are not a part of your population. Now, once you have
done that there can be two kinds of studies: one is known as the problems of dynamics.
Now, problems of dynamics ask the question how is a population changing with time.

For instance if we have a population of whales in an ocean and these whales are
reproducing, but at the same time there are poachers who are killing these whales for meat
and probably the population is reducing with time. If you are looking at anything that is
changing with time such as the population size in the case of these whales which is
reducing with time, we will call it a population of dynamics. Because it is dynamically
changing, it is changing with time. The second kinds of studies are known as problems of
statics.

In the case of statics you are looking at a static population, there is no change happening
with time. So, it asks the question what determines the equilibrium conditions and the
average values. For instance if you see that in your forest you have say 40 tigers, and this
year you have 40 tigers, 5 years ago you also had 40 tigers, even 10 years back you had 40
tigers. So, there is nothing changing in this population. So, we are having some births, we
are having some deaths, but more or less everything is getting cancelled out and the
population is remaining static at 40 tigers.

Now the problem of statics in this case could be, why is this population stuck at 40, why
does it not become 41, why does it not become 39? Or, you could ask the question what is
determining the carrying capacity of this habitat, why is this habitat only able to support
40 tigers why not more? Or, you could ask the question, what are the interactions that these
organisms have, when they have this fixed size of 40 tigers, what are their home range
sizes, how much amount of territory are they defending?

These kinds of questions will be known as the problems of statics. We have problems of
dynamics in which things are changing with time. And we have problems of statics in
which things are constant with time and we are asking the question what is determining
the equilibrium conditions and the average values.

530
(Refer Slide Time: 03:47)

Now, if you have a problem of dynamics. So, there is something that is changing with
time. Now to study such a change you can follow these 3 steps; the first one is; you will
ask the question - Does the change occur in a particular time of the year? So, for instance
if we are talking about the whales, that are there in the ocean we can ask the question when
do these animals breed? When do they have the young ones, and when is the time, when
they are getting poached? So, are these things having some amount of temporal
distribution? So, you have births only in a fixed season probably you have poaching only
in a fixed season.

This is the first question that you will ask. The second question is does the change occur
in a particular stage in the lifecycle of the organism? For instance when we are talking
about poaching, are people poaching mostly the adult organisms or are they poaching the
calves, is there any change between; are they poaching the male organisms or are the
female are they poaching the female organisms. Is there any particular thing that is related
to the lifecycle that is causing the change and the third one is what are the agents that
operate at these times or at these stages?

Now let us take another example, let us talk about some insect population. So, we are going
to look at the locust problem in detail in this lecture. In the case of locust, these are
organisms, these are small insects and these insects are very harmful for the crops. So, they
are very prominent agricultural pests. So, these organisms they will come in huge sized

531
swarms. So, there will be a swam that can have, as many as say millions of creatures.
There are millions of insects that are coming together. If you combine their weights
together, it can be as high as 50000 tons of weight. Now, each of these insect it eats in a
day, leaves that are roughly equal to its own weight. So, if you have a swarm that has a
weight of 50000 tons.

So, it requires 50000 tons of vegetation every day just to sustain itself. Now if you have
major pests, such as a locust you would want to know; when are the times when you are
getting such a huge swarm? Because you do not get these swarms every year, if you are
having these swarm every year then probably most of the ecosystems would have been
decimated by these organisms. So, you will have a swarm say once in every 15 years or
once in every 20 years. If that happens, you will ask the question, what is suddenly leading
to an increase in the size of this population.

Because the population was roughly constant, because of which we were not seeing any
swarms for past 15 years and this year we are seeing a big swarm. So, there is something
that is changed with time. Here you will ask these questions; Does this change occur in a
particular time of the year? If you are looking at a swarm of these insects, are they coming
in a particular time of the year? So, that would give you an indication of what are the
reproductive periods for this particular insect. The second is the changes that we are seeing.

So, we did not see a change in the last 15 years, and this year we are seeing a change.
Probably that had to do something with the rainfall that happened, or probably a draught
that happened. So, it could be related to some climatic conditions, or it could be related to
say an external condition such as a predator. Probably it is possible, that the predators of
locust they have gone down. Now if the predators of locusts have gone down in numbers,
then it is also possible that the locusts will increase in their population.

So, the population will blast. Now in such a scenario we can ask this question that, we are
seeing this locust in this particular season, but what was the stage that the predator was
preferentially feeding upon? Was it feeding upon the adult insects, was it feeding upon the
nymph stages, or was it feeding upon the eggs of this insect. If you asked that question that
is the second question, the change that are occurring; Is that related to some particular
stage in the lifecycle of the organism, or for instance we are saying that these and these
organisms are coming with the onset of rains. So, in that case we can say that yes; then it

532
should be related to the adult organisms, because they are probably laying more number
of eggs in this particular season. So, one is the time of the year, second is the stage of the
animal, and the third one is what are the agents that are operating at these times or at these
stages, and there can be a number of such agents.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:37)

You can have extrinsic agents, or you can have intrinsic agents. Extrinsic agents are those
agents that are acting outside of the organism. So, things such as weather probably it was
very hot, probably it was very cold, very dry, very wet. So, weather can be an extrinsic
agent. Probably it rained much better this year so, that is why we are seeing more number
of locust.

That could be an extrinsic reason, or you can talk about predators; probably the predator
numbers went down because of which more number of locusts are able to survive and
because of which we are seeing more number of locust. Another extrinsic agent could be
parasites or diseases. Probably for the past 15 years; there were some parasites, or some
diseases, that were infecting these insects and probably this year those parasites died off.
So, that is very similar to the effect of predation, or it could be related to the quantity and
quality of the food that is available, probably the locust had a very good amount of food
because of the rains.

So, they had ample amount of fresh grasses to feed upon, and because they were having a
plentiful amount of food and this food was also of a good quality. They were able to devote

533
much more amount of resources into reproduction. This could also be an extrinsic agent
or another one could be the shelter. For instance till now your locust eggs were being
predated upon by say dragonflies, and this year after the eggs were laid there was some
amount of leaf fall and all the eggs that were laid they were covered with leaves. So, they
got a shelter and the dragonflies were not able to find the eggs. So, this could also be an
extrinsic reason.

There could be some intrinsic reasons. Intrinsic reasons are things that have physiological
or behavioral. When we talk about physiological reason, probably there was something in
the shape of hormones that changed in the bodies of these organisms because of which
they were able to lay much more number of eggs, or there can be a behavioral change in
which case we can say that something changed because of which these organisms, they
just came together. And they were together, they did not have to spend quite a lot of time
in finding out a mate. In that case, there was much more amount of mating and because of
which we had a much larger number of eggs. So, this could also be another reason.

We can say that there are a number of extrinsic agents and intrinsic agents that are acting
on every population at all times. Now, the reason for the change in the population, or the
reason for your dynamic problems, could be one of these, it could be more of these, or it
could be all of these, or probably something even otherwise.

So, you will have to look at each and every of these changes and maybe have an idea of
which all changes are applying on your particular population. And that is about the
dynamic problems.

534
(Refer Slide Time: 11:57)

What about the static problems? Now if you population size is say, static. You can ask the
question that the population size is not changing. So, dynamic factors will not have to be
considered. And what are the habitat variables that are responsible for the size of the
population? So, this is the question that you can ask. How do you solve this question? You
can experimentally manipulate the habitat variables to look for the responsible factors.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:35)

For instance; you have say a part in the seas that is having a very high growth of algae. In
this case; you have this whole area that is covered with the algae. So, you have a 100

535
percentage cover. And we have this 100 percent cover, say for the past 5 years. So, nothing
is changing. Now you can ask the question, why is nothing changing in this area? Probably
that is because you have ample amount of nutrients. So, if you try to reduce the amount of
nutrients that you have in this area. So, probably you will cordon off this area and the salty
water can be filtered, and the nutrients, taken away. And then you will see that the
population is declining. So, probably it was constant because it was having ample amount
of nutrients or probably it was constant because it was not having any predators here. So,
in that case you can try to bring in some predators. For instance you can bring in a sea
urchin into this area, and, why were there no predators in this area?

Because probably there was a very huge amount of wave action so, in that case you can
just create a containment in this area and then you can leave the sea urchins. So, in that
case, you will come to know that yes you are having 100 % cover in this area. Because
the wave action is not permitting you the sea urchins to come into this area so, anything
can be manipulated and we do such kinds of habitat manipulations in small scales if we
have to look at a problem of statics. So, if there is a population that is maintained at a very
low level.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:27)

So, let us say, you have a forest; in this forest you have say some elephants and the
population size of the elephants is not increasing. So, let us say you have these 15
elephants. And the population size has remained constant at 15 for the past number of

536
years. Now, you can ask this question, why are these elephants not giving birth? or
probably, the question, why are these animals when they are giving birth? Why are the
young ones not able to grow up?

So, whenever we are talking about a static population, we have seen earlier that if you talk
about the population in the nth+1 generation, that will be equal to the population in the nth
generation plus, the number of organisms that were born, minus the number of animals
that died, plus the number of animals that immigrated into the area, minus the number of
animals that emigrated out of this area.

So, population at the n + 1 generation is the population at the nth generation, plus number
of births minus number of deaths, plus immigration minus emigration. Now if we are
saying that P n + 1 is equal to P n, because nothing is changing with time. So, we can say
that P n+1 is equal to P n. In that case P n and P n get canceled away and you get this
equation that the number of births, plus the number of immigrations is equal to the number
of deaths plus the number of emigrations.

Now in the case of a closed system, you can even have a situation where there is no
emigration, no immigration and so, you can have a very simple scenario that the births are
equal to the number of deaths. Now if the population is constant, you can ask this question,
why is the birth equal to the number of deaths? What is there in this population that is
keeping it at a low level. Probably there are some predators, probably there are some
diseases, probably there are some parasites, probably the habitat is not good enough. So,
the animals are not getting nutritious feed, and in that case you can tinker each and every
of these variables. If you think that the cause is a disease that is there in the animals, you
can go and check if they have these diseases. You can take say blood samples, you can
take faecal samples, and you can look for what all pathogens are present in them. You look
for parasites that are there, now every organism in the wild will have some diseases, it will
have some parasites. So, probably you saw that there were 3 parasites that were there in
most of the elephants.

So, you have your parasite 1 parasite 2, and parasite 3. Now the next question could be,
which of these is responsible for keeping the population at a low level? There could be one
parasite because of which the calves are dying at a very young age. So, that is keeping the
death rates in the population at a very high level. So, in that case you can start treating

537
these calves. So, you kill off all the parasites once and probably these calves are still dying
off.

Then so, you can say that parasite 1 was not responsible for the high juvenile mortality
that we had that we were seeing here, probably you remove the second parasite again
nothing happens. Then you treat for the third parasite and then suddenly you see that the
calves are not dying. In that you can say that this parasite P 3 was responsible for keeping
this population static at this number of 15 elephants.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:01)

Again in the case of a static problem, the population size is not changing. So, dynamic
factors do not have to be considered. So, you are saying that P n+1 is equal to P n or
essentially births minus deaths plus immigration minus emigration is equal to 0. So, that
simplifies our calculations to quite a high degree. And then you look for how many animals
are immigrating, how many animals are emigrating?

In a number of cases we will find that these numbers are also very small or probably 0. In
that case we will ask the question, what is keeping the birthrate at the current level? What
is keeping the death rate at the current level? Then we can manipulate different habitat
variables to look for the responsible factors that are keeping this population at a particular
size.

538
(Refer Slide Time: 18:49)

Now we will look at one such population study which is the problem of the locust, now
locust are certain species of grasshoppers that have a swarming phase. So, there is still
very less amount of certainty, when do you call an organism a grasshopper? When do you
call it a locust? They are both very closely related organisms, but mostly grasshoppers will
be seen solitary, but then locusts will be seen in large sized swarms. So, we can say that
they are grasshoppers with a swarming phase.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:25)

539
Locusts are known to have these two phases. The first phase is a solitary phase and in the
case of a solitary phase they will behave more like grasshoppers, in which here is they are
innocuous. They have low numbers, and they do not pose a threat to either agriculture or
to the habitats. Then there is the second phase which is a gregarious phase, which is a
nomadic phase. These locusts they make large swarms. So, it is a swarming phase.

They make large sized swarms, then they move to other areas and once they start moving
to other areas they will have a huge requirement of leaves and because of which will
become very important pest for agriculture and also for conservation. This is something
that we know today that these locusts are having these two phases. How do you get to this
understanding that this is the same organism that is having these two phases?

(Refer Slide Time: 20:25)

This is what we are going to look at in this case study. Let us begin with looking at these
two phases. In the case of the solitary phase there are morphological differences between
the solitary and the gregarious phases. In the case of the solitary phase you have short size
elytras which are the wing sheaths, which are covering the wings, and in the case of
gregarious phases you have long sized elytras. In the solitary phase you have long hind
femora and you have a short hind femora in the case of gregarious phase. You have males
that are 20% smaller than females in solitary, you have males that are 4% smaller than
females in gregarious.

540
Essentially in this case, you can say that the males are very small. There is a huge amount
of sexual dimorphism that you will see. In the solitary phase the animals are pale colored
mostly light green in color and in the case of gregarious phase they are dark in color. And
solitary as the name implies they have a solitary nature, they do not form groups; in the
case of gregarious they form last sized groups.

Now this was known for quite some time that you are seeing these grasshoppers, you are
seeing this locust that come in sized swarms and when they come they decimate the whole
of the crops.

This has been known since antiquity even if you look at the old testament you will have
references of these locusts that are coming and that are acting as a plague for the society.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:01)

But then when people try to look at these locust, they found these two kinds of organisms.
You have this lighter colored version, and you have this dark colored version. And, both
of these look so different that for a very long period, people used to think that these are the
grasshoppers that live in our in the grassland, and these are the locusts that come into our
agricultural fields. And they were actually considered two different species.

Now the question was that this species, you see this is this particular species, once in every
15 years, or once in every 20 years, whenever it comes there is a huge amount of
decimation to the crops. There is a huge amount of decimation to the grasslands, which

541
also affects a number of other animals especially the dairy animals, and then once these
locust are vanishing, they completely vanish off. You have no trace of them for the next
15, 20 years and then suddenly they come up again and you do not see them in the
intervening period.

So, in the intervening period you only see these green organisms. So for a very long time
people used to think that these are two different species altogether.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:15)

Locusta migratoria is the migrating species or the dark colored species the one that we
have downwards. The second one was known as Locusta danica which is the light colored
species. So, we used to think that these are two different species. So, if you start with such
a foundation and you perform any number of population studies you are going to be wrong.
Why? We will come to that.

542
(Refer Slide Time: 23:51)

So, people started looking at these differences and for a very long period the scientists
were completely perplexed what is happening, we do not see these dark colored animals
for 15 to 20 years, and then they come up again in a jiffy. But, then when people started
doing the population studies; so, we have this person by the name of Plotnikov, and he
started looking at the different these two different forms. And he started looking at the
larvae of these. So, this is an extract from his paper and he writes,

“The most obvious difference between the two phases being in the coloration of the larvae,
this character and its variability have been studied in the experiments. The larvae may be
classified according to their coloration into 3 and not 2 categories. First is the migratoid
category, the second is green, and third is danicoid”.

Migratoid is something that is related to the migratory form, danicoid is something that is
related to the dynamic form and there is the third variety which is green. Intermediate
forms also occur between all three types of coloration and the various types can usually be
recognized definitely in the third larval stage. Now as in a number of insects this particular
insect also has a number of larval stages, and the differences can typically be seen in the
third level stage.

“Larvae of the coloration which I call migratoid have the upper side of the head black the
pronotum velvety black below.”

543
So, he is essentially describing all these three different varieties. You have this migratoid
variety, you have the green variety and you have the danicoid variety.

Now it is important to note here that when you are looking at the larvae you can see these
three different varieties; we are not going to get into details of all these three, but then
there are three different varieties that you can very easily see based on their appearances,
based on their morphology as well as based on the colors. Now just as we had seen that
you have these two varieties and you can very easily make them out using their colors.

Similarly you can look at the larvae also using their colors. So, that is the first level of
understanding that we get. This is how you proceed in doing any of the population study.
The first thing is to look at the population and to describe things.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:19)

He further writes,

“On the 29th of May, I took from an ordinary cage”.

So, he is describing an experiment in this case, now, what was the experiment? The
experiment was that the scientist took out these larvae and he put these larvae into
containers in different numbers.

544
(Refer Slide Time: 26:41)

So, you can keep these larvae either solitary. So, in that case you have a container or a
cage in which you have only one larvae or you can keep them out in a very dense format.
So, you have a number of larvae that I kept together or you can keep them at some medium
densities. So, this is the experiment that he did. He took out these larvae and kept them at
different densities. So, he describes the cage that is not very important, but then he says
that after a while it was observed that the larvae in the ground cage began to turn green
and on the 11th of June they attained the 5th stage, they had become quite green, but 6 of
them became dark grey almost black. In the original cage all the larvae kept their migratory
coloration.

So, essentially when you are keeping these larvae in different densities then you are seeing
that there are some larvae that are changing their colors. Then the same experiment was
repeated with larvae of danicoid coloration and with the same result. But, only green larvae
were obtained in the ground cage. As many as 15 experiments with larvae of the second
brood of danica reared under conditions of overcrowding yielded interesting results. When
the larvae were kept from the first stage in small cages in jars, a density of 30 to 50 larvae
to 450 to 675 cubic centimeter of space, a typical migratoid coloration was invariably
obtained. In experiments in which the density of the population was less, 20 larvae to 2000
cubic centimeter of space, besides the migratoid larvae some green and danicoid, but not
dark specimens were obtained.

545
So, essentially if you are keeping these larvae at a very high concentration. In this case
you are typically getting the migratoid variety and in these cases you are getting some that
are migratoid, some that are danicoid and some that are green colored larvae. So,
essentially through this experiment what he proved was that both of these varieties were
actually one species; they are not two different species. Even though they look very
different from each other, but they are one species. So, that was the first level of
understanding.

So, remember when we started we said that whenever you are doing a population study
you have to define the problem and you have to define the population. Before this paper,
whenever there was a study on the locust they only focused on the green locust or the only
focused on the dark colored locust. Whenever you are talking about only the dark colored
locust that is leading to the harm to your crops, you are not defining your population
correctly.

Because you are missing out all the lighter color versions that are actually also a part of
the same population. They are the same species, they are living together in the same area,
they are capable of interbreeding together and probably they are interpreting together. And
in that case it has to be defined as one population. If you are wrong with your fundamentals,
if you are wrong with defining of your population, then the rest of the results are not going
to proceed correctly.

This was the experiment and he showed that both of these are the same species; now when
the larvae were kept singly in glass jars they began turning green as early as in the second
stage and in the four to fifth stages they invariably became quite green. When larvae in the
first stage were placed in groups of four in small glasses about hundred cubic centimeters,
the resulting larvae of the fifth stage presented a mixture of migratoid and green larvae as
well as some transitional forms.

So, not only do you have these two varieties, here you get a third one. If you keep this
larvae singly, you get only get the green larvae. If you keep these organisms at a very low
density. So, there is just one organism that is having plenty of space to itself, it becomes a
green colored variety. If it is kept in a very high density, it invariably becomes a migratoid
variety and if it is kept in an between condition, then you get all these three different
varieties.

546
So, just by looking at the morphological and the color characteristics of the organisms you
should not rush to say that these are different species, it is also possible that what you are
observing is a trait that is coming out of some extrinsic factors. Remember we talked about
the extrinsic factors right before and this is one extrinsic factor; how much space do you
have per animal?

(Refer Slide Time: 31:57)

Now, this particular work was made done by another Russian - British scientist by the
name of Uvarov and he used these results to say that actually these locusts are coming in
two different phases. He said that these dark varieties and these light varieties are two
different phases and they can change from one to another.

547
(Refer Slide Time: 32:23)

If you look at this seminal paper that was written by Uvarov, he said that there are these
two phases and he named it as phasis solitaria, that is the solitary phase and the phasis
transiens, which is the transient phase and then there is also a third phase. Phasis solitaria
is a term to be applied to the extreme form by which the species is represented in in a given
locality when only isolated individuals are present and no swarms exist or have existed
within the last one preceding generation.

Now, not only are these larvae different but also the adults that are coming out of them
they are also different and Uvarov looked at the behaviors of these two these two different
forms and he said that we call them as phasis solitaria and phasis gregarious and the
transitional phase. In the solitary phase, when you have these green colored organisms
they will live in that particular place they will have a large space for themselves. And, they
have not swarmed in this generation or the previous generation, then we call it a solitary
phase. Then he termed the second phase as the transient phase, to be applied to the form
occurring in a given locality when the species is on the increase and its individuals are
beginning to form loose aggregations, or on the decrease and thus swarms are becoming
loose and tend to scatter either in the hopper stage or shortly after becoming adult and then
he termed a third phase which was the gregarious phase.

548
(Refer Slide Time: 34:07)

Now, in the gregarious phase, it is to be applied to the extreme form to which belongs the
bulk of individuals of the species in a given locality when it is forming dense and large
immigrating swarms. Now, what Uvarov said was that these larvae are different, similarly
the adults are also different and as we had seen in this case that we have these three
different varieties, the migratoid, the danicoid and the green variety; similarly even in the
case of the adults you have these three phases.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:45)

549
The first one is a solitary phase. Now if you have organisms in the solitary phase. So, they
will have a large space for themselves and they are going to remain in that phase for a very
long period of time. So, they have been solitary and even in the previous generation they
were solitary. There is the second phase which he termed as the gregarious phase. Now
the gregarious phase is the phase in which most of the animals are having this gregarious
nature. Most of them are the dark color locust that we saw. If you look at this image, so, if
you have the solitary phase, you will have most of the organisms that are of this color, in
the gregarious phase; most of that organisms will be of this color. In the gregarious phase,
most of these animals are moving or they are forming the swarms or there they are starting
to move and then in between we have the transient phase.

Now what happens is that if you have a solitary phase and the population is increasing, so,
the population will tend to go towards transient. If it increases further, it will tend to
become gregarious. If the population is gregarious and you have ample space the number
of animals have now come down maybe because of change in the environmental
conditions. Then, this gregarious will slowly turn into the transient phase and from the
transient it moves to the solitary phase. At all times we can say that these animals or these
insects they remain in these three phases.

So, you have the solitary phase, you have the gregarious phase and the transient phase.
Now, when the solitary phase is turning into the transient phase, we call it the congregans
phase because these are congregating and when these gregaria are turning towards solitary
then the transient phase is known as a dissocians phase because they are now dissociating,
they are now coming out of the swarms.

550
(Refer Slide Time: 36:55)

And next, once you had this understanding that all of these organisms are belonging to the
same species, they are the same population, then people started looking at the features of
these phases. For instance, if you look at the behavior; the solitary do not tend to aggregate;
the gregarious tend to aggregate. There is very little mobility in the solitary phase. The
solitary phase just remains at one place. The gregarious has a very high mobility. It makes
a swarm, it moves away. Then the activity rhythm, it is not synchronized and solitary. In
the gregarious phase, it is synchronized because of which they are able to form a swarm,
because all their activities are synchronized, they all move at the same time.

Then, if we look at the adult flight, the solitary phase flies in the nighttime the gregarious
phases flies in the daytime. You can see that there are huge differences between the solitary
and the gregarious phases of the same species. Then if you look at the physiology, the food
and water reserves in the case of solitary, they are lower. They are higher in gregarious.
Early mortality of the young is higher in the solitary phase and lower in the gregarious
phase. The development rate is faster in the case of gregarious. In the case of gregarious
you will have less mortality of the young ones and a very fast conversion into the adults
the number of instars is also less.

Instar refers to the number of larval stages that you have. So, you can see that the
gregarious phase has been evolved in a manner that it does everything very fast. So, when
it lays the eggs then the eggs have a very less amount of mortality, they very quickly

551
convert into adults, they have lesser number of in-between stages that are known as instars.
Then if you look at the hopper coloration, it is green in the solitary phase and yellow and
black in the case of gregarious phase as we have already seen in the pictures. Then the
adult coloration does not show any changes in the solitary phase whereas, in the case of
the gregarious phase it changes with maturation and age.

So, the solitary one will always look green; in the case of the gregarious phase it will
become darker with time. Then the fecundity is more in the case of solitary phase, but they
have smaller size eggs. In the gregarious phase they have fewer number of eggs, but they
are larger size eggs. Because you have larger sized eggs, there is more amount of food that
is available because of which the mortality is less because of which also the development
is fast and you have lesser instars. And, you very quickly convert the eggs into the adults.
Now the morphology is also very different in both of these phases.

Whenever you are looking at a population study, whenever we are talking about the
dynamics, we first began with describing the problem. So, we are studying the problem of,
where these are coming from? How does the population change? Secondly, we define the
population. When we were defining the population, we described all different stages, we
looked at different life forms; then the next stages to look at was the timings, when do they
change? What is causing this change?

(Refer Slide Time: 40:21)

552
Another level of complexity is that even in the case of these phases there is not a one to
one correspondence between the characteristics. Even though we are on the very blunt
skill, earlier we said that these are two different species, then we said that these are the
same species, but then there are these two phases and they have very different
characteristics, but then there is a level of complexity, the complexity is that the solitary
phase will not always show the solitary characteristics. It may at times show some
gregarious characteristics. Similarly, a gregarious phase will not always show all the
gregarious characteristics, it might at times show some solitary characteristics.

Essentially when we looked at our computations, when we said that we have this formula
that is applying to all the cases, this is an extremely theoretical way of explaining things.
If you look at the field situations, in a number of cases you will find things that change in
the fields. In this case, you have individuals with solitaria coloration and gregarious
behavior. This was explained later on because we saw that there is a sequential
development of characters.

First of all there is a change in the behavior; after there is a change in the behavior, we
have physiological changes in terms of some hormones that are produced. Once you have
these hormonal changes, then the color changes and then there will be morphological
changes.

(Refer Slide Time: 42:01)

553
With this level of understanding we came to such a figure where we say that when there is
a very high level of multiplication. When the numbers are increasing; now these numbers
could be increasing because of n number of factors. Because of any factor, if they are
having more amount of food or maybe a better climate then in that case the numbers
increase. Whenever there is an increase in the numbers, then the concentration of these
organisms increases in the area. When you have a higher concentration, so most of the
larvae tend to go towards the gregarious style and once that happens, you have more
amount of aggregation, there is a mutual habituation and a visual compensation.

Essentially what is happening is that when you have all these larvae that are together they
are seeing each other at a very close proximity, they are smelling each other at a very close
proximity and because of which it leads to certain reactions which makes it into a swarm.
The adults that form in these areas, they are also getting mutually habituated, they are also
getting visual compensations, they are also touching each other which then changes the
behavior. Once that happens, you enter into this vicious cycle of the swarm formation.

You will have activation. Once there is activation, there will be a change in the color, then
there will be a change in the specific gravity, there will be morphological changes, there
will be an increase in the fecundity. So, they will lay eggs more often; even though they
are laying less number of eggs, but then they lay eggs much more rapidly. Once that
happens, because you are having more number of eggs then that will also lead to
multiplication. So, it tends to give a positive feedback to itself.

554
(Refer Slide Time: 43:57)

If you have many locusts, this will lead to turning into gregarious phase. Now, if you have
a group of locusts that have turned into gregarious phase, then they will have more
fecundity, because they lay eggs very quickly and these eggs will also have very high
amount of nutrients. If you have more fecundity, that will again lead to more number of
locust which will again lead to this formation of gregarious characteristics which will
further increase fecundity.

Basically once this phenomenon has started, it gives it a positive feedback and so, this the
size of the population goes on increasing. So, you trigger this population once and then it
will start to explode. Once that happens, so, there is this one phase because of which it is
doing a positive feedback, then at the same time it leads to the formation of a swarm. Now,
because you have a large number of individuals that are here in this place. After a while
the resources will start becoming less and when the resources are becoming less, so, in that
case these organisms will form large size forms and they will start to move from one place
to another place. Now we have seen this in the case of migration. In the case of migration
there was a seasonal movement of organisms from one place to another place say in search
of food, in search of better conditions or to get rid of a climate that was extremely harsh.
So, we saw it in the case of birds. In this case, this is not a migration, but this is actually a
nomadic behavior.

555
These locusts, they will move out. They are not going to come back to that same place, but
they will move out in search of more and more amount of food. So, there will be emigration
from this area. Now if you have this activation, once you have this activation, there will
be animals that will be going out, there will be more number of animals that are getting
into the system. And, at the same time there is an increase in excitability of these particular
animals.

If you have these insects that are extremely excited. In that case you will have other
behavioral changes, more amount of swarm formation and then because they are more
excited they will again move into this phase and they will lay even more number of eggs
because they are completely excited animals. Now the point is, till this point we are looking
at the changes in the population. So far, we were looking at only the biotic level changes.
What about the abiotic level changes? Now remember, whenever we are talking about this
population, this population is a part of some community; this community is a part of some
ecosystem.

Obviously, the community is also playing some role in this population. It is also
influencing it positively or negatively. The ecosystem is also influencing it positively or
negatively.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:15)

To understand this completely, people started to look at the community level interactions
and the ecosystem level interactions. What are these interactions? If you look at the

556
community level interactions there are certain diseases, there are certain parasites, there is
some predation and which is leading to some amount of changes. If this phenomenon, if it
went on going again and again, because you have a positive feedback loop. If you have
these more number of locusts, you will always have locusts that are gregarious locust.

So, what is there that will again convert it from a gregarious nature to a solitary nature?
There has to be something. That ‘something’ will act at this stage. So, you have some
community interactions. Now these community interactions could be in the form of
predation of the eggs, it could be in the form of parasitism of the eggs, it could be in the
form of some diseases. At the same time there are some ecosystem level interactions in the
form of the abiotic components. So, you have the influence of the weather.

Now, of course, there has to be some cue that is asking these locusts to turn into a
gregarious phase at some particular point of time. Now, what are those kinds of cues?
Now, the first thing is, if you ask this question, why should this locust convert itself into a
gregarious phase? Now, every organism needs to leave more and more number off springs,
but then we had talked about the carrying capacity: the carrying capacity or k that is there
in every environment.

If there is a situation in which the population size is increasing so, there has to be a larger
carrying capacity of the environment to cater to the needs of the large size population. So,
if you have a larger population, if there has to be a population increase, there has to be an
increase in the carrying capacity of the environment. In this case, the environment consists
of say food; now if you think like a locust, if you want to have more number of eggs, there
should also be more amount of food that is available for the off springs to get. Because
remember, in the case of evolution, we only talk about fitness.

557
(Refer Slide Time: 49:51)

Now, fitness is not just an organism that is producing more number of off springs, but then
more and more of those off springs should also survive to the next generation. Now, you
consider two locusts, let us call them L1 and let us call them L2. Now, the L1 locust has
some genes because of which it lays a very large number of eggs in a season that does not
have large amount of food. You have more number of eggs and you have less food. In that
case most of these off springs die out. At the end, what will happen? You will have that
this particular gene that was leading to this behavior this gene will reduce in its frequency.

Because it is not able to leave enough number of viable off springs for the next generation.
Now let us consider L2 that has some genes because of which it only lays more number of
eggs when there is more food. In that case these off springs are able to survive better
because of which this particular gene increase in frequency. Through the generations, we
will find a situation in which more and more of these genes, the L1 kind of genes, they
will be removed from generation to generation and more and more L2 kind of genes will
increase in the gene pool.

So, there has to be some correspondence between the amount of food and the number of
eggs that a particular organism is laying or this particular population is laying. So,
evolution can occur at the level of individuals or it can even occur at the level of the
populations. So, if you want to have more and more of these characteristics there has to be
some cue especially in the form of weather. Because, if you have weather where you have

558
more amount of moisture, you have more number of plants that are growing. So, in that
case, the population will get this cue that it should have more and more number of eggs.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:57)

Then we come to this particular model. You have favorable weather which increases the
density, which further triggers the gregarization phase. So, the solitary locusts are
converting into a gregarious locust. Once that happens, you have the vicious cycle in which
this gregariousness increases gregariousness even further, it leads to an increased fertility.
You have an even more increase in density. It is forming swarms and it is going out and
then you have the impact of predation, you have impacts of parasitism or probably you
have a weather condition that is not that good. In that case, the density would reduce. If
the density reduces, in that case this gregarization is then reversed.

So, from the gregarious phase the locust converts into the solitary phase and this whole
phenomenon stops and it will be in the solitary phase till it gets a favorable weather. So,
probably it gets a favorable weather once on 15 or 20 years. So, this is when the population
increases in size; now once you have come to that level of understanding then the next
question would be, how is this organism able to know that the weather is favorable or not?
What are the kinds of cues that it is getting from the environment?

Now we are talking about behavioral ecology. The second thing would be, if you have an
increase in density then, how does this organism convert from solitary behavior to the

559
gregarious behavior? In that case now, we are getting into the biochemical aspects of this
ecology and this work is still continuing.

(Refer Slide Time: 53:35)

We know that there are certain juvenile hormones that are leading to this change in the
color and there are some neurochrome molecules that are also leading to this change in
color and we are now working on these aspects. Whenever we talk about a population
study, it can be studied in different aspects. You can study the static characteristics, you
can study the dynamic characteristics; now whatever you are studying you will first start
with defining the problem, what is the particular parameter that you want to study. You
will start with defining the population. You will start by defining the area in which you are
going to perform this study. When we are defining the population will characterize the
population. Once we have characterized the population next we will ask, what are the
particular times of year in which there are these changes? Because of which we got to
know about the weather changes. If the size of the population is increasing because, we
are having more number of eggs, then probably it is just before the rainy season. Next you
will ask, At what particular stage are we seeing the changes? In this case we are seeing the
changes in the level of larvae and also in the level of adults. These are the two stages at
which we are seeing the changes and then you try to join all of these dots together and
once you have an understanding, next you move on to the biochemical aspects.

560
So, what are the specific factors that are making this organism capable of sensing changes
in the weather or sensing changes in the density? We said that when we keep these larvae
together and they become a migratoid larvae. How are they able to know this? Is it because
of touch? Is that because of smell?

(Refer Slide Time: 55:33)

So, people have even done experiments in which you have this green colored larvae. Then
you keep it close to a dark colored organism and then if you allow this larvae to see this
dark colored organism, but it is not able to sense or smell this dark colored organism, it
continues to remain in a green color. Probably because you are separating them away using
some piece of glass. Probably these particular larvae, it is kept in a glass bottle and in this
case even though it is able to see this dark colored individuals in the surrounding it is not
able to change itself. But then, if you provide some holes in this compartment so that it is
able to smell the darker colored organisms in the surrounding, then it is able to change its
color into a darker form, which will also tell us that there are some pheromones that are
involved.

When we are looking at these population level studies, we can get into as much detail as
we want to, but whenever we are starting you need to remember that you have to look at
static versus dynamic problems and the three stages at which you will work with your
problem; defining the problem in the population, defining or understanding the time of the

561
year in which you have the changes and understanding the stage in the life cycle in which
you are seeing the changes.

So, that is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

562
 Wild Life Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 16
Community nature and parameters

“Namaste”,

Today, we begin a new module which is Community Ecology. Community ecology is the
study of ecology at the level of the community or the application of the ecological
principles to understand how a community works, and how a community functions? In
this module we will be having 3 lectures.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:33)

The first one is community nature and parameters, what is the nature of a community?
What are the specific traits that we can discern from a community? How is one community
different from another community? What are the species that are found in a community?
Is there any specific relationship between species and communities? and so on.

In the second lecture we will have community changes and ecological succession.
Ecological succession is the process by which a community moves from being a certain
kind of community to another kind of community. For instance, if we have say a piece of

563
rock. This piece of rock might get invaded by certain species they will formal community
say a lichen community.

And then with time it will change, because these lichens will change the structure of the
rock; they will change the chemical composition; they will gave out certain chemicals,
certain enzymes, certain acids into the rock that might lead to the breakage of these rocks.
And at the same time they will also produce a lot of organic material. Once that happens
you will have some amount of soil formation, which will make way for other species such
as mosses, which will then out complete the lichens. And then from mosses will move to
grasses and then 2 shrubs to trees to a final community, which we call is climax
community, which remains stable and does not change.

Succession is the process in which these communities change with time. From a lichen
community, you have a moss community then you have another community that is
dominated by herbs, then another community that is dominated by shrubs and so on and
this process is known as ecological succession. So, it answers the question, does a
community change? And if so, how does it change? And what will be the final result of
such a change? What will be the climax community that will be formed?

And in the third lecture, we will have a look at community organization. Let us begin with
the first lecture which is community nature and parameters.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:45)

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Let us begin with the first lecture which is community nature and parameters. We begin
with the definition of a community. “A community is an assemblage of populations of
living organisms in a prescribed area or a habitat”, that is, it is a collection of populations
of different species. Here you have a number of species that are living together they are
living in a certain area. So, the area concept here is important, if you have certain species
that are living in say Kanpur and there are certain species that are living in say Coimbatore.

These 2 will not form a single community, but then if you have different species that are
living together in say Kanha Tiger Reserve, we will say that it will form a community.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:27)

When you have 2 different communities the border between both of these communities is
known as an ecotone. It has a transition area where 2 communities meet and integrate and
it may sharp or it may be diffused.

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(Refer Slide Time: 03:47)

Essentially what we are saying is, suppose here you have a water body and right next to
the water body you have a grassland. The grassland will be having certain species, that are
living together and the water body will be having certain species that are living together.
If we talk about 2 different communities what is the border? So, this line is telling us the
border and this is known as an ecotone. In this case the ecotone is a sharp ecotone, because
we can very clearly see that anything that is on the right side of this line is a water body
and anything on the left side of this water body is a grassland. In this case have sharp
ecotone.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:43)

566
Let us considered another situation where we are considering a forest area and in this forest
area we have certain trees and then after while you will see trees at a bit longer distances
apart. And then you also have the grasslands.

In such a scenario we can very clearly see that this is the forest region and this is a grassland
region. We can say that this is a forest community on the left side and this is a grassing
community on the right side. Then where is exactly the border of the grassland, or the
border between the forest and the grassland. Is it say here or is it here? That is something
that we do not know for surety. Because, we are seeing that the grassland has invaded into
the forest and the grassland has come to this end or we can say that the forest has invaded
into the grassland and we can see some trees species here in the grassland.

In this case the kind of ecotone that we are having is a diffused ecotone. It is a very wide
ecotone and this is known as a diffused ecotone. Coming back to the definition a transition
area where two communities meet and integrate and it maybe sharp or it may be diffuse,
that is an ecotone.

When we are talking about any community, when we are talking about say a forest
community or a grassland community, they will be certain attributes of that community
certain characteristics of that community.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:40)

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Let us now have a look the community attributes. The attributes of a community are co
occurrence of certain species. For instance, if there is a forest and we say that there is a
tiger that lives in the forest. We are talking about the co-occurrence of certain
communities, where you have a forest you might have a tiger or we can talk about co-
occurrence of species of plants that come up together. For instance in the case of a Sal
forest, we have a number of associated species of Sal. There is a species that is known as
a Sinduri species. In the case of Sinduri, this tree will reside in the Sal forest.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:27)

Let us say that, here we have the tall trees of Sal and in the area in between you might have
these small trees, they are known as Sinduri or Mallotus and their associated with the Sals.
Essentially where you have a Sal forest you will also find the Mallotus trees. Here we are
talking about the co-occurrence of certain species. These species are occurring together,
that is one attribute. We will call this a community of the Sal forest because you are seeing
these tree that are always associated together. The second one is recurrence of groups of
the same species.

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(Refer Slide Time: 08:20)

These groups tend to recur now; when we say recur we mean that if you have say in a
large landscape, if in this area you have a Sal forest and in this area you have another Sal
forest, and in this area you have a third Sal forest. In all three of these Sal forest you will
find Sal trees and you will find Mallotus trees. They tend to recur. Here also you have
Sal here you also have the Mallotus, here also you will have Sal and Mallotus together.
So, these groups of species they only occur together, but they also tend to recur
whenever you have another community of the same type.

It is not like in one particular patch of Sal forest, you have Sal and Mallotus. In another
patch you do not have a Mallotus maybe you have some other species. So, that will not
happen. It is a community because it has certain species that are occurring together and
wherever you have a similar community you will find, the similar species that are coming
together. The third attribute is that of homeostasis or self-regulation. In the case of a
community because you have so, many different kinds of species that are living together,
there is a certain amount of homeostasis or self-regulation that occurs in this community.

569
(Refer Slide Time: 09:47)

For instance, if you say talk about grass; we are talking about a grassland community. In
this you will have grasses of different species; let us say species 1, species 2, species 3,
then maybe there you will have some insects and these are insects that are feeding on grass.
Here you have species 4, species 5, species 6, then maybe you have some insectivorous
animals. Let us say you have species 7, species 8 and species 9.

What do we mean by homeostasis? Suppose this particular species of grass, it has

proliferated itself. Essentially you have this particular grassland in which the earlier
composition was let us say one-third was there for all the 3 species. So, you had, for any
patch you will have 33 % of species 1, 33 % of species 2 and 33 % of species 3 or let us
say 34 % of species 3.

Suppose from this state this community changes in a way, that now you have let us say 10
% of species 1, say 20 % of species 3 and let us say you have 70 % of species 2. So, in this
situation what we are saying is that, the species 2 is tending to proliferate at the expense
of species 1 and species 3. Once that happens the situation is that you have species 1, that
is eaten by all these 3 insects, you have species 2 that is eaten by all these 3 insects and
you have the species 3 that is eaten by all these 3 species of insects.

If a species 2 proliferates a lot. In that case, it is possible that the insect population will
now tend to preferentially feed upon species 2, because it is now more commonly
available. If you have certain species that are not having a very specific selectivity for the

570
kind of food that they want to eat, if any species tends to overshoot itself, so, they would
be a number of other organisms that will regulate it and they will bring the situation back
to the status-quo . It will tend to bring it back to a situation where all these 3 species are
together.

If there is any small perturbation in the community. The community tends to move back
to the original state, which is known as homeostasis or self-regulation. It will self-regulate
itself so that the species composition remains the same.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:51)

These are the 3 community attributes. Now, we will look at some community
characteristics. Now, what are the different characteristics through which we can
differentiate one community from another community? In the case of attributes we were
asking the question, how do you define a community? What are the things that are common
between different communities? And in the case of community characteristics we are
asking, what are the things that are different in different communities?

If we say that there is a community of Sal forest and there is a community in teak forest,
how are both of these communities different from each other is something that will ask in
the case of community characteristics. The first characteristic is species diversity; which
species are living together. Here you can ask which species and also how many different
individuals are living in that particular area.

571
For instance in the case of a Sal forest, we will be having Sal, we will be having Mallotus.
In the case of a teak forest, you will be having teak plants, may be you will be having some
mango trees, maybe you will be having some Jamun trees and so on.

Species diversity is different in different communities, different species live in different

communities more or less. The second characteristic is the growth form and structure.
What is the vertical stratification in a community?

(Refer Slide Time: 14:24)

If we talk about an equatorial rainforest. In the case of an equatorial rainforest, you will
have a top community, a top canopy that is comprised of very tall trees. And these trees
are practically covering up the whole of the canopy and then you will be having some trees
that form a middle storey. So, these are those species that are more shade tolerant.

They do not require a very great amount of sunlight, because of which they are able to
survive below the first or the top canopy. Then you will be having some shrubs that are
growing, you will be having some grasses that are growing, then you might be having
some climbers on these trees, you might be having some other species that are living on
these trees. So, such as you can have some orchids that are living on top of these trees.

This will lead to a vertical structure or a vertical stratification, where we can talk about the
top canopy, we can talk about the middle canopy, we can talk about the ground cover, we
can talk about the climbers or we can talk about the epiphytes that are living on these trees.

572
Now, such kind of a structure or such kind of a growth form is different in different
communities, if for instance we go from this equatorial rainforest to say a shrub forest.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:59)

In the case of a shrub forest you would not be having this top middle canopies and all, but
what will see is that you have a shrub here probably a tree somewhere and maybe some
grasses somewhere. But, here we cannot talk about this vertical stratification. The vertical
stratification is seen in the case of an equatorial rainforest where you have different layers.
In this case you do not have different layers you just have species that are distributed here
and there.

The growth form and the structure, that is the trees shrubs herbs mosses and the vertical
stratification that is brought about by them is different in different communities. That is
also a community characteristic. The third it is characteristics is which is the dominant
species?

Dominant species are those that are highly successful ecologically and which determine to
a considerable extent the conditions under which the associated species must grow. When
we talk about a dominant species, if you go to a Sal forest you will say that Sal is a
dominant species. Because, that is determining the characteristics of the Sal forest, because
you have so many tall Sal plants in that area.

573
The amount of moisture that is there available in the ground cover is very high, the amount
of sunlight is very low. Essentially the characteristics of that community are being
determined by this particular specious which is the Sal or Shorea robusta or in the case of
certain communities let us consider a community which is there on a ficus tree.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:44)

You have a large sized ficus tree and on that tree, now, this is a keystone species and it is
giving rise to a number of fruits and various parts of the tree are edible, the leaves are
edible and so on. And so, you have a community of a number of birds that are living in
this area.

You will have different species of birds that live on this particular tree, you will have
different species of insects that live on this tree, you will have certain mammals that live
on this tree, say things like squirrels, that are living on the tree, maybe you will be having
some reptiles that live on this particular tree, you might also have some epiphytes that are
living on this tree, epiphytes such as your orchids that live on this particular tree.

All of these species dependent on this particular tree which is the ficus tree. Now, if you
talk about this particular community of all these organisms that live together and whenever
you have a ficus tree in the surroundings you will find all these different species that live
together.

574
There is this consortium and there is also a recurrence that is seen in different areas in
different Sal trees. And when we talk about such communities you have this ficus tree that
is responsible for this congregation to occur. We will say that ficus tree in this case is the
dominant species. Dominance can be there out of 2 different ways. The first thing is the
numerical abundance, if you have a tree that has there available in a very vast numbers
such as in the case of a Sal forest, when we talk about Sal trees there in a vast number;
plus they are also determining the conditions under which the associated species will have
to grow.

We will say that they are the dominant species or in the other case if there are any species
that are keystone species, in which case their impact on the whole community is much
greater than their numerical abundance we will say that they are also the dominant species.

In different communities we can have different species that are dominant. In a Sal forest,
we have Sal that is a dominant species. In a teak forests, we have teak that is a dominant
species. In the case of a mixed forest you can have a situation where there is no dominance.
Dominance also varies between different communities and which is why we study it as
part of community characteristics.

The fourth one is relative abundance. Relative abundance is the relative proportion of
different species in the community.

(Refer Slide Time: 20:42)

575
You can have, say a community where you are having species and their abundance.

You can have species 1 to 6. Let us say that we have this community of 6 species and the
abundance is say the species one has 1000 individuals; 2 has 5 and so on. Now, that is one
sort of a community. Let us talk about another community, where we have the same
species, but then their abundance is say 200, 205, 250, 180, 210 and 195.

Now, in this case, in the case of the first community; this is community 2. In the case of
the first community we will say that this species, species 1 dominates this community so
much that it looks very much like a monoculture. If you go into this community you will
say that you have only seen species 1, because species 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are so rare that you
will hardly find them. Whereas, in the case of the second community, you are seeing that
all of these species have roughly equal number of individuals so, wherever you go we will
find probably all of these different species together. Here we are talking about the relative
abundance.

Now, relative abundance is asking, the relative proportions of different species in the
community. In this case in the case of community 1 the relative abundance of species 1 is
very high, in the case of community 2, the relative abundance of all different species is
roughly the same. This is a characteristic that will depend or that will differ between
different communities and so, we studied it as under community characteristics.

The 5th one is the trophic structure or who eats whom. This is something that we have
dealt with in the case of energetics and that is also a community characteristic, because in
different communities, you can have a different trophic structure, because you have
different species, they are having different roles and so on.

576
(Refer Slide Time: 23:06)

Next we move to the description of a community. Now, we have looked at the attributes
of communities, when do we call something a community. What are the common features
that you find in a community? We will look at community characteristics which is; what
are the things that are difference between one community to another community.

How do you describe a community? Let us say that we went to a Sal forest. How do we
describe this community of a Sal forest? In this case we will define it using these 3 terms,
the first point is species richness.

In any community we will define how many species are found in that particular
community? In this particular example, we are having 6 species. So, we will say that the
community richness in this case is 6.

Next, we talk about this species abundance in terms of number of individuals, biomass or
cover that is being used by these different species. Abundance is something that we already
saw in this particular example. In the case of community 1, the species 1 was over
abundant; in the case of community 2 everybody was roughly equal in abundance.

This is about the number of individuals that we found of different species, but in place of
numbers we could go by say the biomass of different species that are found. For example,
in the case of this particular community of the ficus tree, we can say consider that the ficus

577
tree has a mass of say 5000 kgs, then your bird species 1, has say 20 kgs, your bird species
2 has say 10 kgs, bird species 3 has say 15 kgs, insect species 1 has say 20 kgs and so on.

So, in place of going with the numbers we could go with the masses or the biomass or the
third way is to go by the cover.

(Refer Slide Time: 25:16)

In the case of a cover, if this is your area, or this is your community, you can say, so, for
instance if there is a grassland, we could take a view from the top, and suppose the species
1 is found here, then it is found here, and then it is found here. So, this is the first species.
The, second species is say found here, it is found here and maybe it is found here, in a big
chunk.

Now, the third species is say found in this area only and then you can have a fourth species
that is found in this area; maybe a fifth species, that you find in this area and say this area.
And let us say a sixth species that you are finding only in this area. If you are able to see
all these species separately from a top view, in place of going with the numbers or going
with the biomass, you can just take the area that is being used by these different species.

In the case of species 1, we will add up this area, along with this area, and along with this
area. And let us say that species one is acquiring an area of say 10 hectares.

In case of species 2, let us say that it is 7 hectares, in the case of species 3, let us say 5
hectares and so on. So, we can come to our computation of abundance not just in terms of

578
the number of individuals or the biomass, but also in terms of the covered that is being, or
the area that has been covered by these different species. While describing the community
the first thing was how many species are there, second is how much is this abundance of
these different species and then on the basis of the abundance we can talk about the species
dominance.

In the case of dominance we can rank as per the abundance, that is the number basal area
etc; and then we can say that this is the species that is the most dominant species in this
particular area. In this case, we will say, that this is species, the one is the dominant species.
In the case of this example we will say that this species that is having 250 individuals that
is the dominant species. Here, we will say that the ficus tree that has the highest amount
of biomass that is the dominant species. This is the way in which we describe a community.
So, you talk about species richness, abundance and dominance.

Non dominance can also be in terms of the basal area.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:01)

What is basal area? Suppose, you have a forest and in this forest you have these different
trees. When we are talking about of basal area, we can take say, a standard height. We can
take the best height and at this best height we can say that this is the area. Let us use another
colour. This is the area that is used by these different trees.

So, in place of just the number or the cover we can also go with the basal area.

579
(Refer Slide Time: 28:34)

Let us now look at some ways in which we find these different descriptive factors. The
first one is relative density. Now, relative density is number of individuals of species x,
divided by total number of individuals of all the different species into 100. So, when we
are talking about the relative density what we are doing is, in this case we are totaling up
the total number. So, here you have 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14 and 24. So, here you have 1024.
So, that is the total number of individuals that you have in this particular community.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:21)

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Now, relative density of species 1 will be given by (1000 / 1024)*100 %.

Relative density of species 2 will be given by (5/1024)*100 %.

For species 3, it will be (3 / 1024)*100 %,

For species 4, (2 /1024) *100 %,

For species 5, (4 / 1024) * 100 % and

For species 6, (10 / 1024) * 100 %.

When we are talking about the relative density, we are asking this question what is the
number of individuals that are present in a particular species as a fraction of the total
number of individuals of all the species that are there in this particular community?

The second thing is relative frequency. Now, relative frequency is frequency of a species
x divided by sum of frequency values for all the species into 100, where frequency is
defined as the probability of finding the species in any one quadrate. Now, what does that
mean?

(Refer Slide Time: 30:39)

Suppose, we have this forest or this community and in this community you have
individuals of different species. So, let us say that this is species 1, 2, 3, 4 and let us say 5,
then this is 6.

581
Now, this is a particular community that is comprised of 6 different species. So, you have
the black species, you have the blue species, you have light green, you have dark green,
you have purple, I think that we left out dark blue. These are the 6 different species that
are found in this particular community. Now, let us take a quadrate. Now, when we are
talking about quadrate, we are taking a fixed size sample from this particular community.

Let us that we are taking a quadrate here. Now, in this quadrate you found one of light
green, one of black, one of purple and one dark blue. Let us take another quadrate of the
same size. In this case you found one of black, you found 2 of dark green, you found one
of light green. Let us take a third quadrate here. So, here you found 3 of black, you found
one of light blue, one of dark green and say one of dark blue.

In this case when we are talking about the relative frequency, the question that we are
asking is what is the frequency of a particular species?

The frequency of a particular species is, if you are taking this quadrates again and again,
what is the probability that will find this particular species in that particular quadrate. In
this particular example we took 3 quadrates. And in the case of species 1, we found that
this species was found in 3 quadrates, it was found here, it was found here, and it was
found here. So, the frequency of this particular species is 3/3.

In the case of the blue species we only found it once. So, the frequency is 1 / 3. In the case
of light green it is 1 / 3, and so on. Now, this was a very simple example, but then when
we do this quadrating sampling again and again we can come to a very precise value of
the relative frequency. So, relative frequency says that if you are going into the field, you
are drawing up a quadrate at any random location, what is the probability that you will
find species 1.

In the case of species 1, it is so common in this particular community, that wherever you
draw a quadrate, there is roughly a 100 percent chance that you will find the species 1,
whereas, in the case of the species that is light blue in colour, it is only found in one out of
every 3 quadrates.

Because, the numbers of these individuals is very less, it is only 3 individuals that are there
and this particular community. So, frequency also gives us in indication of how different
species are having different number of individuals. That is the relative frequency;

582
frequency of species x divided by some of the frequency values of all the species into 100
percent.

The third one is relative dominance. We can define dominance in terms of the basal area.
So, we can say that it is basal area of species x divided by total basal area of all the species
into 100 percent.

When we add all these 3 values; (relative density of species x) + (relative frequency of
species x) + (relative dominance of species x), we get to a value that is known as the
importance value.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:59)

Importance value of species x = (relative density) + (relative frequency) + (relative

dominance).

In all these 3 we can see that the maximum values can be 100 percent. Suppose there is
this community in which you only have 1 species. In that case you only have species x.
Total individuals and the number of individuals here is equal. You have a value of 100
percent. Similarly, the maximum value of relative frequency is 100 percent and the
maximum value of relative dominance again is 100 percent. The importance value it varies
from 0 to 300 and the higher the value a particular species has we say that, that particular
species is very important for this particular community.

583
That is about the importance value of any particular species in any community. This is a
way in which we can describe a community.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:03)

After description let us have a look at the associations between species. Suppose, you look
at a number of different quadrates. For instance here in this example we had taken 3
different quadrates. We have this first quadrate, we have the second quadrate and the third
quadrate. In the first quadrate we say that the green, the black, the purple and the blue are
coming together. In the second one, we say that the green the black and the light blue are
coming together in the third one.

In the second, when we are seeing that the black, the dark blue, light blue and the green
are coming together. Similarly, if we take n number of quadrates, we can say that between
any 2 species we can have 4 different kinds of relations. The first relation is that if you
have species y. So, species x is present in most of the situations. In which case we will say
that there is a positive correlation, if y is present, x is present, if x is present, y is present
or you can have another positive correlation in terms of absence.

So, if you do not have x you do not have y. In which case we can say that either both of
these species are dependent on each other because of which they are found together in
most of the cases or they are so dependent on each other that if one is not there the second
will also not be there. They are interdependent on each other or maybe they are completely

584
associated with each other. This kind of dependence can be say, one way, in which you
can have one species that is creating conditions for another species to thrive.

(Refer Slide Time: 37:51)

For instance you can have a situation where you have a very dry area and so, in this dry
area, wherever you have a large sized tree there only you will find this small shrub that is
found because if you have this small shrub outside. Because of the sun’s heat the shrub
will die off. Wherever you have this tree you will find the shrub and where you do not
have the tree you will not find the shrub. If that is the kind of relationship we will say that
both these species x and y are associated with each other, when one is present the second
is also present and if one is absent the second will also not be found there.

On the other hand, you can have a negative association. So, a negative association is if you
have species x that is present. So, species y will be absent and where species y is present
species x will be absent. You can have either x or y, but both of these will not come
together. We say that this, that any 2 species in a community can be positively associated
or they can be negatively associated.

If there is a positive association between x and y most of the sample quadrates will have
associations of type a or b, that is either both are present in the quadrate or none of them
is present in the quadrate. On the other hand, if you have a negative association most of
the sample quadrates will have associations of type b or c that is only x is present or only
y is present.

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(Refer Slide Time: 39:20)

And if we look at the associations, this is how we can see? In this example we are looking
at 2 different species. And if you have very high association or very high presence of first
species, the second species is not found in that area, if you have a very high association of
or presence of this particular species, the second one is not found in this area. So, you have
a curve that goes like this. In the case of a positive association the curve will look like this.
So, if you have less of a, you will have less of b, if you have more of a, you will have more
of b. So, that is how you describe the associations between different species of a
community. How does any particular community behave?

(Refer Slide Time: 40:05)

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To answer that question we have 3 different theories of community. The first one is
Clements’ organismic theory which says that the community is a super organism or a
discrete unit, which are boundaries; it exhibits properties that are more than the sum of the
individual parts. Species interactions are assumed to play a major role in the development
and regulation of the communities. But Clement’s thought was that these communities
they behave like organisms. So, just like in our case we have different organ systems we
have different organs that are working together so that we are able to survive and purses.
Similarly, in the case of a community it behave like an organism and different species and
different individuals that are there as part of this community, they are behaving like
different organs and organ systems. Once you have all of these organs and organ systems
together then only the individual is able to function and once it starts functioning it is able
to regulate itself.

Similarly, in the case of a community all these different populations and species and
individuals once they have come together it becomes a self-contained unit. And once it is
the self-contained unit it is able to regulate itself and it will behave like an organism. It
will get properties that are very different from what are the properties of it is constituents.
So, there are a number of emergent properties that a community will have.

On the other hand we have Hubbell’s neutral theory which says that this species are
functionally equivalent and the abundance of a population of a species changes by random
birth and death.

In Hubbell’s view, the associations and the population sizes are governed by random
values of births and deaths. And then, the third theory is Gleason’s individualistic or
continuum theory which says that the abundance of a population of a species changes
gradually along complex environmental gradients. Communities are not tightly structured,
but are merely coincidences resulting from chance dispersal, environmental sorting and
species interactions and communities are less predictable and species interactions have a
much reduced role in determining the structure of the communities.

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(Refer Slide Time: 42:27)

Essentially what it is saying is that, suppose you have in an area, you have gradients of
different environmental variables. Let us say that this area is dry to wet and then you have
high temperature to low temperature.

In this case you will have certain species that prefer high temperature and dryness. So,
they will more be found in this area and in other areas the probability of finding them
reduces. There is, say another species that prefers this kind of an environment and in other
areas it will be less found. Let us say that there is this third species that prefers this kind
of an environment and in other areas it is found in very less numbers. There is this fourth
one that is found in this area and in other areas, it is found very less. And then probably
there is a fifth one that is found in these intermediate areas and in other areas it is found in
less numbers.

In terms of this individualistic theory or the continuum theory, what is happening is that
different species are choosing the areas where they want depending on their own
requirements? They are based on complex environmental gradients and because of this
you have these species that are found in different areas. Now if you are talking about a
community. If say, we are talking about this area and we are saying that, this is a
community that is dominated by the yellow species, then that is not because all these
species have come together to form a, to perform a specific function, but it is just that
every species is just looking for its own kind of atmosphere, the best habitat that it can

588
survive in and then just by chance it so happens that you have a predominance of the
yellow individuals with some red, some purple, some blue and so on.

Whereas, if you talk about a community that is found in this area, we again have another
community that we can describe as having a very high abundance or very high dominance
of the purple species and very few number of individuals of blue and light blue and red
individuals.

Now, the difference between these theories is that in the case of Clements theory, when
once these organisms have come together once they have formed this community, now
this community is having its own emergent properties. So, it is self-regulating itself. If
there is an abundance of probably the death of a number of individuals of a particular
species, the community will function in a way that it will be able to bring that species back
to the normal status.

Whereas, if we talk about the individualistic theory it says that everything is coming up
randomly and so, there is no emergent properties that is coming up. And essentially if there
is any perturbation to this community, there is no way that this communities able to come
back because there is no homeostasis that is working here, but just that every species is
working based on its own requirements.

We see both these extremes in the nature. For instance, if we talk about a community that
is living in a water body, then it will have some interactions and some imagine properties
that are coming up in terms of the organismic theory, but then if we look at individual
species then we can also look at their properties based on the Gleason’s theories. So, both
these extremes are found and then depending on what is the kind of community that we
are looking, or what are the kinds of interactions or what are the kinds of environments,
that this community is surviving in, we will find different kinds of characteristics

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(Refer Slide Time: 46:45).

Let us have a look at guilds. Guild is a group of species which utilize resources in a similar
way. Now, when we were talking about a community here we were saying that we have
so many individuals of species 1, so many individuals of species 2. There is another way
to understand the structure of the community not just a species wise, but then we can group
these species. So, probably both of these species are say producers. So, you have 2 species
of grass that is there in this community. We can club both these species together.

Similarly, we can club those organisms that are feeding on grass together, we can club the
insectivorous organisms together, when we look at these clubbed species together we are
talking about the guilds.

A guild is a group of species which utilize resources in a similar way. Example a group of
fruit eating birds in a rainforest, or a guild of forest-floor dwelling birds etc. Here, we are
talking about those species that are performing a similar function; they are utilizing
resources in a similar way.

Now, because species within a guild utilize the same resources, then we expect them to
complete more strongly with each other then with species from different guilds. If you talk
about birds that are insectivorous. So, we are grouping them together, because the amount
of interspecific competition that they will have within a guild will be much greater than
the interspecific competition that we have between 2 guilds.

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The amount of competition between fruit eating birds and insects eating birds will be much
less as compared to the amount of competition that we have between one fruit eating bird
and another fruit eating bird. The concept of guild is important, because in this case, in
place of just looking at the number of different species, we can say that you have the
producer in this case is just 1 which is the ficus tree and then we can say that the insects
that are dependent on this particular tree are say 10,000 the insectivorous birds are say 500
and so on.

Once we group these species that are utilizing similar resources together. In that case we
can bring out much easier way of understanding the functioning of this particular
community. This community has one producer that is supporting 10,000 organisms that
are directly dependent on this particular tree and which are further supporting 500
insectivorous birds that are dependent on these particular insects. The concept of guild
thus enables us to simplify the understanding of the working of the community.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:48)

From the guilds we can move on to the niches. The ecological niche of a species is the
multidimensional description of its resource needs, habitat requirements and
environmental tolerances.

Essentially when we are talking about these different organisms that are living. In the case
of guild we are looking at one particular resource which is the food. If you bring in other
resources such as the habitat. What are the species that live on the ground, what are the

591
species that live on the branches, what are the species that live on the foliage or we look
at other environmental characteristics? What are the species that require a very hot region,
what are the species that require a cool region, what are the species that require a cold
region?

In place of using just one particular set of characteristics, we can now look at
multidimensional characteristics.

(Refer Slide Time: 50:50)

You have the first dimension which is the resource of food, you have another dimension
which is talking about the height requirements, there is yet another dimension that is
talking about say the temperature requirements and another dimension that is probably
talking about the humidity requirements. And once you have this n dimensional structure
and you try to fit in different species of a community into this structure, you can find those
species that have very similar requirements. When you have species at a very similar
requirements, we say that they are living in that particular niche.

Niche is the multidimensional description of its resource needs, habitat requirement and
environmental tolerances. For 2 species that are occupying the same niche, the competition
will be much higher. In a community, we can talk about the interspecies competition or
we can talk about the interspecies competition in the case of guilds where they are using
the same food resources, in which case the competition will be higher, or we can talk about

592
the interspecies competition between organisms that are occupying the same niche, in
which case the competition will be the extremely huge.

Niche is divided into 2 different categories, the first one is a fundamental niche and the
second one is the realized niche. Fundamental niche tells you the answer to the potential
set of conditions which a species can occupy. It is determined experimentally and it is also
known as a pre competitive niche.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:44)

In this case we are saying that there is one particular species that can say occupy this much
of environmental conditions. It can go from say this level of temperature to this level of
temperature, it can go from this level of humidity to this level of humidity, it can go from
say this much amount of food to this much amount of food and so on.

This is a fundamental niche. These are the set of conditions under which this particular
organism can thrive or this particular species can thrive. If you do not have any other
competition, but then when you put in competition so, for instance there is a frugivorous
bird which is feeding on fruits.

So, that can live on these many areas in this particular tree. That will be the fundamental
niche. But then when you put in another set of competitors so, it is possible that the niche
might change. The only areas where you can have these bird is this area, because in this

593
case the other areas which are outside of the realized niche, they have been occupied by
some other species that have a common fundamental niche.

(Refer Slide Time: 54:06)

Essentially because you had this tree so, probably you have this tree and this tree is having
say fruits here. And then you also have a climber that is moving on this tree and this
climber also gives rise to fruits and it is giving rise to fruits here. In the case or probably
you also have a shrub nearby. So, there is a shrub and this shrub also has some fruits. Now,
in the case of one species of birds, you can have the species 1 that can feed on all the three
species of fruits. So, the fundamental niche would be all these 3 combined together. And
then you can also have another species, say species 2 that can also feed on these fruits, that
can also feed on these fruits, and that can also feed on these fruits. And then say a third
species 3, which can feed on these fruits and these fruits and these fruits. .

In this case, we will say that the fundamental niche of all these 3 birds are coinciding,
because all can make use of all these different resources. And so, the multidimensional
requirements of all these 3 species are one and the same, but then when they are competing
against each other so, it is possible that the species 2 will preferentially feed on this
particular area and it will not feed on these areas. So, it will stop feeding on the fruits that
are there on the canopy, because it is not able to compete with species 1 there. And it will
not feed on these fruits that are growing in the shrub because it is not able to compete with
species 3. So, the realized niche becomes much smaller than the fundamental niche.

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(Refer Slide Time: 56:03)

If you look at the characteristics of the niches, the fundamental niche is much greater than
the realized niche or in some cases where the amount of competition is very less, you can
have a situation where the fundamental niche and the realized niche are one and the same.
Now, realized niche for populations of the same species made differ, because of the
difference in extent conditions between the 2 locations. So, basically you have this
populations of the same species, you have this particular frugivorous bird species 2, that
is living on this particular tree here.

(Refer Slide Time: 56:39)

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But, it is also possible that at some other location, you also have this tree, and you also
have the same climber and you also have the shrub, but then there is no other competitors.
In this case the species 2 can feed on the canopy fruits, it can feed on the climber fruits
and it can feed on the shrub fruits.

The realized niche for populations of the same species may differ in different areas because
of the extant conditions at these 2 locations because of the amount of competition or maybe
the availability of the food sources. Specialized species have narrow niches, generalist
species have broad niches. A species which is generalized can feed on a number of things,
so, it will have a broad and much broader niche. The fundamental niche elaborates on the
various roles of the species and the realized niche elaborates on what the species actually
do.

In the case of a fundamental niche we have talking about, the various roles of this species,
what it can do? It can feed on these different fruits and then it can lead to the dispersal of
seeds of these particular fruits, but then the realized niche tells us what these species are
actually doing. Even though your species 2 can feed on these 3 different kinds of fruits
and it can disperse the seeds of all these different kinds of fruits, but then probably it is
dispersing the seeds of only one particular species. So, that is the realized niche and species
are well adapted to their realized niches.

(Refer Slide Time: 58:03)

The next thing that we can look for is the index of similarity.

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(Refer Slide Time: 58:10)

If we have 2 different communities. You have this community, you can let us say, you
have the second community, we can ask the question, how many species are there that are
common between both of these species in terms of the total number of species that are
found in these 2 communities. So, index of similarity is given by 2c, where c is the number
of species that occur in both the communities divided by a plus b, where a is the number
of species and the first community and b is the number of species in the second community.

Index of similarity = 2c / (a+b)

(Refer Slide Time: 58:52)

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On the basis of index of similarity we can ask the question, how many species are there
that are common between both of these communities? And depending on the association
of different species with communities, we can have accidental species which are rare
species which can be found in different communities. So, they are randomly found in
different communities, or you can have indifferent species which are not rare species they
are available in plenty, but still they do not have a preference for any particular community.

They can be found in any community. Then, we can have a greater amount of preference.
You can have preferential species that prefer a certain community. They will be found in
different communities, but they will be found in more numbers in a preferential
community. Or you can have selective species that are mostly found in one particular
community, but randomly they can be found in some other communities as well. Or you
can have exclusive species that are only found in some particular communities.

The association of a species with a community can show a very wide range of
characteristics. It can vary from a species being indifferent to a species that is extremely
dependent and completely exclusive to that particular community.

In this lecture, we started with the definition of a community, we looked at attributes, how
do we define any particular community, what are the characteristics of a particular
community, and then we went on to the description of communities. Then we looked at
certain concepts related to the niches of particular species or we looked at the guilds that
are there in the community and we will build on these particular ideas in the next 2 lectures.

That is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

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 Wild Life Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 17
Community changes and ecological succession

“Namaste”,

We carry forward our discussion on community ecology and today, we will have a look at
succession. Now succession asks the question, how does a community form? And how
does a community change? So, ecological succession is one of the ways in which the
community changes.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:36)

It asks the question suppose you have a bare piece of rock so, you have this rock that has
come up because of say, some volcanic activity. This would be primarily a basalt rock or
for instance there is a granite rock that is deep inside the earth and because of some tectonic
activities because of some earthquake related activities, this rock comes up to the surface
of the earth. Now this rock does not have any soil associated with it. It is just a bare rock.

How is it that this rock is converted into soil? And then how do different kinds of
communities or different kinds of populations come into this place and then form a
community? And then, will that community remain constant with time? Or will that

599
community go on changing with time? And if this community changes, what are the factors
that are responsible for these changes? All of these things are considered in the case of
succession. In this case, we have this, this magma that is coming out and here we have the
rocks that have been formed. These rocks are very hard rocks. Essentially if you put any
plant here, the plant will not be able to grow. Even if you say make a hole somewhere here
and put a plant inside, the plant will not be able to grow because it does not have access to
water, it does not have access to the minerals.

This rock is all full of minerals. It has all the nutrients that a plant might need, but then all
of those nutrients are logged inside the various minerals that are formed that, that are there
in this rock. All these nutrients have to be released by some process and that process is the
ecological succession.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:25)

Once you have these rocks, in a short time, you will find that there are some lichens that
are coming up onto these rocks. Lichens are extremely hardy species. Here on the
background this grey color is the rock and these yellow colored things are the lichens.
These are very simple organisms these are very primitive organisms and they do not have
a huge nutrient requirement. Essentially they can make use of those small little minerals
that are present on the surface of this rock or maybe those nutrients that are brought along
with the wind when it blows some dust on this these rocks.

600
Any small amount of nutrients, any small amount of minerals that are available, these
lichens can make use of that. Plus these lichens are photosynthetic organisms. These are
photoautotrophs. They can make use of the sunlight to produce their own food. At the
same time their requirements for water is also very less. Any amount of rainfall that comes
into this area the lichens will absorb that water and maybe store it into their bodies or
maybe if this area is close to the oceans and the air has a lot of humidity, so, these lichens
can even make use of that humidity. What are these lichens doing here?

These lichens once they have come up on the surface of these rocks, they will use the
nutrients that are there on the surface or the nutrients that are brought along with the dust
particles; they will make use of the water, they will make use of sunlight and they will start
to proliferate in this area. And at this particular stage, there is no competition; there is
nothing other than lichens. The lichens can have all the space for themselves.

They are able to cover the whole of the surface. Now when you have any organic substance
that is growing up in any area and with this substance starts to degrade, you will have a
number of organic acids that are formed. When you have these lichens and when these
lichens die out, or probably even while they are living, they will be creating a number of
organic acids and some of them will be released into the rocks.

That is a very small amount of acids that is being released, but nonetheless it plays a very
important role because once you have these mineral acids once you have the action of
chemicals on these rocks, there is some more amount of fragmentation. Probably earlier
you only had the surface of the rock that was available for the growth of these lichens.

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Refer Slide Time: 05:06)

Now because they have released some acids, then probably a very thin shell of these rocks
has now started to disintegrate. Once this shell starts to disintegrate what is happening is
that you have much more amount of minerals that are now available for the growth of any
plant material. Because earlier you only had the dust that was there, you only had access
to those minerals that were exactly on the surface, but now that you have this thin shell
that has started deteriorating, so, more and more minerals will start breaking apart more
and more nutrients will be released and so, now, some more plants can come into the place.
And what are those plants?

(Refer Slide Time: 05:54)

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The next stage is the foliose lichen. Now earlier we had the Crustose lichen. In the case of
this crustose lichen, you can see that these are in the form of a crust that has come up on
the surface, they look like a crust, that is why they are called as crustose lichen.

In the case of foliose lichen, these look more like leaves. If you look at these portions
carefully, it looks like you have some leaf kind of arrangement in this place. Now crustose
lichen are followed by the foliose lichen. The requirements of foliose lichen are a bit more
than that of the crustose lichen. The foliose lichen cannot come up as the first organism or
as the pioneer species.

But once you have a these rocks that have been broken apart especially on their top surface
so, now because you have more amount of nutrients that are available. There is more
nutrients plus there is more amount of strata that is available for any autotrophic organism
to make a small indentation or make a small attachment to the rock.

Once that happens and when you have these foliose lichen. The properties of foliose lichen
are that they have a slightly larger nutrient requirement, they have a slightly more three
dimensional structure. They are coming out of the surface plus they are able to perform
photosynthesis in a much more efficient manner than the crustose lichen. In the case of the
crustose lichen their photosynthetic efficiency was less and in the case of the folios lichen
their photosynthetic efficiency is more. Once you have both these kinds of organisms in
this area, what do you think, who is going to out compete whom? Now of course, the
foliose lichen who have a better photosynthetic ability, they will be able to out compete
the crustose lichen.

The crustose lichen made way for the foliose lichen and the folios lichen in effect were
able to displace out the crustose lichen from this area. Now where are we getting all these
lichens from? These lichens are coming from the spores that are there in the air or are
being brought about from the winds. They were not present initially when we had these
rocks; you do not have any plant material, but then along with the air you will have some
spores that will come and land here, you will have some amount of dust that will come in
land here and then probably in the next rains we will have this process of succession that
has started from the crustose lichen into the foliose lichen.

When you have these foliose lichen, they are able to generate much more amount of
organic material as compared to the crustose lichen and in effect they are able to generate

603
much more amount of acids when they are living and also when their bodies are decaying.
Now in that case you will have that the layer of rocks that was exposed, it now depends a
bit. So, in place of having a very small shell, now you have a slightly larger shell and in
this case as well you do not actually have soil here, but then because these rocks have now
broken up on their shell. So, you have a scope for something larger to come up. Now from
the foliose lichen stage the next stage is the moss stage.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:43)

Now, the moss stage will come up when you have these rocks whose surface has been
broken up to a larger extent. They cannot come before the foliose lichen or before the
crustose lichen, they will come only after that and once they have come up. Now, you can
see that these are all more greenish in color. They have much more better photosynthetic
ability and then because of the inter specific competition, they will be able to displace off
the foliose lichen that are present there.

Now of course, it is not necessary that all of these areas should have a complete cover of
mosses. It is possible that in this particular rock, you have this area, the first area that has
say mosses, you have some other area that still has your crustose lichen, you can have
some other area that has your foliose lichen and so on. Because in this particular region
your succession started much before, than it was able to do in this area or probably in this
area in which you only have a bare rock.

604
In a large chunk of rock, it is possible that you have different stages in different places,
but then after a while this is the way in which your community we will move from one
organism to the next organism. In the case of these mosses; they are doing much more
photosynthesis, they have some roots that are now coming up. And once you have the
roots, they will able to break up the rocks even further. Why?

(Refer Slide Time: 11:36)

Because if this is your rock and then you have this crack which was there and the top
surface is having some amount of broken portions in which you can have the nutrients. If
you have a plant that is coming up in this area so, this plant will be having roots and
probably the roots will reach much deeper. In this case your roots are able to reach this
point and are probably able to secrete some chemicals inside this crack.

Probably, some acids because the roots also want to make space for themselves. In that
case, you will have some more amount of degradation that is happening very deep inside
and once that happens then probably this crack will enlarge. Similarly, if you say have a
very small crack here and you have a root that is coming up here so, this crack will also
start to enlarge. In effect what is happening is that, this rock surface is now getting more
and more cracked and in these cracks there would be other processes as well.

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(Refer Slide Time: 12:52)

For instance, if you have a rock and you say have this crack here. Now in the night time
probably there would be some amount of dew that would accumulate. Dew consist of water
droplets. Probably some amount of water droplets will start accumulating inside and once
that happens and if the temperature is very less. In that case these water droplets might
start to freeze. They will form a piece of ice inside. Now we know that the density of water
is highest at 4 degrees Celsius. So, as your temperature is going down as it reaches 4
degrees.

So, you have the densest part of water, then once, the ice starts forming. So, you have
reduced its temperature from 4 to 3 to 2 to 1 and then 0 and maybe even to the sub zero
temperatures. What is happening now is that the density of water is now reducing which
means that the water is now becoming lighter which is why you have ice cubes that float
on the surface of water because they have a lesser density.

If something has a lesser density it means that it has a larger volume and once you have
something that has a larger volume, it requires more amount of space. When these ice
particles, when they start freezing in this area, they also exert some kind of outward force
on this particular crack and on this particular rock. What would that lead to? That would
lead to some secondary cracks that develop on the surface and once that happens, you will
have water that comes into these areas as well; then later on when it forms an ice here.

606
You will have larger quantities of ice that are being formed and then they again start
exerting the forces on the surface of these cracks. Ultimately this crack starts to expand in
size; you will have more and more number of cracks on the surface of this rock. This
process is also accentuated by the presence of the plant species because they are also living;
there they are also secreting out some acids which are further weakening the rocks and so
on.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:17)

Not just ice, but you can also have a situation in which you have a surface of the rock and
when you have the sun that is shining in the daytime.

Probably this area becomes very warm and then in the night time when the area cools
down. So, this area is now suffering. It is now becoming cold and so it is the now shrinking.
For a number of materials when you heat up the material, the size increases; when you
cool it down, the size reduces. Now in this case because of the continuous action of sun
and the moon you will have some expansion in some contraction that is happening on the
surface at all times.

Once that happens that will also lead to the breaking up of the rock surface and in the case
of rocks such as granite, this is known by the term of onion weathering because just like if
you take a piece of onion, you will have a number of a leaves that are one. Similarly in
this case you will have a rock that will look something like this.

607
After a while you will have see a small section that has come out here, a small section that
has come out here, a small leaf that has come out here and so on. In this case your rock is
now getting separated layer by layer. Just like in the case of an onion, you have layers that
are forming on the surface which are also leading to cracks here.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:00)

Similarly, if you have us a rock with a small crack and probably, this area is close to the
seas. If this area is close to the seas then you might have some amount of sea water that is
coming into this area or probably some amount of salts that are being blown along with
the wind and are getting deposited here.

Now, what happens? If you have say a small amount of salty water, brackish water here
and when a you have the sun. So, this water starts to evaporate. Once that starts to
evaporate the, the salt particles they start accumulating here. Then later on maybe some
more amount of water came along with the salts. So, you again that evaporated.

After a while you will have a salt solution that is of a very high concentration and in this
high concentration when you again have the sun. You will start seeing crystals of salt that
are forming here. Now again, once you have this crystal formation the salt crystal that was
earlier say small in size that will start becoming larger and larger in size. During this
process of crystallization as your crystal is expanding, there also it will start exerting forces
on these surfaces and because of these forces the rock might crack further.

608
When we are talking about succession, it is not just the biotic organisms or the different
populations that are playing a role, but at the same time the climatic conditions or the
prevalent conditions are also playing a role in this case. Once you have these cracks you
started with the lichens, now you have reached the moss stage. The moss will further
accentuate the cracks and after a short while when these mosses start to die, their bodies
will start converting into the humus.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:12)

Now, you have an area where you have this rock. This rock is cracked in a number of
places, then this rock has also been converted into a powdery form at a number of places.
These rocks also have some lichens and maybe some mosses that have come up and they
are also dying. When they are dying you are also having some organic material that is
coming up into this area. What do you have now? You have rock particles which is
providing you minerals, you have the organic matter which is coming from the dead tissues
of these different species. Once you combine both of these together, what is this? This is
soil? Now, you have soil in this area.

So, because of the action of the climate, because of the action of different plants, now this
top layer of the rock has now been converted into soil. Once you have soil in an area, you
will start seeing some other species; maybe you will start seeing grasses in that area.

609
(Refer Slide Time: 20:20)

Grasses are much more prolific species, they are able to perform photosynthesis in a much
better way. Once you starts seeing grasses in this area so, the mosses and the lichens; they
have now been out competed. They get removed from the system and now you have lots
and lots of grasses.

Once you have these grasses, they are now further breaking up the soil or they are further
breaking up the rock surface that is down there because they have a very extensive root
system. In the case of your mosses you did not have an extensive root system, but now you
even have a more extensive root system. You have a much better photosynthetic ability.
You are able to generate a much larger amount of organic matter.

In this process the rocks are now breaking up even further and after a short while these
grasses will make way for shrubs.

610
(Refer Slide Time: 21:21)

Now, as we are moving from the grasses to the shrubs, we will observe that the requirement
of different nutrients will change; again because grasses can grow in the low nutrient
environments, but your shrubs will require typically a higher nutrient conditions. These
higher nutrient conditions are brought about because the grasses were able to break the
rocks, break the soil and so, much more amount of nutrients now becomes available for
the growth of these plants and after the shrubs you will start seeing a forest in a short while.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:59)

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Now a forest is typically referred to as a climax community so, this is typically the end
where your succession is going to end. You start from a bare rock you move from lichens
to mosses to grass to shrubs to trees and ultimately you reach to a climax stage which is
the forest stage. This is what succession is all about. When you talk about succession, you
are asking, which species is making way for which species? Who comes after whom? That
is what you are asking when you are studying succession.

For instance even in the case of royalty when we say that there is this particular prince
who is going to succeed his father as the next king. That is succession. Here in the case of
ecological succession, we are asking which community is getting succeeded and which
community is succeeding the previous community.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:56)

We define ecological succession as the process of change in the species structure of an

ecological community over time. We have this ecological community which was having
your lichens in an area; maybe it was having say two or three different species of lichen.
But then, slowly and steadily the species structure is changing, you are getting other
species such as grasses you are getting shrubs.

The earlier species are getting out completed, they are dying off, they are making way for
these newer species and so, the species structure of the ecological community is changing
at all times. The process of this change is known as ecological succession. It takes place
over a long period of time.

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(Refer Slide Time: 23:46)

We also have this other term which is called as sere or a seral community is an intermediate
stage found in ecological succession in ecosystem advancing towards its climax
community.

(Refer Slide Time: 24:05)

Essentially when we were referring to a community that ultimately became a forest. So,
this community started with your lichens which was both crustose and then followed by
your lichens that have foliose structure. Crustose lichen followed by foliose lichen,

613
followed by your mosses , followed by grass , followed by shrubs and followed by the
forest; so, all of these different communities.

If you are talking about our community that is all full of lichens that is called a seral stage
in this succession. If you talk about a community that has grass that is a seral stage in this
succession. A seral community is an intermediate stage; it is not the final stage, but it is
the intermediate stage that is found in ecological succession in an ecosystem advancing
towards its climax community.

In this case the forest is the climax community. When we talk about seres, they are of three
different kinds. The first one is known as a hydrosere. Now hydro is water, sere is your
seral community. This is a seral community that is found in water and we will have a look
at it in more detail in a short while. The second one is a Xerosere. Now ‘xero’ is dry. Dry
community; a community in a dry area; this includes a lithosere. A lithosere is a
community on a rock as we just saw and it could also be a psammosere. Now psammosere
here is you have sand and community. It is a community on sand.

If you look at ecological successions that are happening on sand dunes, that is an example
of psammosere. The third kind is a halosere; now halo is salt sere is a community. You
have a community in salt or a community in a saline body such as a marsh.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:18)

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When we talk about the succession, this succession proceeds from a pioneer species
towards a climax species. In this case, we had started with rocks and the first community
that came up was the crustose lichen. This would be called as a pioneer species. Pioneer,
because this is the first one to come up. So, it is a pioneer. Pioneer is the first one, climax
is the last one and everything in between is a sere or a seral community.

Pioneer species are defined as, they are hardy species which established themselves in a
disrupted ecosystem and trigger the process of ecological succession. They may come up
in an area where you did not have any community beforehand or they may come up in a
disrupted ecosystem. What do we mean by a disrupted ecosystem?

(Refer Slide Time: 27:23)

Probably you have a forest and in this forest you have a number of trees. Probably you
have some shrubs, you have some herbs and so on and then you have a forest fire because
of which all of these die out. Now, you have a community in which you have disrupted
something. Probably a few trees remain in this area, but then everything else has been
disrupted. What would come up in these areas? The first species to come up in this area
we will again be called a pioneer species because it is the first one to come up in this
disrupted ecosystem.

Pioneer species are hardy species which establish themselves in a disrupted ecosystem and
triggered the process of ecological succession. If you do not have a pioneer species, you
will not have the ecological succession because there is no other species that can replace

615
these pioneer species. Why is that so? Because of their specific characteristics. Their
characteristics are their ability to grow on bare rocks, nutrient poor soil or water.

They are the first one to come up and they can come upon bare rocks where you do not
have any soil or they can come up in a soil that is nutrient poor or they can even come up
in water that is also nutrient poor. What are the examples of these soils that are nutrient?.

Consider a glacier. A glacier when it is moving from one place to another it is also grinding
the rocks that are below the glacier. Once this glacier melts the rocks that have been ground
up they come up in the form of a soil in that soil is extremely nutrient poor; it does not
have any organic materials, it does not have a number of minerals because it has never
been acted upon organically. The organisms that can come up in search of soil that will
also be the pioneer species. The other characteristics are the ability to tolerate extreme
conditions such as heat and cold.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:40)

When we are talking about a community that is coming up on a piece of rock. In the
daytime it is getting exposed to very hot conditions, in the night time it is getting exposed
to very cold conditions.

If we have a community that is coming up in a forest. In this forest you have much more
moderate climatic conditions because all the time you are having a high moisture level. If
you look at a location say here. So, you have a high moisture content, you are not exposed

616
to the direct rays of the sun because the plants are turning it out and then you are also not
exposed to a very cold condition because the air movement that would have happened in
this area is also being starved because of the trees. But in the case of a bare rock, you will
be exposed to all the conditions.

The pioneer species are able to tolerate these extreme conditions, they are able to tolerate
extreme heat. They are able to tolerate extreme cold, they have less nutritional
requirements and they are photoautotrophs because there is nothing else available for
them. Only those species can come up and have less nutritional requirements. If there is a
species that requires say nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, in high concentration maybe in
a water soluble form; that is available in soil that cannot be a pioneer species.

They are typically small in size because again you have less amount of nutrients that are
available, you have very extreme conditions these species are not able to support a very
large body size. They are small in size. They often have a short life span with rapid growth
and they are mostly annual species. They are not perennial species, they cannot remain
there for a number of years. They probably come up in those conditions that are favorable
and then they die off.

Probably in the very extreme summers, they will die off; probably in very extreme winters,
you will not see these the species, probably these species will come up in the spring season
in that area. Because you have spring season only once in a year so, these the species will
come up only once in a year and then will die off. They often have a short life is span as
against forests species or the climax species that have a very long life span.

Then they have the ability to disperse through spores or seeds and they are also prolific
seed producers. They have to be those species that are able to disperse through spores or
seeds because otherwise when you talk about a bear piece of rock of say, a volcanic origin.
Where do you get these spores in the first place? Or where do you get this pioneer species
in the first place?

They have to have a dispersal mechanism through either air or through water. So, they
have to give out spores or seeds and typically these plants are also very prolific in their
seed production.

617
(Refer Slide Time: 32:47)

On the other hand, we have the climax species. In our example the forest was the climax
species. A climax species is defined as or a climax community is defined as a biological
community of plants, animals and fungi which through the process of ecological
succession in the development of vegetation in an area over time have reached a steady
state. Essentially when you talk about a climax community, it is a steady state community.
When we see a steady state it means that it is able to remain as this community for a very
long period of time.

Once you have these sal forests in this area so, probably they will continue for hundreds
of years because they are in a steady state. There is no other factor that is now pushing
them towards some other community or towards some other change. It is a biological
community of plants, animals and fungi. Why does it have all these together? Unlike a
pioneer species that is making way for itself, in the case of a climax community you have
so many species that are together that they are able to support each other.

When you have the plants that are growing. These plants will be giving out leaves. These
leaves upon dying they will fall onto the ground and if you do not have fungi, then you
will not be able to break these leaves down into the nutrients again. Or if you do not have
say these animals here so, in that case probably there would be some species that would
try to out compete everything else.

618
Now because you have these predatory organisms, because you have these animals and
because you have a rich biodiversity with a number of decomposers, so, this community
is able to sustain itself for a very long period of time so that it has reached a steady state.
Now there are four kinds of climaxes that have been recognized. The first one is a climatic
climax which is controlled by the climate of the region.

For instance when we talk about sal forest that is a climatic climax. It will come up in an
area that has sufficient amount of moisture that is probably a cooler area. So, that is the
species that will come up and that will come up and the community that gets formed
because of these sal trees the forest that would be a climatic climax because it has been
determined because of the climate and it continues to remain there for a very long period
of time.

The second one is in edaphic climax. That is controlled by the soil conditions of the region.
Different kinds of soils will be having different kinds of climax species or climax
communities. So, that is when you have a condition like that it is known as an edaphic
climax.

The third one is a catastrophic climax that is controlled by some catastrophic event such
as wildfire. A good example would be your teak forest. Now in a teak forest, you have
these deciduous a trees in the form of Techtona grandis and these trees shed their leaves;
when these trees shed their leaves, you have ample amount of dry fuel that is available
there and so they are very frequently prone to forest fires.

Now once you have the forest fires in these areas so, a number of other species that are
now trying to push it towards some other seral stage will die off.

619
(Refer Slide Time: 36:27)

In this case what we are saying is that you have these forests, you have these teak trees
and probably you are having some other trees that are now coming up.

These teak trees when they shed their leaves so, you have a lot amount of fuel that is
available on the forest floor. And when you have a very high fuel load so, typically these
forests get engulfed in a large size fire or these are rapidly or these are frequently exposed
to forest fires.

Once you have these forest fires, then the species that are not able to resist these fires they
die off. These species die off, but then the teak plants because they are fire resistant. They
are able to survive. Now if we do not have forest fires in these areas, then probably these
teak forest will start converting into something else. So, they will start converting into a
forest that is probably having more amount of moisture in that area, but then because we
are having these forest fires every year or year after year.

In that case they are able to maintain themselves as a teak forest or as a teak community.
In this case the climax that has been formed is formed because of this catastrophic event
and so, it is known as a catastrophic climax.

The fourth one is a disclimax and that is controlled by some disturbance which could be
man or domestic animals and a good example is grasslands.

620
(Refer Slide Time: 38:08)

In a grassland; suppose you have these grasslands and these grasslands are being used for
say cattle grazing. When that is the situation if there is any shrub that is coming up in this
area, the man would come and it would kill off these. So, these would be uprooted. So,
because of the action of human beings, these communities are not able to evolve further.
So, they are not able to convert into a shrub line or maybe into a woodland or into a forest.
Such kind of communities that are governed or that have reached their climax stage
because of some disturbance either due to man or due to domestic animals. So, these kinds
of climates communities are known as disclimax communities.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:03)

621
Whatever the kinds of climax that we see, the climax community will have certain
characteristics. What are those characteristics? The vegetation is tolerant of the
environmental conditions. For instance when we talk about a sal forest, you will not get a
sal forest that is there in a marshy area because it is intolerant of the environmental
conditions.

It will only be formed in those areas where the environmental conditions are suitable. So,
the vegetation that comes up in a climax community, it is tolerant of the environmental
conditions. The climate community typically has a high species diversity , it has a well
formed special structure. When we see a special structure, it means that we have a good
top canopy, middle canopy and shrubs as ground cover and so on.

It has a well formed spatial structure, there are complex food chains that provide stability
to this community. If you have a very simple ecosystem, so that cannot be a climax
ecosystem. You will typically have a very complicated structure, you will have a number
of food chains, you have a very complex food web so that even if there is some amount of
disturbance, probably one particular species dies off or it gets reduced in its numbers so,
in that case there should be some other species that is able to support the community.

In that case you will have very complex food chains that will provide stability because
remember that in the case of a climax community, you want to have a situation that it is a
steady state. It should persist it should prevail for a very long period of time. So, for that
you require stability which is provided by complex food chains in food webs. Then there
is equilibrium between gross production and respiration, uptake and release of nutrients.
What do we mean by this equilibrium? If there is more uptake of nutrients and less the
release of nutrients.

In that case your community we will suffer some sort of a change because you will have a
soil that is getting depleted year after year. In that case the organisms that are living or the
vegetation that has come up, it might change. There might be some other species that
would out compete the present species because the present species require much more
amount of nutrients. They are taking up much more amount of nutrients, but then the soil
is getting poorer and poorer with time. That cannot be a situation because if that be the
situation, then your community will change with time and a climax community cannot
change.

622
Or suppose you have a situation in which the uptake of nutrients is less, the release of
nutrients is more. So, in that case the soil is changing. The soil is becoming more and more
fertile with time. If that is the situation, so, in that case we will have some other plants that
are better able to use these nutrients and they will come up and they will start out
competing the present species. So, there again you will have a situation that is not a climax
situation, but as an intermediate situation.

Similarly you have equilibrium between in cross production and respiration. On an average
the amount of energy that is coming into the system is also getting lost because of
respiration because of having a number of animals in this area. Suppose you have a gross
production that is greater than respiration. In that case you will start accumulating more
and more biomass in this system and once that happens, because it is changing with time
we will say that it is not a climax community.

A climax community needs to have an equilibrium between a number of things such as

grass production and respiration and uptake and degrees of nutrients. Also the species
composition continues for a long time again because it maintains a steady state. So, the
species composition is not going to change.

The climax community is a good indicator of the climate and other conditions of the area.
Now because you have these climax communities that are tolerant of the environmental
conditions. If you have a climax community that has come up, you can just use the species
that are found in the climax community to get an idea about the general climate and other
conditions of the area; what is the soil type? How much amount of moisture do you have?
What is the climate of that area? You can tell about all of these just by looking at the
climax community because that is dependent on the environmental conditions and that is
going to continue for a long period of time.

623
(Refer Slide Time: 43:45)

We have talked about succession. Now let us look at the kinds of succession. There are
three different kinds of succession. The first one is called as a primary succession.
Successional dynamics beginning with colonization of an area that has not been previously
occupied by an ecological community such as newly exposed rock or sand surfaces, lava
flows, newly exposed glacial tills etc., are referred to as primary succession. In the case of
a primary succession, it begins with an area that never had an ecological community
beforehand such as the bare rock situation that we just saw.

The second one is a secondary succession. A secondary succession is successional

dynamics following severe disturbance or removal of a pre existing community are called
secondary succession. A good example is a forest that suffered with a forest fire and in
that forest fire all the plants died off and so, you have an area that is now devoid of any
vegetation. When succession starts again in that area, that is known as a secondary
succession.

The third one is cyclic succession which is periodic changes arising from fluctuating
species interactions or recurring events. For cyclic succession, a good example is that of
the Brahmaputra floodplains. Every year you get floods in that area. So, the species that
are already there, they die off because they get drowned and then every year you have a
succession that starts ab-initio. So, every year you get a grassland and then after a while

624
you will get a flood again. So, all the species will die off and then again you will have the
grasses that are coming up in this area. That is a cyclic succession.

Primary succession is succession in an area which never had any community; a secondary
succession is in area which had a community, but everything died off and a cyclic
succession is a succession that occurs in an area with some recurring events.

(Refer Slide Time: 45:52)

Let us look at some examples of primary succession. The first one is lithosere that we have
already seen. From rock, you move to crustose lichen to foliose lichen to moss to
herbaceous stage where you have the grasses to shrub stage to woodland stage and finally,
to the climax stage. That is a lithosere, which is rock community.

625
(Refer Slide Time: 46:14)

The second one is a hydrosere which is a water community. Now you have this water
community and you have a primary succession. You have a body of water that has newly
come up. Probably there is an area that just got filled up with water. What will happen?
From the water stage you will move to the phytoplankton stage because the phytoplankton
will be the first community that will come up. These are the pioneer species. From the
phytoplankton, we will move to a submerged stage. In the case of a submerged stage, you
will have some plants that are coming up and they are submerged.

(Refer Slide Time: 46:55)

626
Probably this is your water body and the first thing that will come up will be the planktons
that will come on the very top because that is the photosynthetic zone. Once these
planktons have started dying with time so, you will have these bodies that are now coming
down and once that happens you have some amount of soil that has started accumulating
in the bottom.

Once you have these soils which are formed because of these organic materials that came
from these planktons. So, now, you will start seeing some submerged vegetation. You will
start seeing some plants that are coming up which are submerged. After this submerged
stage, you will start seeing some floating vegetation; a floating vegetation is something
that is coming up. It has these roots here and it is getting all the nutrients just from the
water itself. It is not getting into contact with the soil.

From the floating stage the next will be the reed swamp stage. The reed swamp stage will
be coming up in the marshy areas. So, typically what is happening is that all these plants
that are now forming they will also start dying off with time and so, the bottom layer is
now increasing with time.

Because you now, have much more amount of accumulation, much more amount of
organic material that has come up. So, now, this area has started converting into a marshy
area. Once it converts into a marshy area, you will have the reed state. The reed will be
followed by a meadow stage; sedge and meadows that will come up. After the meadows;
so, meadows are very much like tall plants that are living in that area and this is equivalent
to a shrub stage that we see in the lithosere. After this stage-meadow stage, you will again
have quite a lot of water that is being taken out because of transpiration, quite a lot of
organic matter that is getting deposited because now you have large size plants. More and
more amount of soil is getting formed, more and more amount of humus getting form.

From the sedge-meadow stage, you will move to the woodland stage where you start
getting some trees in this area. Typically with time your organic matter is increasing in
this area. Once we have much more amount of organic matter, we will have the situation
where this much area is now are all filled with the organic material and you have a very
slight amount of water that is there on the top. Here you will start seeing large size plants.

Now from these large size plants they will be using up more and more amount of water
and after a while you will start seeing trees in this area and from the trees you will move

627
to the climax community which is determined by the existing prevailing conditions in that
area; what is the climate in this area? What is the availability of water in this area? What
is the soil that is coming up in this area? and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 50:02)

Now that is the primary succession. What about the secondary succession?

A secondary succession is something like, you have a forest and then there is a forest fire.
So, you have a forest that is incompletely destroyed. From there you have the herbaceous
stage because you already have quite a lot of soil in this area. So, you will not start with
the lichens and mosses, you will directly start with the grasses. So, you will have the
grasses that come up followed by the shrubs, followed by the woodland, followed by the
climax.

628
(Refer Slide Time: 50:33)

Typically we will observe that a secondary succession is much faster than a primary
succession because you already have soil in this area. Even if the forests were burnt
because of the forest fire you, but you still have the soil that remains in this area.

You have a soil that is already formed, you do not have to start with a rock and start with
breaking off the rocks. It is much faster. You already have spores and seeds that are present
in the soil. There would be some seeds that are left unburned and they will start the process
of succession.

As against in the case of a primary succession where the pores had to be brought by the
action of wind or water. Also there can be regeneration of some plants from the roots.
Because you have these roots that are there inside the soil and the top layer got burnt, but
the roots remain. Probably there would be some amount of vegetative growth from the
roots itself. That will also start and typically the soil fertility is high enough to support the
organisms.

In the case of a primary succession such as a rock the fertility was less, but in this case the
fertility is already high because it was already supporting a large sized forest community.

629
(Refer Slide Time: 51:49)

Now, succession is also classified as autogenic succession or allogenic succession. Now

‘auto’ is self, ‘gen’ is for production. Autogenic is something that produces itself, allo is
outside, ‘genic’ is production. So, it is production from outside.

Now autogenic succession is a succession that is governed by something that is inside; it

is brought by changes in the soil caused by the organisms that are already present there.
These changes include accumulation of organic matter in litter or humic layer alteration of
soil nutrients or change in the pH of the soil due to the plants growing there. Now in the
case of an autogenic succession, you have the organisms that are already present.

Because we have these organisms they are bringing about some changes in the biotic and
the abiotic components of that ecosystem. For instance you had this rock and this rock had
some lichens. Because these lichens were able to break down the rocks further so, they
were making way for new species such as the mosses that is an autogenic succession.

Allogenic succession is caused by external environmental influences and not by the

vegetation. For example, soil changes due to erosion, leaching or deposition of silt and
clay can alter the nutrient content and water relationships in the ecosystem. Other examples
include volcanic eruptions, meteor or comet strikes, flooding, draught, earthquakes and
non anthropogenic climate change.

630
What we are seeing here is that in the case of an autogenic succession, you have a plant or
a community that is already there and this community is making some changes that is
leading to the succession. In the case of an allogenic succession, there is no role of the
community that is already present, but we bring about a much greater influence from
outside that is leading to a succession.

A good example is something that we saw in the case of Brahmaputra. So, the Brahmaputra
river floods every year. Because of this flood, you have a succession that starts. It is not
caused by the grasses that are already present in that area. But in the case of an autogenic
succession, the succession will be caused because of the organisms that are already
present.

(Refer Slide Time: 54:15)

Now, we can differentiate between different phases of succession. This is typically what
you can correlate to the rock example that we have seen. The succession begins with the
nudation stage. Nudation is making something bare. It begins with the development of a
bare site such as a rock surface or maybe a new lake that has formed. So, that does not
have anything else, it is completely bare. So, that is nudation. After nudation, you will
have migration which refers to the arrival of the propagules. In the case of your rocks, you
have the spores of lichens that are coming up from outside. That is referred to as migration
in this terminology.

631
Now remember that we had defined migration as a seasonal moment of a organisms from
one place to another in typically in a repetitive manner, but in this case when we talk about
succession, migration is just defined as the arrival of propagules. So, this is not the usual
definition of migration.

Once you have the migration, then you have ecesis. Ecesis is establishment and initial
growth of vegetation. You had these lichens that establish themselves and then they started
growing in that area. Next we have aggregation which is increase in numbers and
population densities. Earlier you had a small patch of lichens, now you have a larger patch
of lichen and there are a number of lichen individuals that are there in this population.
Once you have aggregation the next stage will be competition. The vegetation has become
well established it grows and spreads. Various organisms or various species now begin to
compete for space, light and nutrients.

When you had this lichen stage probably there were a few a moss spores that also migrated
into this area, but now you have a competition and in this competition now you are fitting
up the lichens against the mosses. Once that happens, there would be some species that
will be out competed and some species that will be able to keep themselves fixed in that
area.

After competition we have the reaction phase during this phase and the autogenic changes
such as buildup of humus affect the habitat and one plant community replaces another.
You have competition now, between lichens and mosses, but then the lichens have already
changed the soil in that area. So, they have made the soil much more fertile and so, when
there is a fertile soil that is available, the mosses are able to out compete the lichens.

The lichens made way for the mosses and one plant community has now replaced another.
So, that is the reaction phase. These phases we will continue because after you have a moss
community, you will start again with this phase; you will have migration of grass seeds
and then there will be a ecesis. You have these mosses that are now establishing
themselves, they are increasing in their numbers there is competition, but then there has
also been migration of some grass seeds.

In that case you will again have a reaction. In the case of reaction the masses will make
way for the grasses, the mosses will die out, grasses will establish themselves and then
again you move with the establishment, aggregation, competition and reaction.

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In the next stage, the reaction will be with the shrub seeds that have migrated into this area
and this process continues again and again until you reach a phase of stabilization in which
you have reached a climax community. Now, there is no more change that is possible;
whatever is there is the most optimum stage. So, these are the phases of succession.

(Refer Slide Time: 58:09)

When you talk about these climaxes, then one question arises how many climaxes can be
there. So, suppose I have a bear piece of rock in the case of Madhya Pradesh. So, in this
rock, what would be the climax community that will come up ?

So, in this case there has been a number of observations. So, the first one is by Clements
in 1916. He put up a theory which is known as a monoclimax theory or a climatic climax
theory. There is only one climax whose characteristics are determined solely by the
climate, the process of succession and modification of environment overcome the effects
of other factors such as topography, parent material of the soil etc. So, basically if we go
with this theory, it would say that because we have this rock in Madhya Pradesh. So, this
rock is governed; or the climax community that will come up in this area will be governed
only by the climate of this area.

Essentially whatever is the climax community in the nearby areas, that would be the climax
community that will come up on this rock. So, this is monoclimax theory that is one climax
only. So, in any particular area, you can determine ab-initio what is going to be the climax
community in that area. The second theory is that of Tansley which is called as the

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polyclimax theory. Now polyclimax theory says that the climax vegetation of a region
consists of more than one vegetation climaxes that are controlled by soil moisture, soil
nutrients, topography, soil exposure, fire and animal activity.

So, in the case of Clements, he said that there will be only one climax that will come up in
this area. In the case of Tansley he said that there could be some other climaxes that could
also come up. So, probably this rock is closer to a water body, in that case the climax will
be different as compared to when this rock is say closer to another or maybe it is closer to
the mountains. So, depending on the situations that are nearby, you will have the climax
that comes up.

And the third one is a climax pattern theory which was given by Whittaker and he said that
there is a variety of climaxes governed by responses of species populations to biotic and
abiotic conditions. The nature of climax vegetation will change as the environment
changes with the central and most widespread community being the climatic climax.

In this case he said that you will not have one particular climax, but then even this climax
community will go on changing a bit; it will go on changing bit by bit, but the most
widespread community will be the climatic climax. But then what comes up actually in
this area, you cannot determine it on the basis of the climatic conditions or on the basis of
the ambient conditions, but then it will go on changing with time. So, it will be near to the
climatic climax, but then the actual climax that comes up will be a bit different.

In this lecture we looked at succession, different kinds of successions, we looked at

primary, secondary, cyclical successions. We looked at different seral stages, we defined
a primary community looked at its characteristics, we defined a climax community looked
at its characteristics, we looked at different kinds of climaxes that can come up and so on.
So, a study of succession is extremely important in the case of community ecology because
this is a process by which a community changes from one stage to another.

That is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

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 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Indian Forest Service, M.P
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture –18
Community Organization

“Namaste”,

We move forward with our discussion on Community Ecology.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:20)

Today we will have a look at Community Organization and how communities change in
response to external forces.

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(Refer Slide Time: 00:30)

We had defined these 3 terms earlier, relative density, relative frequency and relative
dominance. So, to recap relative density is the number of individuals of a particular species
divided by the total number of individuals of all the species multiplied by 100 percent.

This is telling us the number of individuals of any species, as a fraction of the total number
of individuals of all the species that are there in this particular community. We had also
defined relative frequency; as the frequency of finding the particular species in this case a
species x, in any quadrat divided by the sum of the frequencies or values of all the different
species.

We had also defined relative dominance in terms of the basal area of the species or this
definition of relative dominance is primarily used in the case of trees, but in the case of
other species when we are talking about say herbs or shrubs, we can make use of other
definitions of relative dominance.

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(Refer Slide Time: 01:34)

A more generalized definition of relative dominance is in terms of the importance of the

species for that particular community. So, we can define dominance in 2 terms. The first
is in terms of keystone species, which play a role that is much greater than their numerical
abundance. If we have a keystone species such as a ficus species in a particular forest
ecosystem will say that, the ficus species is a dominant species because it is a keystone
species.

It is supporting a number of other species, which are found in that community plus a
number of parts of this particular tree, the ficus trees are edible, their fruits are edible, their
leaves are edible, even their flowers are edible. In that case even in the case of very pinch
periods like, extreme dry seasons they act as a food source. They are essentially they are
providing for the whole of the community. So, we say that the ficus trees are dominant
species for that particular community.

Secondly, we can define dominance in terms of the numerical abundance of the species.
So, if there is a species that is numerically very abundant or a species that is having a high
relative density, then we can say that that particular species is also dominant in that
community, because of it is numerical abundance it is able to regulate the characteristics
of the community. A good example is the sal trees in a sal forest so, because we have so
many number of sal trees, the environmental conditions or the habitat conditions for all
different species in the sal forest community are determined by the sal trees. Because, they

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are very tall and they have a canopy. There they do not permit enough amount of sunlight
to reach to the ground. And, at the same time they also result in a very high amount of
moisture that is present in the whole of the community.

So, just because of their vast numbers the whole of the community is characterized by the
properties of the sal trees. So, in this case we can also say that the sal trees are dominant
species in the case of the sal community.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:04)

For any community we can define a term which is known as a community dominance
index. Community dominance index is the percentage of abundance that is contributed by
the two most abundant species. So, earlier we were talking about the relative abundance
of any one species. Now, we are talking about the relative abundance of two species.

CDI or the Community Dominance Index is defined as [(y1 + y2) / y] * 100 %

y1 is the abundance of the most abundant species, y2 is the abundance of the second most
abundant species and y is the total abundance of all the species. And, here abundance may
be measured in terms of density, biomass or productivity.

Why are we doing that? Now, if we are talking about the abundance of one species, we are
looking at the abundance of that particular species in the community, but it is often seen
that there are a number of other species that are associated with the most dominant species.

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For instance in the case of a sal forest, you will normally find Mallotus where there is sal.
In that case we say that Mallotus is a dependent species or it is a sal associated species.
And, when we are talking about the dominance value in any particular community, we
should incorporate the abundances of both these species, because they are always
occurring together. So, sal is the most abundant species, Mallotus is, maybe the second
most abundant species.

We add both of these to determine the community dominance index, whether this
community is dominated by a few species or whether this community is not dominated by
just a couple of species, but nearly every species has an equal amount of abundance. That
is the question, that, we are asking. Is this community turning towards say a monoculture
or a biculture when you see only 2 species everywhere or is this community a more
diffused community, where you have a more number of different species that are found in
all the regions.

So, CDI = [(y1 + y2) / y] * 100 %

Now, the question is; is there a relationship between the community dominance index and
the biodiversity of an area?

(Refer Slide Time: 06:41)

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In our lecture on biodiversity we had seen that biodiversity is dependent on 2 factors. Now,
the first factor is the number of species that is found in the area and the second one is the
distribution of individuals among these different species.

Essentially what we had said was if you have 2 communities and there is one community
that has say 7 species and there is another community that has 100 species. We will say
that this community is much more biodiverse as compared to the first community. So, here
we are talking about bio diversity. So, we will say that the second community is much
more diverse, but then if we have 2 communities.

The first community has 10 individuals, the second one also has 10 individuals, but then
in the first case you have the individuals such that, in the case of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. The
first one has say 1000, the second one has say 10, then you have 2 3 1 2 5 6 7 8. Now, in
this case this community is having this particular species that is species 1, in so, much
abundance that if you go anywhere you will only find species 1.

Whereas, in the case of the second community, we have a situation where let us say we
have 200, 250, 300, 150, 225, 205, 210; let us say 175 190 and 200. If, this is the number
of individuals that we have of different species in, the second community then wherever
you go you will find a representation of all these different species because all of them have
a roughly equal numerical abundance.

If you have a situation where there is one community there is one species that is dominant.
The more is the amount of dominance or the more is the amount of the relative abundance
the lesser is the biodiversity. When we are talking about the community dominance index,
we take not just the most abundant species, but also the second most abundant species. In
this case what we are saying is that suppose the first species had 1000 individuals and the
second one; the second most abundant had say 800 individuals.

Here we have 1800 individuals that are there in just 2 species in all the other species have
very less number of individuals. Here again we will say that the amount of biodiversity in
this community is less. Why? Because if you go anywhere you will find either individuals
of species 1 or you will find individuals of species 2.

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(Refer Slide Time: 10:05)

More is the amount of dominance, the lesser is the biodiversity. Also the more is the
number of species the lesser would be the dominance index, because when you have more
number of species, then it is also possible that the numerical abundance of the top 2 species
will be lesser because you have individuals from so many different species. So, this is
roughly the relationship that we expect.

(Refer Slide Time: 10:35)

But, this relationship is not that simple. If we actually look at the field values, so, here we
are looking at the relationship between dominance and species diversity in the invertebrate

641
community of decaying oak logs in a place called Wytham Woods in England. There is a
slight tendency for dominance to be lower in diversity is high, but the relationship is not
very tight.

Here you have the community dominance index on this side you have the number of
species. We can say that you can try to put a curve like this, but then because here you
have so, much amount of variation, so, it is also possible that we might try to put a curve
not like this, but say like this; that is also possible. The relationship is not very tight in this
case or in terms of mathematics we will say that the r2 value is not very high or the amount
of correlation between both of these variables is not very high.

So, roughly we can say that if you have more number of species the community dominance
index reduces, but then this is not a very hard and fast relationship, the level of correlation
that you have between both of these variables, the number of species and the community
dominance index, the correlation is very less. But, then there is one correlation that is much
more prominent, which is the relationship between dominance and productivity.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:03)

Here we are looking at the relationship between dominance and productivity of grasslands
on sandstone and serpentine soils on jasper ridge. In this case, here you have the dominance
index, here you have the productivity. Productivity is in terms of grams per square meter
per day, that is the amount of production that is going on in this area.

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And, we can see that if you have a lower dominance index, the productivity is roughly low
and if you have a higher dominance index the productivity is roughly high. Now why is
that so? Because here we can look at the organization of the community in terms of why a
certain species is dominant in a community. Any species will be dominant when it is able
to compete better than the other species.

Probably a species that is more dominant is able to say produce faster or maybe it is able
to take much more amount of sunlight and convert it into biomass. It is efficiency is much
greater. So, if you have a community where some species are dominant. They are typically
those species that have a very high level of productivity. And, in those communities where
you do not have a very high level of dominance, then most of the species that are there,
they are either all very low productivity species, or else they are also all these species are
spending quite a lot of energy in competing with each other.

Because, none of them is having a very high level of competence or competition as

compared to the other species. In this case those communities which have some dominant
species, they will be able to have a much higher level of productivity as compared to those
communities that do not have a species that is dominant.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:11)

This dominance also changes with the surroundings; it also changes with the biotic and
abiotic conditions that are brought about in the community. In this image, we are looking
at the changes in the phytoplankton community of a particular lake in British Columbia,

643
after artificial enrichment with nitrogen or phosphorus, 1 or 2 of the rare species increased
rapidly to form a “bloom” and then die back to their former status. Exactly which species
will “bloom” cannot be predicted.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:54)

What was done in this case was that we have already talked about eutrophication. In the
case of eutrophication, we have a situation in which you have a water body and in this
water body there is some discharge of nutrients into it. So, suppose you add N P and K
inside so, nitrogen phosphorus and potassium.

There will be some algal species that will form a very big bloom that will cover the whole
of the surface, because they are now getting very ample amount of nutrients and once there
is this algal bloom. So, after a while, this whole lake will be dead because all of these algae
after a while will start dying and when they die they will start sinking to the bottom. And,
when they are decomposed so, all the oxygen that is there in the water is taken away.

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(Refer Slide Time: 15:40)

In this particular experiment the scientists tried to artificially do eutrophication in a

controlled manner. So, here on the x axis we have the days following the enrichment. So,
on this day 0 you added the nutrients, which nutrients were added nitrogen or phosphorus.

Here you have the nutrient that was added and this curve this dashed line is showing you
nutrient concentration that is there in the water. When you put the nutrients. This is the 0
level. So, before day 0 you have this line this dashed line, then you spread it with nutrients.
And, after a while, the concentration of the nutrients it starts to come down. Why does any
nutrient come down in concentration after a while? Because as we have seen in the case
of nutrient cycles, if you have nitrogen in the form of nitrates.

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(Refer Slide Time: 16:37)

There will be some organisms that will be denitrifying organisms. And, in that case they
will convert these nitrates into nitrogen and oxygen and both of which will be later on
released from the water. Or in case you are adding the second nutrient; if you are adding
phosphorus into the lake what happens is, you have this lake in which you added the
phosphorus; let us just talk about phosphorus here.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:04)

The phosphorus was used up by all of these algae and then later on when these algae die
off, so their bodies have come to the bottom of the lake and with them, the phosphorus has

646
also come to the bottom of the lake. And, it typically takes a very long period of time for
this phosphorous to get released back into the water. So, if you look at the concentration
of phosphorus in this water after a while, it will start declining.

If we plot the concentration. If this was the normal concentration. In this case the
concentration has spiked and then it will start decaying and it will reach to the normal
levels after some days. So, this is what we are seeing. It increased and then it started
decreasing.

If we look at the number of species in this particular lake, the number of species all
throughout it remains constant, because in this particular short experiment there was no
extinction of species that occurred. So, none of the species was completely decimated from
this community. But if we look at those species diversity, so, if this was the species
diversity shown by these crosses, the species diversity reduced considerably and then it
started to increase.

Why do you have a situation of reduced species diversity? Because as we have seen earlier,
in this case you have these 2 communities, in the case of the first community you have 10
species, in the case of the second community you also have 10 species. But then, if the
number of individuals that are found in different species if that changes that can reduce
the level of diversity.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:09)

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What happened in this particular case ? So, let us say that this is the species and say we
had these 6 species in the water. Now, the earlier numbers were say; we are looking at the
abundance say, per 100 ml of water. So, let us say that earlier we had 20, 25, 22, 24, 23
and 18 number of individuals. Now, once you have spiked it with the nutrients. So, let us
say after spike. So, once you added these nutrients there were some species that were able
to prolifically use these nutrients. So, suppose that was the second species. In this case
after spike here, you have 20, 22, 24, 23 and 18, but in place of being 25, let us say that it
increased to 10,000. Now, why did this happen? Because, when you have a lake that does
not have ample concentration of nutrients so, all these 6 species are competing against
each other, there is not a plentiful amount of nutrient that is available. So, none of the
species can become dominant. So, all of these are competing for the same scarce resources.

But then once you have given the resources so, again if you remember the Liebig’s law of
the minimum, so, those species that were constrained by the nutrient availability, they were
able to come out of that particular threshold and they were able to proliferate very rapidly.
Because, say in this particular example, suppose this was a species that was limited
because of the nutrients. Let us say this was a species that was limited by the pH of the
water.

Probably it required a more basic pH, but the pH was more acidic or maybe this again was
another species that required an even more acidic pH, but then it was again limited because
the pH was not that much acidic. Or probably there was some other species that was limited
because of the light, that could be there in this area. Or some other species that was limited
by the temperature, or there was some other species that again required another range of
temperature, there was some species that wanted a more higher temperature there was
another species that wanted a lower temperature.

Suppose we played with these parameters; suppose we played with the pH. So, in that case
this species would have proliferated much better or say this species would have
proliferated much better, but then because of all of these species this one was the one that
was actually limited by the nutrients that were available. So, it was tolerant of the pH, it
was tolerant of the temperatures, it was tolerant of the light; the only thing that it needed
was the nutrients.

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Once you put in the nutrients, the other species are not able to overcome their limitations,
but this species is able to overcome it is limitations and from 25, it becomes 10000. Now,
once that happens, what do we say about the diversity or the biodiversity that is there in
this community. In this particular community, that is in the earlier situation we had all the
individuals that are roughly the same.

In this case every species has roughly the equal or, more or less equal number of
individuals. In that case the level of biodiversity is high. In this particular case after the
spike this species became so large, that it now looks more or less like a monoculture. So,
there are so many individuals of this particular species that now if you take out any sample,
you will only find individuals of this species and others will be just overwhelmed because
of these numbers.

Because of these reasons the biodiversity so, you have the same number of species, but the
species diversity it reduces. Now, it reduces and then it starts to increase again. Why?
Because you had this peak and your species 2 was able to use this peak of nutrients, but
then later on when they speak again subsides, so, again you are getting to a situation where
the amount of nutrients in the water is less. So, in that case it is coming back to the status
quo. So, you started with this relative scale. So, it started here and it came back to here.
So, this value and this value are roughly the same, but then, what happened to the standing
crop in that time? Standing crop is the amount of biomass that is present in the lake.

In this case the standing crop it increased exponentially, then it reached a peak and then it
decreased. Now, why did that happen? This is because of the second species which was
using these nutrients and it led to an algal bloom in this area. Now, when that happened,
so, this peak coincides with the time where you had the algal bloom. So, this is how
dominance changes with the surroundings. Earlier when you did not have this spike of the
nutrients in this particular condition, in the earlier situation there was no species that was
very much dominant if you had to find out the community dominance index.

The two most abundant species are these two. So, this is roughly like; 49 divided by 132.
This is the community dominance index would be [( 49 / 132) * 100 %], which is roughly
we can say that this is around 50, this is say around 150. So, this will become close to
around 33 %.

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This is the amount of community dominance index that we had in the lake before hand,
but then after the spike you have this value that is 10,000 and the second most diverse;
most abundant is 24. So, you have 24 divided by; and now this bottom value will also be
very close to 10000, but let us do the computation.. And, the final value is very much close
to 100 percent.

So, the community dominance index it shifted from 33 percent to 100 percent just because
of some changes that came up in the surroundings. The dominance changes with the
changes in the surroundings. But then in this particular case we can also see, that the
community, even though it suffered with these changes, even though it suffered with this
algal bloom, but then the later on values of everything are the same as that of the initial
values.

If you look at the number of species it does not change, if we look at the species diversity
here suppose this was 100 percent. Here again it comes back to the same level. If, you look
at the standing crop, it also comes back to the same level, if you look at the amount of
nutrients, that also comes back to the same level.

This is what we mean when we said that a community shows some amount of homeostasis
or self-regulation. So, even though this community was given some changes it was able to
self-regulate and it was able to bring everything back to the normal state. At the very end
it had the same level of biodiversity, it had the same standing crop, it had the same number
of species as if nothing had happened. So, how is any community able to bring itself back
to the normal? Well it is able to bring it itself back to the normal, because we have this
concept of stability of different communities.

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(Refer Slide Time: 27:24)

Community stability is defined as the ability of a community to defy change or to rebound

from change. There can be certain situations in which there is a community that is defying
the change. What do you mean by defying the change? That is, if there is a change, a
community is able to resist the change or in certain situation, it suffers from a change, then
it is able to rebound from the change.

How do you defy a change? A very good example of defying a change is the case of
buffers.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:11)

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Suppose you have a beaker and you have say water in it and the pH of the water is 7. And,
now if you add acid into this water. Now, as soon as you start adding acid, the pH starts
decreasing.

This is an example of a system that is not able to resist a change.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:37)

But, if we have another beaker. And, in this beaker suppose you have a buffer and the pH
of the buffer is again 7.0. Now, you add the acid. So, because you have a buffer solution
so, the pH will go down, but it will not go down at that faster rate. Suppose in this case
when you had the water inside and you added say 1 milliliter of an acid and the pH moved
from say 7 to 3.

In this case, here again you added 1 ml of the acid, but the pH change from 7 to 6.9. So,
this would be an example of a system that is the resisting the change.

A good example in the case of our communities would be that if you have a system in
which say you have again a lake ecosystem or a lake community.

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(Refer Slide Time: 29:34)

Here you are adding your nutrients inside. Once these nutrients come in you have an algal
bloom. But then before this algal bloom can happen, suppose there are some fish species
inside this water and these fish species they eat up the algae that are being formed. So, in
that case this system is resisting the change, because you are putting in an external
disturbance which is trying to increase the algal population, but then your system is such
that you are maintaining our homeostasis because your fishes are eating up that algae.

In that case, there cannot be an algal bloom. But then, this amount of resistance will be
limited. Because, it will depend on the amount of changes that you are bringing in and the
rate at which you are bringing in the changes. For instance when we were talking about
this particular lake, in place of giving it this spike suppose we gave it a spike that was only
this much.

In that case probably the algae that started to proliferate they could have been eaten up by
the fishes and then probably we would not have seen an algal bloom. Or in other case, in
place of giving it a very sharp spike, suppose we gave it the same amount of nutrients, but
then probably we gave these nutrients in a span of say 30 days. What would happen in that
scenario?

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(Refer Slide Time: 31:07)

We are not talking about the fish that are eating up these algae, but let us say that we are
giving in the nutrients at a very slow rate. What happens when you have a very slow rate?
You have some algae that were able to proliferate, but then after a while they start dying
and so, these algae, they come down to the bottom of the lake. With that the phosphorous
that was there in the water that also came down. So, the phosphorous that was there on the
top it has come down.

And, when they have started to degrade, the nitrogen that was there it was released out by
the denitrifying bacteria that are present in this community. Again you have added very
small amount of these nutrients, again there was a small algal bloom and then again the
phosphorous went down; the nitrogen what lost. If you are giving these changes at a very
slow speed. If the quantum of changes is less or if these changes are coming at a very slow
speed, in that case the system is able to resist the change. Because, you are giving it, these
nutrients, but this system is able to push those nutrients down or it is able to push those
nutrients away so that there is no change in the community.

That is the resistance to change. And, so, that is defying the change or the ability to rebound
from the change. In our example of this lake, the community did suffer from a change, it
did suffer from a decline in species diversity, it did suffer from an extensive increase in
the standing crop, but then it was able to rebound back. So, it was able to bring all these
values back to the normal.

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The ability of a community to defy a change, to resist a change or to rebound back from
the change is known as community stability. Community stability is a very integral part of
this study of ecology, because we are pushing different communities through different
changes, because of our anthropogenic influences, we are putting quite a lot of waste
materials into our water bodies into the environment and that is all changing different
communities.

It becomes important to know, how much is the amount of change that different
communities can tolerate. Whether the communities will be able to come back to normal
or not and, if we know the variables that govern the amount of resilience or the amount of
resistance in any particular community we can play with those variables, we can make our
communities much more stronger so that they are able to resist changes in a much better
way or maybe much more resilient so that even though these changes have occurred they
are able to come back very quickly. So, that is why a study of community stability becomes
very important these days.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:08)

Stability is divided into 3 different kinds. We can talk about global stability and we can
talk about local stability. We can understand it by the example of this ball that is there on
the surface. If you have a ball here and you take this ball up here and then you release it.
With gravity, this ball will come down and it will be here, you take it here to the other
direction and here again it will come down. Now, this is an example of a global stability.

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In the context of a community this is a community that is in such a state that whenever you
take this community to some level of disturbance it is always able to come back. And, it
will always come back to the same initial state, because this is a global stability.

In this second example is an example of local stability. In this case you have a ball here, if
you push it to this direction it will again come down here. If you push it to this direction it
will again come down here, but then if you push it too far; if you; maybe bring this ball to
this particular point, now, it will not come to this point, but then it will start rolling in this
direction and it will come here. Now, in the context of a community this is an example of
a local stability.

In the case of a local stability, if there are small changes in the community the community
will be able to bring things back to the normal. But, if there are larger changes in the
community, then the community will change and maybe become a very different
community. And, a good example is when we are talking about the successions. Now, in
the case of an ecological succession, the community is shifting from one local stability to
another local stability. So, a grassland is a stable community, if you put some amount of
changes in the grassland, it will come back to its own state, but then if you bring about a
large change then maybe it would convert itself into a shrub-land or maybe it would
convert itself into a more primitive level, say a moss stage. So, that would be an example
of local stability.

If you have a situation where you have a global stability and you are pushing your species
to a very large extent. So, here you have an example of stability and then you are pushing
your community to a very large extent. So, the large scale disturbances will result in
extinctions of some of the species and probably the structure of the community will change
the completely.

If you have global stability then even large scale disturbances will bring your community
back to the initial state. In the case of a local stability, if you have small amount of changes
the community will come back to the initial state, if you have a larger change the
community will change and become another community. And, if the changes are very
large, then you will have extinction of some species or maybe colonization by some new
species. So, it will become a very different community altogether.

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The question is, what governs this stability? So, if you talk about two communities, one is
a more bio diverse community; is that having a more amount of stability, or if there is
another community that has less biodiversity, does that have a higher level of stability?
Now, through ages the common knowledge has been that if you have more amount of
biodiversity, so you will be having a greater amount of stability.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:00)

Why? Because if you have a lesser biodiversity, you will probably have a few food chains.
And so, if there is some change at some particular tropic level the whole community will
collapse. Whereas, in the case of those communities that are extremely biodiverse, you
will have a number of food webs and in the case of these food webs. Even if there is some
species that is changing, you will have a situation where there will be some other species
that would be able to bring it back to the normal.

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(Refer Slide Time: 38:43)

For instance, if you have a situation where there are say 3 species of grasses and you have
say your 3 species of organisms that feed on grasses. So, in that case, if the number of
individuals of species 2 reduces, so, in that case the individuals of species 1 and species 3
will be able to counter the loss, because the organisms that were earlier feeding on species
2 they can now also feed on species 3 and species 1.

There is much more amount of stability and which will provide some time for species 2 so
that it is able to recuperate itself back to the original position. So, that has been our
common knowledge that the more is the amount of biodiversity in a system, the more is
the level of stability that we see in that particular system. But then, these days this common
knowledge has been questioned.

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(Refer Slide Time: 39:44)

Some examples are; we have always said that pest outbreaks occur more often on
cultivated lands and cultivated land has less diversity. If we look at a national forest, the
pest outbreaks there are lesser as compared to agricultural cultivated lands. And so, we
have always stated that, because the cultivated land has lesser biodiversity, it is less stable
and so, it is more prone to the attacks. However, there can also be a counter-argument that
there is no co-evolutionary history with the pest that resides there.

Because in the case of a forest there has been a co-evolutionary history; all these organisms
have co-evolved with one another, they are all dependent on each other and through time
they have been able to make out mechanisms through which they would be able to resist
those changes.

It is not because of the more biodiversity that we have in this area, but because of co-
evolution that a number of species are having mechanisms to thwart their attack. So, that
can also be another argument.

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(Refer Slide Time: 40:49)

Or if you look at things like tropical rainforests. So, tropical rainforests which are more
diverse, they are having fewer pest outbreaks as compared to temperate forests, where you
have less number of species or less amount of biodiversity. But then a counter-argument
is also that the tropical forests have not been studied enough when compared to the
temperate forest. So, it is also possible that we do not know the kinds of pest outbreaks
that are erupting in the case of the tropical forest. Now, if that be the situation, what should
we say? Does biodiversity increase stability or is there no relationship between
biodiversity and stability?

(Refer Slide Time: 41:34)

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When the current knowledge would say that yes, we have seen situations, in which if you
have a very simple system, then there is an inherent amount of instability in that particular
system. If there is a system that is very simple, that will tend to become unstable or will
tend to have more amount of instability. However, if you have a system that is more
complex so, there is more amount of stability, but then if we talk about a direct relationship
between diversity and stability, that has not yet been known. So, probably we should say
that biodiversity increase the stability, but only to a certain extent.

(Refer Slide Time: 42:14)

If there is a change in the system, how does the system respond? Again, we talked about
these two things one is resistance, resistance is a measure of how little the variable of
interest changes in response to the external pressures, or how much is the amount of
resistance your community is able to put towards the external threat. So, if your community
is a very resistant community, there will not be much changes in any of the variables that
you are measuring.

However, if your community has less amount of resistance, then the level of changes will
be very high. The second thing is; a related concept is inertia or persistence, which is again
the ability of the living system to resist the external fluctuations.

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(Refer Slide Time: 43:09)

So, this is about resistance or resistance can also be explained in terms of inertia.

The other definition is that of resilience. Resilience is when you have the changes, how
fast, how quickly, and to what extent is your community able to bounce back to normal.
The tendency of a system to retain it is functional and organizational structure, after a
perturbation or disturbance. Now, resistance is measured in terms of inertia. Resistance is
measured in terms of inertia and resilience is measured in terms of elasticity and amplitude.

Elasticity is the speed with which a system returns to it is original or the previous state.

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(Refer Slide Time: 43:49)

For instance, for the community you gave it a nutrient spike and because of which the
amount of biodiversity reduced. So, let us say the biodiversity was this much and then it
reduced and then after a while it was coming back to normal. Now, the question is, how
fast will this come back normal? Does it take this much amount of time or is it able to
come back very quickly.

So, a community that is taking this much amount of time. Here you have time and here
you have the parameter and you give it the nutrient spike. So, this is the level of nutrients.
And, the purple one is the level of biodiversity. Now, because this community is resilient
so, the initial level of biodiversity and the final level of biodiversity are the same, but then
your elasticity will ask the question take this longer period of time t1 or does it come back
very quickly which is t2.

A community that has a higher amount of elasticity will typically take a less time to come
back to it is normal state. So, elasticity is the speed with which the system returns to it is
original or the previous state. Now, the second related concept is amplitude. Amplitude is
a measure of how far a system can be moved from the previous state and still return.

Now in the case of amplitude we are saying that, in place of giving this much amount of
nutrient spike, suppose we give it this much amount of nutrients spike, a very great amount
of nutrients spike. Now, in that case it is possible that your system; the biodiversity reduces

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and then it is never able to come back. So, probably it comes back to some extent, but then
there is a difference that pops up.

So, the initial level of biodiversity is greater than the final level of biodiversity. Now, if
you had a spike of this much concentration, the system was able to bounce back to normal,
when you have a spike that is this large, the system is not able to come back to normal. So,
what is the maximum value of disturbance that you can do and still the system will be able
to come back to the normal state.

In this case, suppose it goes down and probably it is able to come back. So, what is this
maximum level of disturbance that the community will be resilient to; that is measured by
this term called amplitude? How far a system can be moved from the previous state and
still return back? Now, why are these concepts of resistance and resilience so important?

(Refer Slide Time: 46:45)

So, as we have seen, because we are adding a number of disturbances to different

communities. Now this is a case study of sewage in lake Washington. Now, lake
Washington is a lake near Seattle and in the case of this lake, there were a number of
sewerage drains that were draining into this particular lake.

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(Refer Slide Time: 47:11)

There is a lake. And, in this particular lake you have one stream that is giving out sewerage
then you have another stream that is giving out sewerage and so on. Now, after a while it
happened that people said no this is too much let us now treat this waste. So, they then set
up some sewage treatment plants, but then even after treatment the waste was put into the
river itself.

Even after treatment you have a very high amount of nutrient load that is there in the
treated wastewater. So, that would also result in some changes in the community, that will
also result in algal blooms. After a while it was decided that no we are not going to put
any of this treated base into our lake and we are going to push it into the oceans. And so
that now you do not have any more amount of sewage that is put into the lake Washington.

This lake was studied as an example of how communities change. So, on the x axis here
we have the years and so, near to around 1960, we had hundred percent amount of sewage
that was put into the lake and then it was reduced. And then is reduced because it went in
phases. In different phases the sewage was diverted into the seas. So, this is showing you
the amount of sewage that remains. So, after diversion now at this point, you do not have
any particular amount of sewage that is being put into the system.

Now, this grey curve is telling you the sewage effluent that was there in the lake. At this
particular point of time you have started reducing it and after the while you do not have

665
any other effluent that is now being put into the lake. In this case, this is showing you the
level of dissolved phosphorous. Now phosphorous is only coming because of the sewage.

In this case, if you have more amount of sewage, you will have more amount of
phosphorous. When you have less amount of sewage, less amount of phosphorous is
coming. And, then after a while it reduces as well. Once you have these nutrients in the
water, here we are looking at the secchi transparency.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:38)

Secchi disc as we have seen in one of the previous lectures, it is a disc that is roughly 30
centimeters in size and in this dish you have these 4 portions, and 2 of the portions are
black in color, and 2 of the portions are white in color. And, then this disc has a rod. So,
with this rod you are able to push this disc into the water. And, then you look at the depth
at which you are unable to differentiate between the black portions and the white portions.

That is the depth at which the turbidity of the water is so large that you are unable to see
the black portion as black and the white portion as white. If you have more amount of
turbidity in the water, if you have more amount of planktons which are giving rise to more
amount of turbidity. In that case the secchi depth will be low. Here we are saying that when
you had sewage that was being put into the system the secchi transparency or the secchi
depth was close to around 1.5 meters. Now, later on we can see that the level is going up.
After a while, once you have stopped putting your sewage, the secchi depth increases and
the water is now becoming more and more transparent.

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The things that we are asking in this system is that, once you are putting in your sewage
there will be some amount of disturbances to the communities. Now, are the community
is able to come back to normal? And to what extent? and how? That is the question.

In brief, in this lake we were putting in sewage. The sewage was bringing in phosphorus
and nitrogen, because of which we were seeing a very high amount of growth of algae and
phytoplankton. And, then after a while it was stopped and we are asking the question, what
happens in next?

(Refer Slide Time: 51:35)

This lake was studied for a very long period of time and we see here that this is the point
where you have the 100 percent level which is the point where you stopped at reducing the
amount of sewage. Now in a very short period from this point, 1963 to 1969, the level of
phosphorus has dropped considerably.

From hundred percent level that we measured in 1963 here the level is close to say 20
percent or 25 percent. Now, why was this phosphorus able to come out of the system?
How was this community resilient enough that it was able to get rid of the phosphorus?
Because as long as you have a heavy dose of phosphorus in your ecosystem, there will be
more and more amount of growth of these planktons.

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(Refer Slide Time: 52:30)

As we have seen before, if you have a lake and you have the planktons which are now
using up the phosphorus when these planktons die and the dead matter comes to the
bottom. And so, the phosphorus gets trapped to the bottom of the lake. So, that is how the
community or the ecosystem in this case is able to bring the phosphorus down. The nitrates
take a very long time to come down.

Even after say 6 or 7 years the level had only come down to say around 80 or 85 percent,
because nitrates take a very long period of time. But even though we have these nitrates in
the water, still we can see there that the level of chlorophyll has gone down or the amount
of algae and phytoplankton that has come down. So, the chlorophyll is shown here in this
circular curve.

So, the chlorophyll, it increased and then it came down and then it is less than 10 percent
of what has remained of what was there in 1963. Now why is that so? Even though you
have a high amount of nitrate, but still the amount of chlorophyll is able to come down.
Now, that is because different species have differed tolerances to different perturbations
in the environment.

And, when we talked about Shelford’s law of tolerance or when we talk about Liebig’s
law of the minimum, in this case, the growth is not driven by the amount of nitrogen that
you have in the water, but it is actually driven by the amount of phosphorus that is there

668
in the water. If you are able to bring one nutrient down, even if there is another nutrient
that is still there in the system. So, the growth will come down.

In this case, the level of nitrate is so high that you probably will not want to drink this
water because you have a very high concentration of the nitrate, but then because the plants
require nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, so, in this case, just because the phosphate
level came down so, the nitrate level also came down. And, in this case if you look at the
measures that were taken in 1933. So, this black one is the phosphate and if this was say
10 percent of the 1963 level, from this 10 percent, the final level is only close to around
say 15 or 20 percent. If, we look at the amount of chlorophyll that was there in 1933, it has
roughly come down to the same level as was there before the sewage was put into the
system.

Remember that we had started putting in the sewage at this particular point of time and
then if you look at the 1933 concentrations, it has come back to the 1933 concentrations.
So, which is giving us an indication that even if you have disturbed a community to a very
large extent; you have added so much amount of nutrients into the system, even when you
have added so much amount of sewage into the system, you are still able to come back.
The communities are still resilient enough that they are able to come back. The amount of
turbidity goes down, the amount of nutrients goes down and the lake again starts to support
a number of different organisms.

(Refer Slide Time: 55:54)

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So, it is telling us that the detrimental changes that we are bringing into the environment,
they can be stopped and they can be reversed if they are within the limits.

If you have crossed the limits, if you have brought about a change that is greater than the
amplitude of resilience of the community, then probably this lake would change forever,
but then still today, even after you have made so much amount of changes into the
environment, if it is still within the limits, you can still bring back the system to the
normalcy level, which tells us, which gives us the hope that all is not lost. Even though we
have played with or we have disturbed the communities and the ecosystems to a very large
extent, we still have hope, we can still bring things back to the normal.

That is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

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 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Forest Service, M.P.

Lecture – 19
Biogeography: Analysis of geographic distributions

“Namaste”,

Today we begin a new module which is distribution and abundance. This module will have
3 lectures.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:21)

The first one is biogeography which is the analysis of geographic distributions.

Biogeography is the field of ecology that asks the questions, why are things where they
are? And we look at this topic in more detail in the second lecture which is why are things,
where they are?

Here we will ask if there is a species that is found in a certain area. So, why is that species
only found in that area? What is constraining the range of that species? why is it not found
anywhere else? And the answer to that is some push factors and some pull factors.

So, push factors are those factors that are pushing that species away from other areas and
pull factors are those factors that are attracting the species to that particular area. So, every

671
species tries to remain in an area or it is best able to survive in those areas that have the
most suitable climatic conditions most suitable biotic conditions for the survival of that
particular species. So, which is why we get a certain geographic distribution for every
species and this is what is asked in the topic of biogeography.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:33)

Biogeography is the study of the geographical distribution of life on earth and the reasons
for the patterns one observes on different continents, islands and oceans. Essentially it is
asking why are certain species found in certain areas and it also asks; it tries to document
which species are found in which areas.

It is the study of the geographical distribution of life on earth. So, that is a cataloguing of
different species in different areas and the reasons. So, not only do you catalog, but you
also ask, what is the reason behind such a particular geographical distribution and the
reasons for the patterns one observes on different continents, islands, and oceans.

Now depending on which particular areas you are concentrating on there are further
subdivisions or biogeography such as island biogeography that asks the question, how do
species come into an island? How many species will there be in any particular island?
What would that depend on? Does it depend on the structural diversity of the habitats that
is therein on the island? Does it also depend on the size of the island? And so on.

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Similarly, you can have oceanic biogeography which shall ask the question, what are the
species in the oceans that are found near the continents? what are the species that found
away from the continents? what are the species that are found in the upper layers of water?
What are the species that are found in the seabed? What are the species that are found in
the column of water and so on? You can have different sub disciplines of biogeography in
the term in the form of continental biogeography, island biogeography, oceanic
biogeography and so on.

Now, when we are asking which species is found in this area the other scientific term that
comes into picture is the range; the range is the distribution of the species. The range or
distribution of a species is the geographical area within which that particular species can
be found. Now when we are asking this question, which species is found in which areas?
And how are these different areas different from each other? It makes sense to have an
understanding of different kinds of habitats that exist on this planet.

Or at least the kinds of habitats that we have in India, because India itself is a very varied
country by geographically and so, we have different kinds of habitats, we have very high
mountains, we have deserts, we have the oceans, we have different kinds of forests, we
have grasslands and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:11)

Now we will have a look at some major Indian habitats and their residents.

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(Refer Slide Time: 04:13)

Let us begin with the Alpine meadows. Now, alpine is a term that refers to the mountains.
So, this is a meadow. A meadows is the grassland. This is a grassland that is found in the
mountains and a good example is the Dachigam National Park which is there in Srinagar.
Now in the case of Dachigam National park here you can observe that you have these hills
and these hills have these meadows or the grasslands. Now a place like Srinagar is having
an extremely cold climate and that is the climate that is therein and Dachigam hill.

Climatically we can seen that these areas that have the alpine meadows they have a cool
or a cold climate. Typically they are at a great height because you have mountains, so you
have hills here, typically if you talk about the wind speeds, the wind speeds will be very
high because this is a mountainous area. In a mountainous area you have winds in the
daytime you also have winds in the night time.

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(Refer Slide Time: 05:17)

Now if you look at a hill, so, let us consider a hill and if you have the sun here, now in the
daytime what happens is, this particular area it preferentially gets heated because of the
sun rays so, this area becomes warmer. Now when this area becomes warmer the air around
it also becomes warmer and it starts rising, now when it starts rising the cold air that is
there in the valley. So, here you have the valley and the cold air that is there in the valley
it will start rising upwards to fill up the gap. This is the kind of wind pattern that we will
observe in the daytime and this is known as a valley breeze.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:01)

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Now, at night time, when do not have the sun. So, now, what happens is the valley area
because it is sort of secluded from both the sides. So, here the air remains as such whereas,
the hill areas or the top areas they are able to lose out the radiation very fast. So, they are
able to lose out the heat. Now when that happens, the air here becomes cooler. So, here
you have a cooler air and the cooler air is more denser and so, this air now starts flowing
towards the valley, now this wind is known as a hill wind.

In the case of these alpine meadows not only do they have a cold climate, but at the same
time they also have a very high wind speed. At the same time we can talk about the soil
characteristics that we have in these areas. So, typically the soils here will not be very
fertile, why because they have been in this particular state for say thousands of years.

Whenever there is a rainfall so all the minerals that are there on the top layer of the soil,
they will start dissolving in the rainwater and they will start moving down slope. So, they
will reach into the streams and then they will reach into the rivers and ultimately they will
get drained into the seas.

These areas are typically not very fertile. At the same time especially in the case of this
particular area, you have the rocks that are making these mountains and there is a
continuous process of weathering that is going on and in the process of weathering the
rocks are getting broken into smaller fragments and they are ultimately making soil in
these areas, now that soil with the rains it moves down exposing more rocks which
ultimately makes more soil and so on.

So, this is a process that goes on. Now, if we are asking the question why are these
particular species of grasses found in these areas we will have to make a correlation
between the requirements of the species and the actual climatic conditions that we have in
this area. So, it is possible that the grasses that are growing here do not require a very high
level of fertility and they are tolerant to high wind speeds and they are also tolerant to low
temperatures. These are the kinds of correlations that will make in the case of
biogeography.

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(Refer Slide Time: 08:35)

Alpine meadows are found in Jammu and Kashmir. These are also found in Uttarakhand
and in a number of areas where you have hills and typically you will find that the species
are more or less common between these areas.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:51)

Another kind of habitat that we have is known as an Alpine forest, now again Alpine is a
mountainous area. So, alpine forests are those forests that are found in the mountainous
areas. Typically you will find trees that are coniferous trees and you will also find some
broadleaf trees.

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(Refer Slide Time: 09:19)

Now, in the case of these conifers trees you will have a structure that permits snow to fall
down and they will have a very specific shape of the tree. So, for instance, if you have a
tree like this and if there is a very heavy snowfall, so all of this snow comes on the canopy
of these trees which will make it extremely top heavy and that would facilitate the toppling
of this particular tree.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:43)

In the case of these areas, typically you will find that the trees have a conical structure.
Now this particular shape facilitates that if you have snowfall so this is snowfall moves

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down to the ground. It is not able to accumulate very much on top of these trees and
because of which these trees are able to withstand heavy snowfall as will.

In the case of Alpine forests we will find some of these conifers trees together with some
associated species which would even be broad leaved species. When we are talking about
these meadows and these forests, there would also be very specific animal species that are
found in these areas.

For instance in the case of Uttarakhand you will also find species like the pica, now pica
is a very small mouse species that is only found on this area. Now these are the alpine
forests and then if you move southwards with reach the moist deciduous forests.

(Refer Slide Time: 10:45)

These are again the deciduous forests that are found in Uttarakhand; now when we say
deciduous, now deciduous forest is a forest type in which the trees have this adaptation
that they shed their leaves in a particular season. Now you could have trees that shed their
leaves in the summer season. In certain areas, when trees are shedding their leaves in the
summer season the main reason is that they want to conserve water, because in the summer
season it is typically the pinch period for water and water is lost from the leaves through
the process of transpiration. If you lose out all your leaves, so the amount of water that you
will be losing out every day becomes less.

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On the other hand there could be some other species that shed their leaves in the spring
season. In those cases, these trees typically store their waste materials into their leaves and
then they shed their leaves so that the waste materials are gotten rid off.

So, these are the kinds of adaptations that we will find in these areas. Typically in a moist
deciduous forest you will find a very heavy ground cover. These are the moist deciduous
forests of Uttarakhand. If you talk about the climatic conditions here the climatic
conditions will not be that extreme it is not very cold, but then it is cooled plus in these
areas you have ample amount of moisture available throughout the year and the wind
speeds are not very high plus the amount of solar insulation that you get in this area is also
not very high, because typically these areas are on a higher latitudes.

These would be the characteristics of the terrain of this area or the characteristics of this
particular region. The soil typically again is not very fertile, but all of these trees like these
are the Sal trees that are found in this area and these trees are adapted to these conditions.
Now in the case of biogeography when we ask the question, why are Sal trees found in
these particular areas? That is because a Sal requires these conditions. So, it requires ample
amount of moisture, it cannot tolerate a very heavy cold and it does not require a very
fertile soil. This is why we can say that Sal is found in this particular area.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:13)

In certain other areas we will find dry deciduous forests. Now again, this is a deciduous
forest because it is shedding it is leaves. In the case of a dry deciduous forest you will have

680
typically less amount of moisture that is available to the plants and a good example of a
dry deciduous forest is a teak forest. Teak forests are found extensively in the states of
Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Gujarat.

In the case of teak forest, these forests shed their leaves right before the summer season so
that they are able to conserve moisture and they are found in these areas because they are
able to tolerate quite a heavy amount of draught in these areas.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:59)

Now moving westwards in our country, we have the scrub forests, now a scrub forest is,..
you can typically find a scrub forest in Rajasthan or Gujarat. In the case of a scrub forest
you will have such a situation that the land is exposed in a number of areas plus you have
these small shrubs in the area. Typically these shrubs are very thorny shrubs.

Here again you have a very low amount of moisture that is available to the plants and the
plants also show adaptations to conserve this moisture. There would be a number of plants
that would have reduced their leaves into the spines or the thorns. When you have a leaf
that is converted into a thorn so, it not only gives protection to the plant, but that is also an
adaptation through which it is able to reduce the amount of water losses through
transpiration.

In these areas because you do not have very tall trees, these areas have such low amounts
of moisture that they are not able to support tall trees. Typically the ground flora is exposed

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to a very heavy amount of solar radiation. The plants would be adapted to that as well. So
that you would find a number of species where the leaves are covered in a waxy coating
not only to reduce the amount of moisture that is being lost, but also to reflect the solar
radiation that is incident on these plants.

When we talk about the animals of these areas, these areas do not support a very high
density of animals typically because the amount of moisture is less and also you do not
have ample amount of fodder that is available to the animals and green fodder is only
available in certain seasons in plenty. Otherwise the animals have to make use of this dry
fodder or maybe some amounts of leaves that some animals can have access too.

(Refer Slide Time: 16:01)

If you move further westward in the case of Jodhpur, you will find these sand dunes. Now
we have moved from a scrub forest to a sand dune. A sand dune is typically a very dry
area and these trees they have been imported and planted to stabilize the sand dune
otherwise the sand dunes typically do not support a very large number of trees.

The sand is very fragile; It moves from place to place and again here the amount of
moisture that is available for so supporting life is very less and there would be very great
amount of adaptations to severely constrain the amount of water that is being lost or to
reduce the requirement of water per day.

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(Refer Slide Time: 16:49)

In this case you will find very specialized species such as this spiny tailed lizard that is
only found in this area. Now again if you ask this question, why do you have this spiny
tailed lizard in this area? The answer would be because this particular species is adapted
to this area plus the conditions in this area are so harsh that the predators of this particular
species are not able to live in this area.

Otherwise, if you have a very large number of predators in this area they would eat up the
all the spiny tailed lizards that are found in this area. Again you have this species because
there are certain pull factors for it for this particular region. It is well adapted plus also it
has a very less number of predators that are there in this area and also the other areas have
push factors. So, other areas have conditions that this lizard is not comfortable with or the
other areas has predators that would eat up this lizard. Typically we find the distribution
on this lizard more in this area.

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(Refer Slide Time: 17:57)

We also find Estuaries. Estuaries are very specialized habitats where you have a river that
is coming and meeting the seas. Here you have a confluence of fresh water and the saline
water. Now here again the species that would be found would be those that are tolerant to
both these levels of salinity. So, they can tolerate fresh water and also they can tolerate the
salty water plus there would be a number of species that will make use of all these 3 kinds
of habitats that will be found in an estuary. When you have estuary, you have this river
that is coming and it is meeting the ocean.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:35)

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In the case of the ocean, you have a very high salinity whereas, in the case of the river you
have a very low salinity. Typically you will find that these intermediate areas have an
intermediate level of salinity and here you will have a number of species that would spend
part of their time in the high salinity areas, part of their time in the intermediate salinity
areas and part of their time in the low salinity areas.

So, this provides a very specialized habitat and the species that are found in these areas are
found here because these are the only few areas where you can have all these 3 kinds of
salinities that are available in the same area. This is why you will have these species, these
specialized species that will be found in these areas.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:43)

Near the estuaries of Gujarat you also have the Rann of Kutch. Rann of Kutch is home to
the wild asses that are found in our country. So, you have the Indian wild ass sanctuary.
Here again, if you talk about the habitat conditions, you will find that it is a very flat land.
There are hardly any hills around.

It is a very flat land and if you go, there you can see kilometers and kilometers of very flat
land. Now in the case of the rainy season, this area gets somewhat inundated and in the
case of the dry season, it will just act like a very flat dry piece of land. Here again, the
habitat is so specialized that you have only few months of the year when these areas are
inundated, during the other months of the year it is completely dry. So, the species that
will be found in this area will also be extremely specialized.

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And especially, in the dry season you do not have access to water in a number of places
and so the species will be very constrained in their movement. Now the wild asses that I
found in this area are adapted to these dry conditions. They do not require a very large
amount of water plus they are able to feed on the native vegetation that is found in this
area. So, this area cannot support other predators and this area can support the wild asses
because of which you have the wild asses that are living in this area.

Typically the water sources in this area are extremely saline, because this area when it gets
inundated, it also receives some amount of salty water from the seas and also the
groundwater is extremely salty. So that also makes this habitat extremely specialized.

If you take these wild asses out and place them into some other forest. Say, if you keep
these in the forests of Madhya Pradesh. So, the tigers will come and hunt these wild asses.
But then, because tigers are not able to survive in this area, so, the wild asses are able to
sustain themselves in this particular area.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:05)

In certain regions of the Rann of Kutch, we will also find these water bodies that will
support a very dense population of flamingos. Flamingos again are very specialized birds.
So they are migratory birds they spend some time in India and sometime they move out
and when they are here in India you can see that all of these are pinkish in color because
of their very specialized diets.

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In their diets they have certain plants that are rich in carotenoids and also certain animals
that are taking these carotenoids and these carotenoids, these are compounds that are
getting accumulated into their bodies. If you talk about why this bird is found in this area,
you again have to make a correlation between the requirements of the bird. This bird
requires water. It is feeding on the organisms that are found in water.

It will only be found in areas that have water plus this has other requirements. Typically
these flamingos come here and they also breed in these areas. If this bird is coming here
to breed, it requires an area that does not have predators, it requires an area where it can
have ample source of food which it can feed to it is young ones. Because this the
surrounding area is extremely dry and you do not have a number of predators. So, you can
have a sustained population of these birds in this area.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:37)

Another very specialized habitat as that of the lagoons. Here we are seeing the Chilika
lagoon. Similar to an estuary, a lagoon is a large water body.

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(Refer Slide Time: 23:51)

In the case of your Chilika lagoon, you have this water body. Here you have the oceans
and this particular case you have the Bay of Bengal. The lagoon is drained by a number of
rivers. Now these rivers are bringing in fresh water or a low salinity water. In the case of
the Bay of Bengal, you have high salinity; so you have saline water here. Now these
lagoons are separated from the sea with these sand bars.

When you have these sand bars here you have fresh water coming in from this area and
you have a saline water that is coming in from this area. If you went ahead and try to
measure the amount of salinity that you will have in the lagoon, you will typically find that
these areas that are near to the sandbars have a very high level of salinity. These areas that
are near the mouths of the rivers have low level of salinity and the other areas have an
intermediate level of salinity.

Here again, if you ask, what are the species that are found in these areas? So, there is a
dolphin by the name of the Irrawaddy dolphin that is found in this area and this dolphin
makes an extensive use of the organisms that are found in this area. Typically, the plants
that would grow here near the banks, which have a very low salinity, will be very different
from the plants that would be growing in these salinity areas. This makes a habitat that is
structurally very diverse plus you will have, especially in the case of this Chilika lake, the
depth of the water is very less so, the depth of the water is typically like 2 or 3 meters.

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When you have a depth of water that is typically 2 or 3 meters so, all of this water is able
to receive sunlight from, because if you look at a column of water, now if you have incident
sunlight. The sunlight will not be able to penetrate completely to the down surface because
typically your sunlight is able to penetrate say around 5 or 6 meters of the water column.
Now here because the area is extremely shallow, so most of this water column is having
the sunlight which makes it extremely rich photosynthetically.

You have a lot of photosynthetically active radiation that is available in this area, which
supports a very extensive plant life, plus at the same time because you have these fresh
water rivers and you have agricultural fields in this area. These rivers are also bringing in
a number of nutrients into this area. Typically, the amount of nutrients is very high, the
amount of food production because of the autotrophs, the photoautotrophs that are found
in this area is very high that also supports a very large population of fishes in this area.

If you have a heavy fish population so, there would be a number of predators that can now
sustain in this area and examples are the Irrawaddy dolphins or a number of piscivorous
birds that are supported by these kinds of habitats. If you have to ask the question, why is
Irrawaddy dolphin found in this area? You will have to make a correlation between the
abiotic factors that are found in this area and also the biotic factors that are found in this
area.

Abiotic factors as in, you have this water that is not of a very great depth so, you have a
lot of photosynthesis that is going on in this area. In terms of salinity you have a
distribution of salinity in this area, in terms of nutrition you have a very heavy nutrition
load that is coming in from the streams and then all of these abiotic factors are giving rise
to biotic factors. So, you have a very high amount of photosynthesis that is going on in
this area which is leading to a lot of food production. Now that food production is
supporting a number of fish species in this area because they are getting an ample amount
of food.

If they are getting an ample amount of food, they will have very large populations which
will then sustain other organisms that are dependent on the fishes such as the birds and the
dolphins. If you did not have the fishes in this area, the dolphins would not have occurred
in this area. If you did not have this depth of water, you would not have fishes, you would

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not have the dolphins. Now biogeographically, if you ask the question, why are dolphins
found here? Here is an answer.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:59)

Now, moving to the northeast part of the country, here we are seeing the Brahmaputra
floodplains. Brahmaputra flood plains in the state of Assam are governed by the life of the
river.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:15)

Typically you have this river Brahmaputra which is draining this area; this is Kaziranga
national park and in the rainy season the river floods and when it floods, it inundates the

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whole of this area. So, you have these floodplains that completely get inundated. When
these flood plains are getting inundated, the sediments that were there, that were brought
by the river, they are also distributed to all of these areas.

These sediments are extremely new soils so, they are extremely fertile and so, the grass
growth in this area will be very high. At the same time when you have this river that floods
the area whatever remains in this area gets killed. Essentially what happens is, when you
have a flooding so, all the existing grasses or other plants that would be found in this area;
there are a number of mosses species that are found in this area and all of them get killed
in the flood season.

Typically, if you did not have this regular flooding in this area so, you would see that you
have grasses. After the grasses it would start getting a series of successional stages. So,
from grasses you would move to shrubs, from shrubs you would move to trees and
ultimately this area would become a very dense tree rich forest area. But then, because we
are having floods every year, so, all these species; any plant that is coming up in this area,
so, suppose this is a sapling of a tree, so, this happening will also get killed in this area.
Typically, the only period that is available for the growth of plants is the period where you
are not having the floods and, what are the species that can grow very fast in this area?
That are the grasses species; so, which is why in these floodplains you will see that
typically for a very long distance you do not see any trees.

If you have an area that has these grasses species and here you have ample amount of
moisture that is available, the climate is not extreme and in these regions you have ample
amount of grasses. Now grasses are again producer organisms and they perform
photosynthesis, they bring in a lot of food for a number of animals and so this area supports
a very heavy density of the herbivores. If you have a heavy density of herbivores, a large
population of herbivores, this would also support the carnivores. So, Kaziranga National
Park is also a tiger reserve. It supports a dense density or a dense population of tigers in
this area.

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(Refer Slide Time: 32:01)

This also supports organisms like the rhinoceros. Rhinoceros again is an animal that is a
dependent on these grasses and because we have these grasses here, you have these floods
every year. So, these floods are not allowing the competitors to remain in this area; so you
have the rhinoceros that is found in this area. Again if you ask, why is rhinoceros found
Kaziranga National Park?

You will have to answer in terms of the pull factors. The pull factors are that you have
ample amount of food that is available to this animal, you have equitable climate that is
available to this animal, you have an adequate amount of protection that is being provided
to this animal and you will also have to talk about the push factors. This animal cannot
live in say, very high hills or it cannot live in the deserts. Those are the areas where it
would not be found plus if there are areas where it has some predators or there are people
who are trying to kill this animal. It would be wiped off from the other areas and would
then only be found in these areas. So, the push and pull factors would tell you what species
are found in which area and why.

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(Refer Slide Time: 33:15)

Now, moving southwards, here we are observing the Shola forest. Now you can see Shola
forests in Karnataka or Tamilnadu. These again, are very specialized habitats,

(Refer Slide Time: 33:33)

What is happening here is, you have certain trees. So, you have this tree and then you have
this grass. Now typically the tree is not able to expand itself. Let us say that, here you have;
this is a patch of trees and then you have the patch of grasses. Now, in the case of these
Shola forest the trees are not able to expand their territory outside and the grass is also not
able to expand its territory inside the patch of those trees.

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In this case there is a dynamic equilibrium so, you will find trees and you will find grasses
and these are found in these areas and if you try to replace one with the other they can be
replaced, but then just because of their mutual competition, the tree is not allowing grass
to come into it is area and the grass is not allowing tree to come into its area.

This makes it a very structurally diverse habitat plus you would observe that again because
this is a hilly area, so there are very high wind speeds.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:41)

With very high wind speeds if you have a tall tree. Let us say that you have a very tall tree
in an area with a large sized canopy and if there is a heavy wind in this area. There would
be a lot of pressure that is being provided to this tree and either this tree would topple down
or this tree would break somewhere. Now if that be the situation, how should trees respond
to a situation of very high wind speeds? Now this is an adaptation that we find in the Shola
forest. You will find that typically the trees are very stunted so, they do not have a great
height.

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(Refer Slide Time: 35:19)

So, you will have these trees. You will have trees that are extremely stunted, plus these
trees will remain close to each other. In this case if there is a high wind speed that is only
applied to this particular tree and the other trees get protected so, you do not have a high
wind speed that is being suffered from these trees. These are again very specialized habitats
that you have only in these particular areas and these support a very rich biodiversity that
is only found in these areas, because these would support those species that require both
the trees and the grasses for their survival.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:01)

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Now, moving further south, if you visit the Andamans, here you have the equatorial forest.
In the case of equatorial forest, if we talk about the abiotic conditions; these are islands.
The variation in temperatures is not very high, it is warm throughout the year and the
rainfall is plenty. So, there is an ample amount of moisture that is available for the growth
of vegetation.

Typically, the trees that you will find in this area will be very large. So, they will be very
tall trees. You can see this log that is being moved by this elephant. Now elephants are not
naturally found in this area, but elephants are brought to this area or to help in the logging
operations. Now in the case of equatorial forest, because these are close to the equator,
there is large amount of sun sunlight that is available for the growth of the vegetation.

So, you have ample water, you have ample sunshine, you have a fertile soil and so you
have very tall trees. Now typically when you ask about the species that are found in this
area, they will have to be adapted to these conditions. So, these are the pull factors. If you
are once adapted to certain conditions, you will prefer living in those conditions.

(Refer Slide Time: 37:23)

And if you go near the coastal areas, you will find the mangroves. Mangroves again are
very specialized organisms plus they also provide a very specialized habitat to a number
of other organisms. In the case of mangroves, here you can see that their roots are typically
very large in size, these are the stilt roots, you also find a number of pneumatophores. The

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pneumatophores are those roots that move from the ground upwards to get air. These are
found in areas that are typically very marshy.

When you have a high tide, a lot of this area will get inundated; when you have the low
tide so, this area becomes exposed again. These are the species that can make use of such
abiotic conditions of partial inundation or compute inundation at times. These are adapted
to these conditions and which is why these species can thrive well in this area. Now
suppose you went to this area and you try to plant a teak tree or say a Sal tree that we
normally find in a deciduous forest. These areas will not support a teak or Sal tree because
of the high salinity that is there in the waters.

But then, if you move inside the island, you have ample amount of sunlight, ample amount
of water and if you are able to remove the other trees. Artificially, you can have a very
good teak plantation in these areas. Now once these mangroves are here, now you can also
look at a number of community interactions that will happen because these mangroves are
found here. These roots of the mangroves they provide a specialized habitat for a number
of other species.

They can act as breeding grounds for fishes, they can act as nurseries because they are able
to protect the young ones of the fishes from their predators. At the same time these areas
also support a large population of saltwater crocodiles. These crocodiles can live in these
areas and they can make use of these roots to get their prey or to kill their prey.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:37)

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Typically what a crocodile does is that it would come to these roots. Now a crocodile is
not able to chew it is food. It normally has to tear the flesh that it has caught. So, if there
is an animal so, this crocodile has to tear it apart and then it will gulp it. Now because it is
unable to chew it is food what it does is, it will typically bring its prey or the dead animal
that is here and it will bring this prey inside these roots and once this prey gets entangled
with the roots then it will try to tear it apart.

These roots also support the crocodiles in this particular manner. Or the crocodile once it
has killed an animal, it will just bring the carcass and it will put it here so that this carcass
starts rotting; once it starts rotting it becomes easier for it to tear the flesh apart. Again,
you have these mangroves here because you have this particular abiotic conditions of
ample amount of sunlight, ample amount of water, high salinity and conditions of partial
inundation.

Now once you have the mangroves they will support other species because of the
community interactions. They will support a number of fish species and some crocodiles.
Now if you have a heavy amount of fishes or a large population of fishes in this area, that
would also support a number of birds in this area, a number of fish eating birds or the
piscivorous birds and once you have the piscivorous birds, then you will also have a large
amount of dropping that will happen near these mangroves which will then further
substantiate the growth of these mangrove trees. So, there is a complete ecosystem that
you will find in these areas.

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(Refer Slide Time: 41:21)

In biogeography when we are asking the question, Where are certain species found? Or
what are the species that are found in certain area? And why are they found in those areas?
The first question that you need to ask is what are the conditions that are available in this
area? So, you will have to talk about the abiotic factors that are available, the amount of
sunlight that is there, the amount of moisture that is available, the level of fertility of the
soils, the depth of soils or say the wind speed and so on.

And with these abiotic factors, the next thing you will ask is, what are the biotic factors
that are available in this area? What are the other species that are found in this area? Do
you have a number of prey species that are available in this area because of these abiotic
factors. Now if you have suitable prey species in this area, so you will also find so a number
of predator species in these areas. When we are asking this question, why are these species
found here? So these are the connections that we need to make.

Here we are observing that we are talking about the altitudinal variation. So, altitudinal
zonation of forests in Sumatra. If you talk about an area say, an area that is at 10 degrees
latitude. Now if you move upwards so typically the temperature reduces. So, you will start
seeing a tropical forest, then you will move to a subtropical forest, then you will move to
a warm temperate forest and maybe later on you will even move to the alpine forest. In
this case, when we are talking about an altitudinal zonation, it is the temperature
differences that are making all these different forests possible in any particular area.

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For instance, you will find warm temperate forests typically between 30 degrees and 35
degrees north and south latitudes, and you will find subtropical forests typically between
say 28 and 32 degrees, but then even if you are here between 0 and 10 degrees, you can
find these forests if you can make these conditions available to the species.

(Refer Slide Time: 43:37)

So, what we are saying here is that, if you have this if you have a tall mountain so, in this
portion you will typically find equatorial forest and the location of this mountain is say
close to the equator. Now close to the equator you should find the equatorial forest, but
then because this area is tall, so, you also get a zone where you have a lower temperature
that is available. So, along with the equatorial forest or along with the tropical forest you
will also start seeing subtropical forest.

Subtropical forest typically should not be found near equator, but then because you have
made this conditions available, so you will find these species that are found in these areas
as well. And then the species that are found in these subtropical forests will either be very
same or related to the species that are found in the actual subtropical forest which are near
the tropics. Then if you move further up, you will find the next zonation so, for instance
you can start seeing deciduous forests.

From the deciduous forests, you will have another zonation where you will start seeing the
alpine forests and then even above you will start seeing the next kind of vegetation, say

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you will start seeing the alpine grasslands and then on the very top because this area is
now very cold, so, you will have a situation where it does not support any species.

So, in any particular location, if you can make the other conditions available for certain
species, those species will start thriving in those areas. They will typically migrate to those
areas and will start thriving. Now we will look at migration in more detail, later on. And
we cannot ask questions just on these tree species, but also on different animal species that
can be found in these areas.

(Refer Slide Time: 45:55)

For instance, if you look at the distribution of an animal such as the snow leopard. Now a
snow leopard is found in these areas. Now, you can ask this question, why is snow leopard
found in these areas? What are the abiotic characteristics of the environment that are
supporting the snow leopard in these areas? And what are the abiotic conditions and the
biotic conditions that are not supporting snow leopard in other areas?

Here again you are asking 2 questions; If this is the distribution of snow leopard, why is
snow leopard found here? And the second question is; Why is a snow leopard not found
here? And once you have both these answers, then you can understand the distribution of
any particular species.

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(Refer Slide Time: 46:39)

Or if we talk about say the coral reefs. Now, we have the coral reefs in these areas and
here we have the minimum and the maximum temperatures of the seas. Here you can see
that the maximum temperature in these areas are following this particular isotherm.

So, maybe the question, why the corals are found in this area has a lot to do with the
maximum sea temperature that can be tolerated by this particular species? Or is it related
to the minimum sea temperature that can be tolerated by this species? Why is this species
not found to the very north or to the very south? For any particular species, we can start
by asking the questions, what are the abiotic conditions that are found in this area? What
are the specific adaptations that you have in this area? And what are the other biotic
organisms that are found in this area that might support or that might not support the
presence or absence of a species in any particular area?

So, a study of all of these; the distribution of animals or the distribution of organisms and
the reasons, why a certain organism is found in an area and is not found in an area, is what
constitutes biogeography and we will look at it in more detail in the subsequent lectures.

That is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

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 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 20
Why are things where they are?

“Namaste”,

Today we move forward with our discussion on biogeography and look in detail at ‘why
things are where they are?’

(Refer Slide Time: 00:21)

In the last lecture we began by looking at the definition of biogeography. It is a discipline

of ecology that asks the question, what species are found where? In different areas of the
earth what different species are seen in those areas. Then it ask the second question why
are those species found only in those areas? So, if we say that lions are found in Gujarat,
why are lions found in Gujarat? What is there in Gujarat that lions are finding it a
hospitable place? Then it ask the third question, what are the other factors that are not
permitting lions to live somewhere else?

For instance, why do not we have lions in the Sundarbans? Or why do not we have lions
in Jammu and Kashmir? Is there something that is related to the characteristics of the lion
or the characteristics of the area that is different physical or chemical constituents that are

703
there in that area that is not suitable for a lion to live there. And, if you go for a very
simplistic analysis we can ask this question, why does a fish live in water? Why does not
a fish live in the land? Or why does not a fish fly? So, what is there in water that is making
it a suitable habitat for the fish? What is there on the land that makes it an unsuitable habitat
for the fish? These are the three questions that biogeography asks. 1: What species are
found there? 2: Why are they found there? and 3: Why are they not found somewhere else?

(Refer Slide Time: 01:59)

When you ask this question, ‘Why things where they are?’, we looked at this particular
diagram, now in this particular diagram we said that here we are putting up the altitude of
the location and here we are putting up the latitude of the location. Now we say that these
kinds of habitats a subarctic forest or a cool temperate forest these are typically found at
higher latitudes, but then if we have a mountain that is very tall and it is very near to the
equator then we also see the subarctic or the cool temperate forest near the equator.

So, essentially it is not related to where exactly these kinds of forests are found, it has got
more to do with what kinds of characteristics are available for these forests. So, if you can
make so like, typically you will not find a subarctic forest near the equator, but then if you
make the conditions such that you have a low temperature or maybe the kinds of wind
speeds that we find in the subarctic forest, if you make these sorts of conditions available
near the equator you will start finding a subarctic forest, near the equator as well. And this
is a fact that we regularly make use of when we are doing the conservation of different

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species using ex-situ conservation. So, for instance we know that polar bears live in Arctic
and Subarctic areas. They live in very cold areas. But then we can also have a polar bear
in New Delhi. How? If we can create a condition, if we can create a chamber that is cold
enough for a polar bear, if we can give it a big sheet of ice to live on, then the polar bear
will not know whether it is living in the Arctic or whether it is living in New Delhi.

This is a fact that we regularly make use of. If you want to have a botanical garden
somewhere and you want to have say species from Africa. You can just bring those seeds
from Africa, you can give or you can create those sorts of conditions in your botanical
garden that those species can grow there. Typically in the case of many botanical gardens
we go in for areas that have an altitudinal variation.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:25)

If you have say a forest that is there near a hill, so now, the climate here will be cooler, the
climate here will be more moderate, in the climate here will be warmer. Now, if you select
such an area to construct say a botanical garden. In the cooler areas you can bring the seeds
of those species that are found in cooler areas, in the warmer areas you can bring the seeds
of species that have found in the warmer areas. And then in this small area that you have
designated as a botanical garden you can have multiple different kinds of species.

Here again we have to ask the same question, what are the conditions that are making those
species live in those areas? So, that we can copy paste those conditions into our areas, but
then this also brings us a second question. Let us say that we have a hill in India and we

705
have a hill in say South America and both of these hills have similar soil types and they
have say similar climates, but then again we do not find all the species of South America
in our hills in India.

What is causing certain species to be found there in South America, but not in India? When
we are talking about say the cat families, why is puma found in south America, but it is
not found in India even though we might be having several areas that have very similar
kinds of climates and vegetation? This is also another question that we are going to look
forward when we are studying biogeography.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:01)

To summarize biogeography, if we look at any distribution, if say the distribution of snow

leopard, the first question would be where is snow leopard found? The second question is
why is it found in these areas? The third question is why is it not found in these areas? And
then the fourth question is if suppose we look at another location at the same latitude and
and having very similar conditions so if snow leopard is found here why is it not found
here? Now this place might also be having a very similar climate. What are the factors that
are limiting the distribution of this species, only to the areas where it is currently found
and you can do this for n number of species.

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(Refer Slide Time: 06:47)

We saw that we can look at island biogeography, we can look at continental biogeography,
we can even look at oceanic biogeography. So, this was another case that we looked at in
the last lecture, that if we have coral reefs that are found in these areas, why are they only
found in these areas? If you look at the distribution of coral reefs in greater detail you
would find that there are a number of conditions that make their survival possible in these
areas, they cannot live in very cold waters, they cannot live in very warm waters.

This is typically the area where there will be found where the water is having a good
enough temperature for them to be found. Then they have some specific nutritional
requirements and also some other requirements such as the condition that they cannot live
in areas that are extremely polluted or in areas that have a high sediment load. For instance,
if we look at this area which is near Sundarbans; here we have the Ganges river and the
Brahmaputra river. Both of these are falling into the Bay of Bengal in this area, but then
because they are carrying a huge amount of sediment load so we will not find a coral reef
in this area. So, we are looking at those factors that are causing coral reefs to be found here
and are causing the coral reefs not to be found in this area. This is all what it biogeography
is all about and the observations have come from a very long period of time.

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(Refer Slide Time: 08:23)

Even if we look at Darwin’s journals; Charles Darwin as we had seen in one of the earlier
lectures. Charles Darwin happened to be a naturalist who went around the world in a ship
called the Beagle and when Charles Darwin was visiting the Falkland Islands so there he
made this journal entry. Two kinds of geese frequent the Falkland’s, the upland species
Anas Megellanica is common in pairs and in the small flock throughout the island, they
do not migrate, but build on the small outlying islets.

The rock goose, so called from living exclusively on the sea beach, Anas Antarctica, is
common both here and on the west coast of America as far north as Chile. In the deep and
retired channels of Tierra del Fuego, the sno-white gander invariably accompanied by his
darker consort and standing close by each other on the same distant rocky point is a
common feature in the landscape.

This naturalist, when he was going around South America and when he visited the Falkland
islands he made this observation that there are two species of geese. Geese, as we know
are birds and now even in the case of these birds we are think that there are two different
species and these two species are found in different areas. So, the upland species is found
throughout the island of Falklands, they do not migrate, but they build on small outlying
islets.

There is another goose that is the rock goose which lives exclusively on the sea beaches.
It does not go it does not venture inside and it is common both here and on the west coast

708
of America as far north as Chile. He is making the observation that there are two species
of geese, now we can say that geese when we refer to geese as a species of bird or as a
kind of bird.

Both geese would be having similar requirements; they would be feeding on similar kinds
of food, they would be having similar kinds of wings. They would be having similar size
and shape of the body, there are only some minor differences because of which we are
saying that these are two different species of geese.

They are not able to interbreed amongst each other, but then they requirements are more
or less the similar. But, even in those species that are very similar to each other we are
observing that they have very specialized requirements or very specialized area that they
are inhabiting. Then the question arises; why are they only in those areas and not in the
other areas?

(Refer Slide Time: 11:11)

This brings us to the push and pull factors. When we are asking the question, ‘Why are
things where they are?’, we need to talk about the pull factors in the push factors. The pull
factors are conditions that attract the organisms to an area. For example, food availability,
amiable climate. If you have plentiful amount of food there is a good climate you want to
live in that area.

709
The other factors go by the name of push factors, can drive organisms away from an area.
Example is food scarcity or inhospitable climate. So, these are in general the push and the
pull factors.

(Refer Slide Time: 11:51)

If you look at this image; this is again an image from Uttarakhand and here we are
observing, that we have these hills and on these hills there is vegetation on these slopes
and there is no vegetation on this particular slope. The question is, why do we have
vegetation on the slope and why do not we have vegetation on the other slope? What can
be the push factor, what can be the pull factor? Here again we can say that because this
area is getting more amount of sunlight so probably this area is drier or probably the slope
here is greater than the slope here.

If you have of a mountain phase that has a greater slope, so in that case soil will not be
able to accumulate in that area. So, the depth of soil will be less, now if there is a less depth
of soil so the roots cannot penetrate deep, they cannot hold on to that area and at the same
time they will not be able to get sufficient amount of nutrients.

That could be some push factors that are keeping plants away from these slopes. Now what
are the pull factors that are bringing plants here? Probably because this area is a depression
area so it might be retaining much more amount of moisture, it is also having a slope in a
way that it is getting less amount of sunlight. Probably that is also another reason why the
losses of water is less.

710
And also because the slope here is less so probably more amount of soil is able to
accumulate here. Here we can see that even in the case of a single hill there can be a vast
variety of differences in the microhabitats of two different areas on the same hill that might
be responsible for a plant to live in certain area and to not live in certain other areas. But
then push and pull factors are not the only things that govern where a species is found and
why is it found there?

For instance, we were talking about the availability of puma in the hills of South America,
but not in India. Now it is also possible that if you bring puma from South America and
you allow it to settle in India, then probably it would be able to survive here, probably it
would out compete some other species and make a niche for itself.

It will occupy some of the niches that are available or say create a niche for itself. But then
you do not have puma here in India, not because India is providing some sorts of push
factors, but because puma has not been brought to this area because puma is very far away
from India, there are oceans that are separating the continents of Asia and the South
America. So, probably that is one reason why puma is not found in India.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:47)

Apart from the push and the pull factors the next factors that we need to look at are the
dispersal factors, what are the ways in which the organisms are able to move from one area
to another area. Dispersal is the movement of individuals away from their place of birth or
hatching or seed production into a new habitat or area to survive and to reproduce. So, this

711
is the movement of individuals from one place to another place, now why would there be
a movement of organisms?

(Refer Slide Time: 15:17)

Let us consider this particular tree. Here we have a tree and this tree bears fruits and inside
the fruit so you have the seeds. Let us suppose that this fruit fell down here and then later
on it gave rise to a seedling, so here we now have a seedling that is coming up. This is a
seedling of the same species as that of the tree, but then in the case of the tree we would
have roots down here and because this tree is very old so these root should also be very
extensive.

Maybe they are able to tap the groundwater; so they are able to tap the groundwater and
they are also able to tap various minerals throughout the soil. So, because they are already
have a very extensive network of roots, so they are better able to get water, they are better
able to get the nutrients. On the other hand the roots of this plant are very small and so
they are neither able to reach to the groundwater table nor are they able to reach to the
nutrients so extensively as the larger plant.

In this case, what is happening is a case of intra specific competition. There is competition
for water, there is competition for nutrients, there is competition for sunlight and so many
things. Now in the case of this intra specific competition we can say that in a number of
situations, because this tree is much more older, it has got a much better network so it will
be able to out compete its own sapling and the sapling would die out.

712
Now, if the sapling dies out, then evolutionarily we would say that the plant is not having
that good a fitness because fitness not only means that you produce more number of
offsprings. But, also that the offsprings should be able to live and grow to their maturity
and produce their own offsprings.

In this case, if the plant adopted a strategy that all of its seeds just fell down below it so all
of or most of those seedlings would die off or else they would be competing with the
mother plant itself. In this case, this is not the best of the strategies. Now let us think about
another strategy; another strategy could be a strategy of dispersion.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:05)

Probably the fruits are such that a bird comes here; there is a bird that is coming here and
this bird eats up the fruit and then this bird goes to some other area and through its
intestines the seed of the fruit moves and then it gets dropped somewhere else; so probably
as seed fell down here. Now in this case this again would give rise to a plant a sapling, but
then in this case because this is far away from the mother tree so there is less amount of
competition that this seedling will have to suffer from.

Probably, now it is not always possible that your seedlings will always have less amount
of competition because it is also possible that your bird went and sat on some other tree
and then, put the seeds there with its droppings. But, then it is also possible by chance that
your seeds fall into an area where there is less amount of competition where there is a
canopy opening for instance.

713
So, if there is a an opening in the canopy so some amount of sunlight is able to reach down
and reach to this particular sapling or probably if there is this canopy opening, so there are
less number of trees around. So, its roots are also not suffering from that amount of
competition from the neighbors and in that case this plant would be able to survive.

And when it survives when it grows up then we would say that the fitness of the mother
tree was greater than that of another tree, that was only having this is strategy that all the
seeds come down; because when all the seeds fall down then there is a very big chance
that all of them are going to die. Whereas, if there are some seeds at least that fall to some
other area or are able to move from their area then there is a better chance that they are
going to survive, which makes dispersal a very important component of ecology.

You will observe that most of the species would want to disperse, so most of the offsprings
would want to disperse from that area consider tigers. Now if there is a tigress that has
given birth to say three cubs, now when these cubs are say around three or four years of
age, in that case the male cubs will start moving away, they will go away to some other
area and they will establish their own territory. Because in that process, 1: they will not be
posing a competition to their own mother, 2: the mother will not be posing a competition
to their own kids and 3: the chances of inbreeding become less.

Consider a plant such as the coconut. Why does a coconut have such a big shell? The
coconut has this big shell so that when it falls to water and there is ample amount of air
that is trapped inside so this whole fruit and the seeds are able to move away. So, every
plant or every organism wants its individuals or its offsprings to move away; to move at
least slightly away so that there is less amount of competition and less amount of
inbreeding and the process by which these offsprings are moving away is known as
dispersal.

So, it is the movement of individuals away from their place of birth or hatching or seed
production into a new habitat or area to survive and reproduce, and this is one strategy that
increases the fitness of the species. Now there could be some other factors apart from
dispersal and apart from the push and pull factors which might be responsible for why
certain species are found where they are found. And those are the anthropogenic factors or
the man made factors. Manmade factors include things like clearing of forests or pollution.
A good example is this clearing of forest.

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(Refer Slide Time: 22:03)

Here, if we ask the question, why do we have trees here, but we do not see a tree here?
This area is no different from this area, so this area also has all the pull factors that this
area has; this area has none of the push factors that this area has, and because these areas
are so well connected, so it is very much likely that the seeds from here are able to disperse
to this area, but still we are seeing that this area is not supporting these trees. Now, here
comes the impact of humans, so this is a man made factor, this is a man made clearing of
the forest for their own purposes.

Today if we are talking about biogeography we not only have to look at the natural factors,
but also the man made factors. If we ask the question that if we are considering a river, say
if he considered the river Yamuna, so why are there certain patches in the Yamuna river
that do not have many species of fishes? The answer is because of the man made factor
because that particular stretch of Yamuna is so polluted that species cannot; that fishes
cannot live in that area. Or, if you ask the question why do we not see forest in near
industrial areas or especially those industrial areas that give out quite a lot amount of sulfur
dioxide?

For instance, if there is in ore processing industry that is releasing a plentiful amount of
sulfur dioxide, why do not we see plants nearby it? Now that again is a man made factor;
because of acid rain the plants are dying out. So, today when we are talking about
biogeography we not only need to take into consideration the natural factors, the push and

715
the pull factors, the dispersal factors, but also the man made factors that might be
responsible for a species being found in an area or not being found in an area.

For instance, if you ask the question why are lions not found in India or say why are lions
not found in Madhya Pradesh or why are cheetahs not found in India? The answer is
manmade factor because the lions of Madhya Pradesh or the cheetahs of India were hunted
down long back. But then again there was a human intervention that led to the wiping up
of these particular spices in those particular areas.

(Refer Slide Time: 24:35)

Now, another factor that might play a role in biogeography is known as habitat selection.
Habitat selection refers to a hierarchical process of behavioral responses that may result in
disproportionate use of habitats to influence survival and fitness of individuals. What we
are asking here is, suppose you have two areas and both of these areas have equal amount
of push and pull factors for a particular species.

716
(Refer Slide Time: 25:09)

For instance, you have this forest and in this forest you have two trees. This is the first
tree; and then there is a tree of another species. Both of these trees look similar. There is
only some slight difference in the chemical constituents that are found in the leaves. But
then, if you have a bird that makes its nest on this tree and there is a bird that makes a nest
on this tree.

And if you look at the survival of the offsprings, you figure out that probably both of these
nests have statistically equal probability that the chicks are going to survive because this
tree, the first tree is also providing a place to the bird that it is able to nest at a higher place.
So, that it is away from a number of predators and then this is also in an area where you
have plentiful food sources and this is also in an area where the bird has access to water
say nearby.

You have a nearby pool of water and the same factors are also available in the second tree.
In this tree as well, because these both of these trees are so close by, here also if the bird
makes a nest, it will be at an elevated location so predators will not be able to find it, the
bird can access all the food that is nearby and the water that is nearby.

In this situation we might see that there is hardly any push or pull factor that is different
between both of these trees. But then it is also possible that because of some behavioral
selection that the bird prefers this tree and does not prefer this tree. Those behavioral
selections may come because of some amount of learning or maybe because of the

717
exposure of the bird. Probably, if this bird was born in this nest, so it knows that these
particular leaves are good for making a nest and so it makes a nest here.

Whereas, if you had shifted this bird here, so it would have known these leaves and it
would have known that these leaves are also good for making the nests and in that case it
would have preferred this tree, but because that did not happen then we can say that the
bird is choosing this nest. So, these kinds of factors in which the bird is not going after a
push or a pull factor, but then there is a behavioral choice that the bird is making is known
as habitats selection.

It is a hierarchical process of behavioral responses, here we are talking about the

psychology of the bird or the behavioral responses of the bird to different stimuli, that may
result in the disproportionate use of habitats to influence survival and fitness of individuals.
So, there is a disproportionate use of a particular species of tree and not other species of
tree.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:13)

And this can be because of both innate responses that is the responses that come from birth
and they could also involved the learnt components, that the bird is learning after it is born.
There was this experiment that was done in which a species of bird which is known as
chipping sparrow it was studied and then the scientist wanted to see how much time it
spends on two different species of trees.

718
There are these two species of trees pine and oak. If you catch these birds out from the
wild, so they have lived all their life in the wild and you catch these birds and then you
reared them in an aviary.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:05)

In this aviary you have say a large size open air aviary and here so this areas completely
covered with say your nets and in an inside you have these two kinds of trees, one is a pine
tree and one is an oak tree and then you catch these birds from the wild and you have
released these birds into these aviaries. How much time do they spend on a pine tree, how
much time do they spend on the oak tree was the question. If you catch these birds from
the wild you find that these birds spent as much as 71 percent of their time on pine and
only 29 percent of their time on the oak trees. So essentially the birds preferred the pine
tree.

If you rear these birds in the laboratory, so essentially you catch hold of the eggs or
probably you catch hold off the chicks before their eyes are open. You bring them into the
laboratory and they are not exposed to anything else. They are just kept in the laboratory
and once they have been reared like this then you leave them out into the same aviary. The
first case was, so let us say that, you have wild birds and they prefer pine. That was the
first experiment and the inference was that the birds preferred pine.

Now there was the second experiment. In the second experiment the scientist just caught
hold of the birds before their eyes were open or they caught hold of some eggs before the

719
birds had been hatched. They allowed these eggs to hatch in the laboratory or they allowed
these chicks to open their eyes in the laboratory and then these chicks when they became
slightly older, then they were released in the same aviaries.

And here what we are observing is that if there is no foliage exposure to these laboratory
treated birds, then the percentage of time they spent in pine was 67 percent which is very
close to 71 percent and the percentage of time that they spend on the oak tree was only 33
percent which is very close to what we see in the wild behavior. In this case, what we can
conclude is that if the birds have not learnt anything new then it is probably in their genes,
it is probably coming from the birth that they should prefer living in the pine trees and not
prefer living on the oak trees or not prefer spending more time on the oak trees.

This was the second experiment and so you have lab reared birds and they also prefer pine,
but then we have a twist we have a third experiment. Now in this third experiment, the
eggs were caught or the birds were caught before their eyes were opened and then they
were reared in the laboratory, but then the scientist also put oak leaves nearby. When this
bird opens its eyes it sees that there are oak leaves nearby. You have lab reared birds with
exposure to oak. And what happens in that case? Here you have laboratory reared birds
and oak foliage expose your only they were not exposed to pine, they were only exposed
to oak.

After these birds have become older, then you release them in the same aviary. What
happens to the behavior now? Now, they spend 46 percent of their time in pine and 54
percent of their time in oak. Now, if we say that a bird that is spending more than 50
percent of its time on a particular species, we say that it is preferring that species. So, in
that case we would say that in these two situations the birds are preferring pine, but now
they are preferring oak. So, here we say that in the 3rd experiment they prefer oak.

This preference or this habitat selection by this way we can say that it has got both in-born
components, the innate components. Because, if the bird has not been exposed to anything
new then it would prefer the pine tree; we have these innate components. But also there
are some learnt components; if the bird has been exposed to the oak leaves it learns that
oak is a preferred species. So, this is about habitat selection it has both innate components
and the learnt components. So, we looked at a number of variables that can govern where
by a species is found in a certain area or not found in a certain area.

720
There can be push factors, there can be pull factors, there can be anthropogenic factors,
there could be factors of dispersal, the species is not found somewhere probably because
it has not raised it so far and there can also be factors of habitat selection. How do we
decide which of these factors are at play at for any particular instance? For any particular
species which of these factors is playing a role? We can dissect out the roles of all these
different factors by doing what are known as transplant experiments.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:55)

What happens in a transplant experiment? Suppose this green area is showing you the area
where a particular species is found. Let us say that there is a particular plant species that
is found in the green area and is not found outside. What we do in the transplant
experiments is that we take certain plants from this area and we transplant them to the
other areas.

There are three experiments here. The first experiment is that you have transplanted it from
this green area into the yellow area and you observe that when you transplant these plants
to the yellow area the plants are able to leaven in that area. But, when you are transplanting
it to some other area, say to the red area then the transplant dies out and then the there is a
third experiment which you call as the control experiment in which you transplant a plant
from the green area to the green area itself.

Why is a control experiment necessary? Because it is also possible that in the process of
transplantation the plants are dying out because probably you were not able to separate out

721
the roots properly over probably your procedure was such that while you were
transplanting these plants the plants dried out; and so they died out of drying or maybe
because they got exposed to certain test or maybe because they got broken or maybe there
was an extreme of temperature which these plants got exposed to so which is why we
perform these control experiments.

If the control experiment tells you that the plants are not dying because of your procedure.
There has to be some other reason what can that reason be? In the yellow areas because
the plants are able to survive so then we can say that the reason that the plants are not
found in the yellow area is probably it does not have to do much with the push and the pull
factors involved. Because if you transplant a plant there then this plant is able to live in
that area, but then this plant is not naturally found in the yellow area probably because the
plant has not yet reached into that area.

Probably in the process of dispersion the process of dispersion takes its own time and the
time has not been sufficient enough to permit the plant to move from the green area to the
yellow area, but then with time if the plant is able to reach into the yellow area then it will
survive in that area. That is the first kind of inference that we can draw. The second kind
of inference is when you transplanted a plant from the green area to the red area and the
transplant died out.

Probably there was something in the environment in the green area that is not suitable to
the for the survival of the plants. Probably this red area is having some push factor or
probably it is lacking some pull factor because of which the plant is dying out. These are
the kinds of inferences that we can draw using the transplant experiments. We can ask this
question whether a species is not found in an area because of dispersal factors or because
of push or pull factors. What are the kinds of outcomes that we will see. If the transplant
is successful so you have a transplant from a green area to the yellow area and in this case
the distribution is limited either because the area is inaccessible.

There is a physical barrier. Why pumas are not found in India? Because there is a physical
barrier in the form of oceans, but if you transplant pumas from South America into India
they will be able to survive here or the time has been too short to reach that area that is the
dispersal time is insufficient. Here we could ask the question that there is some plant that

722
is growing in Gujarat which is a weed and it has not yet reached Madhya Pradesh but then
in time it will be able to reach Madhya Pradesh.

If it reaches Madhya Pradesh, then we will say that it is now naturally found there, but just
because this process of dispersal takes its own time and the time has been short. So, the
plant has not yet moved to Madhya Pradesh and which is why it is not found in Madhya
Pradesh or the third reason can be that the species fails to recognize the area as a suitable
living space because of habitat preference.

This is common in the case of birds. There could be a bird species that that is normally
found in a particular lake; so it is a migratory bird and it always lands in that particular
lake, it does not land in any other particular lake. But, then it is possible that both these
lakes are having the same kinds of constituents, the same biotic and abiotic constituent but
then just because of habitat selection, because the bird has not been exposed to the other
lake, so which is why the bird is not found in that lake. So, that is the third reason. So if
you have a transplant successful, then distribution is limited either because of a barrier or
because of time or because of behavioral selections.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:15)

But, if your transplant is unsuccessful as in the case of a transplant from the green region
to the red region then probably you have a distribution that is limited by physical or
chemical factors or a distribution that is limited by some biological factor. You can have
situation that the other region does not have fertility or it does not have some specific

723
micronutrients that this species needs or that area is too hot or too cold or too dry or too
wet so or may be too windy. These are the kinds of physical factors and chemical factors
or they can be, say some other species that are found in that area that are out competing
this particular species.

There is competition or maybe there are some predators found in that area that eat away
these plants or maybe there is some pathogen that is found in that area and the local species
of that area have become resistant to that pathogen, but then because this transplant that
you are taking from the green area it does not have those resistance genes, so it dies out.
These are the kinds of inferences that we can make out of the transplant experiments. When
we talk about these physical, chemical and biological factors we need to take into account
the Liebig’s law of the minimum.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:33)

This is a law which states that the rate of any biological process is limited by that factor in
least amount relative to requirement so that there is a single limiting factor. Basically, what
we are asking here is, when we want to dissect between different physical, chemical and
biological factors that which factor is actually responsible for the limitation of or for the
presence or absence of a species from a certain area, when we have this law which says
that suppose a plant has these requirements.

724
(Refer Slide Time: 42:09)

Suppose, every day this plant needs 1000 ml of water and say it needs 1000 milligram of
nitrogen and say 1000 milligram of potassium, just to keep things simple so we are keeping
1000 everywhere. Now the availability at the site is that, this site is able to give say 1000
milliliter of water, this site is able to give say 500 milligrams of nitrogen. It is not able to
give all the amount of nitrogen that is required by the plant and maybe this site is able to
give 800 milligrams of potassium. The Liebig’s of the minimum will ask, what is the factor
that is present in the least amount relative to the requirement?

Let us ask this question; percentage requirement met by the site and this case because the
plant requires 100 ml of water and it is getting 100 ml of water, so 100 percent of the
requirement is being met. On the other hand for the case of nitrogen, only 50 percent of
requirement is being met and in the case of potassium we have 80 percent of requirement
that is being met. Liebig’s law of the minimum says that the rate of any biological process,
in this case we are asking the question what is limiting the rate of growth of this particular
plant? So, the rate of any biological process is limited by that factor in least amount relative
to requirement so that there is a single limiting factor. In this case, we can see that the most
limiting factor is this factor which is only available in 50 percent to the requirements.

We will say that in this case the plant growth is limited by the availability of nitrogen in
this particular area. How does this help us? Because if we know the requirements if we
know, how much amount is being available is being made available by the site, so how

725
much percentage of requirements are being met. If we add this particular factor; if we add
nitrogen to this particular soil, so the rate of plant growth would increase.

(Refer Slide Time: 44:57)

The second law when we talk about biogeography is the Shelford’s law of tolerance. The
geographical distribution of a species will be controlled by that environmental factor for
which the organism has been narrowest range of tolerance. What is that mean?

(Refer Slide Time: 45:21)

Suppose there is an organism, so this organism can say tolerate temperatures from 10
degrees Celsius to 50 degree Celsius. Then this organism can tolerate salinity that is say

726
500 parts per 1000 to say five 505 parts per 1000 and then this organism is able to tolerate
say, next against pH, so a pH from say 5 to a pH of 9. In this case, what Shelford’s law of
tolerance says is, the geographical distribution of the species will be controlled by that
environmental factor for which the organism has the narrowest range of tolerance. In this
case the range of tolerance for temperature is high. It is from 10 degrees to 50 degrees.
The range of tolerance for pH also is high. From pH 5 which is an acidic pH to a pH of 9
which is an alkaline pH. But, if we look at the salinity, we can say that this organism has
the lowest tolerance for salinity.

If it becomes less than 500 the organism dies, if it becomes more than 505, the organism
dies. In this case, Shelford’s law of tolerance would say that the geographical distribution
of the species will be controlled by the salinity because, it is for the salinity that the
organism is having the lowest amount of tolerance and this would also depend on what are
the variabilities that are available in the environment. For instance, if you have a situation
in which all the areas of the earth have a salinity between 500 and 505.

In that case this particular factor will become immaterial and in that case the organism will
be limited by the next limiting factor. Shelford’s law of tolerances that the geographical
distribution of a species is controlled by that environmental factor for which the organism
has the narrowest range of tolerance. If the environmental factor is such that it is able to
cater to that requirement, then probably it will move to the next level of environmental
factors.

727
(Refer Slide Time: 47:45)

Now this is becoming important these days because of the changes that we are observing.
Once it changes that of global warming, now if you have heating up of many areas of the
earth there is an increase in the temperatures, then that would mean that certain areas that
were so far good habitats for certain species might cease to be good habitats for those
particular species. Because, the species is not able to tolerate the higher temperatures that
are available or otherwise if there is a species that is not able to tolerate a lower temperature
and now with increase in temperatures, that area also is start to get a higher temperature,
so the organism will be able to live in that area.

(Refer Slide Time: 48:33)

728
Essentially, let us say that there is this hill and we have a temperature range. Let us say
that, here you have see 25 degrees Celsius and here you have 0 degrees Celsius. So, 25
then you have 20, 15, 10. 5 and 0 degrees Celsius so there is this lapse rate, so as you move
up the temperature reduces. Let us say that there is one particular species that can live
between these temperatures, between 10 and 15 degrees Celsius. This is the normal
distribution of this particular species; this is the natural distribution of this particular
species.

Suppose global warming happens and when global warming happens say every position
increases in its temperature by say 5 degrees. This whole area or let us say it increases by
say 2 degrees. So, in place of 25 degree Celsius this is becomes 27, this is becomes 22,
this becomes 17, this becomes 12, this becomes 7 and this becomes 2. Now, this point that
earlier had a temperature of 10 degrees now has a temperature of 12 degrees and this point
that earlier had a temperature of 8 degrees now it has a temperature of 10 degrees. If we
talk about this particular area this was earlier not a suitable habitat for this particular
species because it was too cold for the species.

But now, with increasing temperature it has become warmer and so now, the species can
live in this area. Now, similarly this point, this was earlier 15 degrees Celsius, now it has
become 17 degrees Celsius. So, this is species will find living in this area very difficult
because this species can only tolerate temperatures still 15 degrees and so now, the
distribution is going to change. Earlier we had a distribution that was this distribution and
now that the distribution has changed to this distribution and this is something that we are
now observing in a number of situations.

For instance, for a number of insects that were earlier found in the lower areas of the hills
they are now starting to rise up.

729
(Refer Slide Time: 51:03)

This is another such result, so here we have in have different temperatures and here we
have the median altitudes. If you have 18 degrees Celsius then your malaria vectors or the
incidence of malaria will be found till a height of 1820 meters above sea level, but then if
you have a higher temperatures say, 19.2 degrees, then your malarial incident will be found
at a much higher altitude where it was not found earlier. This is something that we are
observing in a day to day manner and this is not just important for the understanding of
biogeography or ecology, but it also has a number of practical applications such as the
spread of diseases or extinction of species or changes in the ranges of different species.

This is one result that we are getting out of the Shelford’s law of tolerance. Only those
species that were so far limited by temperatures will be shifting because of these
temperature changes. Of course, if you have global warming you will also have other
impacts. There will be changes in the amount of precipitation in that area, there will be
changes in the wind speeds in that area. And, so those species that are limited by those
factors will also now change their ranges or they will start becoming extinct in different
areas.

730
(Refer Slide Time: 52:29)

Apart from dispersion there is also another factor that we need to differentiate. So, there is
dispersion and the other factor is migration. Migration is defined as regular seasonal
movement of animals often across fixed routes and the purpose is to have better resources
and to shift from harsh to amiable climate. If you have certain birds and there are a number
of migratory birds that are found in India.

So, they might spend some part of their life in say China or Russia where the climate is
much cooler and then during the winter seasons when the climate shifts from cool to cold,
so in that case these birds start migrating and then they come to India, because when these
areas in Russia are very cold in those cases, the areas in India are probably cooled and so,
the birds find it much better to live in these areas. And then with the advent of the summer
season, when the Indian climate will become very hot. So, they will start migrating and
they will move back to Russia where the climate is much cooler.

It is a regular and seasonal movement. It is regular because you will find these migrations
every year. So, on a yearly basis you will find these migrations. These are seasonal because
you will find these migrations in the summer season, you will find these migrations in the
winter season and they are often along fixed routes. So this year the bird follows a route
the next year the birds will also follow the same route more or less.

And there are two purposes; one is to shift from a harsh climate to a more amiable climate
and second is to make use of better resources such as food or breeding sites. Probably

731
during the breeding season, when the animals require much greater supply of nutrients, so
in those seasons they would prefer to live in those areas that can provide those better
nutrients.

(Refer Slide Time: 54:39)

(Refer Slide Time: 54:43)

Here are some other examples that the demoiselle cranes are also migratory species that
we find in large numbers in Rajasthan.

732
(Refer Slide Time: 54:49)

And this was migration. Migration is different from dispersal because in the case of
migration, the animals are moving two and fro. In the case of dispersal the animals are
moving from their place of birth to other locations. So, this is how we differentiate between
migration and dispersal. Now, migration might not be that important of factor when we
are talking about biogeography, but then dispersal is a very important factor because it
governs whether a species is found in that area or not.

If a species have been able to move to an area through the process of dispersal, so it will
be found in that area. There are different modes of dispersals. The first mode is called
diffusion. Diffusion is gradual movement over several generations often across hospitable
terrain, example the movement of Gir lions across the Gir landscape.

733
(Refer Slide Time: 55:47)

In this case, what we are saying is that in the case of Gujarat, you have these lions that are
found in this particular area, which is Gir and now these lions are moving to other areas.
When these lions are moving to other areas, the areas that are in between, so, if this lion is
moving from here to here, all the areas in between they are also hospitable areas. The lions
can live anywhere, but then because this movement is slow, it takes place across several
generations, so we call it diffusion.

The second mode of dispersal is called jump dispersal. Now jump dispersal is quick
movement over large distances often across unsuitable terrain. Example is dispersal of
zebra mussel through ballast water. In the case of these lions, in the process of diffusion,
they were moving through a hospitable climate.

734
(Refer Slide Time: 56:47)

But then let us consider two islands. Here you have one island and here you have another
island, and there is a species that is that is a terrestrial species, so this is species is found
in this island. If this species needs to disperse out how can it reach to the second island?
Probably, it can jump on top of a piece of log and then when this piece of log is able to
move with the waves or with the water to the second island, then probably this species will
be able to move to the second island. But, here the important part is that, this island is
hospitable for this species; this island is hospitable for the species, but then all the areas in
between they are inhospitable.

Because if the species falls into the ocean, then probably this species is going to die,
because it is a terrestrial species. A dispersal that is from this location; location 1 to the
second location; location 2 which will happen very fast because, it will probably happen
in a period of a few days and it is happening across an inhospitable terrain so this kind of
a dispersal is known as a jump dispersal.

735
(Refer Slide Time: 58:07)

A jump dispersal is often seen in the case of a number of waterways. If you have a ship
that is moving from one place to another place, so there can be a number of animals that
stick themselves to the surface of the ship or they get inside the ship along with the ballast
waters, and when the ship has moved to the second location, then these animals are able
to come out or maybe with the release of the ballast water these animals are able to reach
to the second area.

And zebra mussels are a very common example. Other good examples are the spread of
rats to a number of islands. When sailors were moving from one place to another in their
ships, rats came in and those rats were able to disperse from one place to another. That is
also a good example of jump dispersal.

736
(Refer Slide Time: 58:55)

Another mode of dispersal is known as a secular dispersal. This is diffusion in an

evolutionary time. It takes a very long period of time, several generations and this is so
long that it is happening in evolutionary time. By the time the migrants are able to reach
to the second place, they have already changed a lot and a good example is the dispersal
of humans out of Africa.

So, the humans moved from Africa through Middle Eastern countries to say India. During
this movement which occurred across several generations, the population that reached to
India was very different from the population that remained in Africa because it happened
over a long evolutionary period. Such kinds of diffusions or dispersals are known as
secular dispersals.

737
(Refer Slide Time: 59:59)

There is one more point that we need to discuss and that is allelopathy. Allelopathy is a
process, it is another push factor that we observe in a number of circumstances in which
there are some organisms that actively try to kill or hinder the growth of other organisms.
Examples include things like antibiotics. So, there is this fungal colony and this fungal
colony is giving out antibiotics which is killing off the bacteria in the surrounding or we
can observe it in a number of forests.

(Refer Slide Time: 60:27)

738
For example, the teak forests. Teak forests are giving out some chemicals in the soil that
are not allowing other plants to grow.

(Refer Slide Time: 60:43)

These are also another sort of push factors that might play a role in governing the
distribution of animals and the abundance of animals or organisms in different areas. So,
to sum up we can use this chart. A species may be absent because of dispersal, so, if this
is the reason then the cause is probably that the area is inaccessible. If it is not absent
because of dispersal that it might be absent because of a behavioral cause; because of
habitat selection. If that is not the cause, it could be because of some other species,
predation, parasitism, competition, diseases. If it is not because of that, then probably there
are some physical and chemical factors such as temperature, light, availability of water
oxygen and so on. So, using all of these factors we can come to a conclusion about all
different species, why species are found in some particular areas and why they are not
found in the other areas.

That is all for today.Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

739
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 21
Some push and pull factors in greater detail

“Namaste”,

We will carry forward our discussion on the Distribution and Abundance of organisms.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:22)

Today, we will have a look at some push and pull factors in some greater detail. Now in
the last lectures, we had seen that push factors and pull factors govern the distribution and
abundance of different organisms and we had defined push factors as those factors that
make a certain area inhospitable or maybe less hospitable for a certain species. If an area
is very hot, if an area is very cold, very moist or maybe very dry for some particular
organism, that organism would not prefer to live in that area and different organisms have
different tolerances to all these factors.

A certain factor might be a push factor for a certain organism and might be a pull factor
for some other organism. Similarly we had defined pull factors as those factors that attract
organisms to any specific area. If an area has abundant amount of food, it has the amiable
climate; it is neither too hot for the organism nor too cold, it is neither too wet nor too dry,

740
if those are the conditions. The organisms would prefer to live in those areas. So, those
factors are known as pull factors. Today, we will look at some other push and pull factors
and some push and pull factors in more detail.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:44)

One push factor is the presence of predators; now this is an observation. This is a field
observation from an area in which we are seeing the number of sea urchins. In this case
we are seeing looking at sea urchins and this is at a particular line which is called as
‘Section at J’ and here, we are looking at the algae populations. And this is the depth of
the water and in this case we can see that in these two areas, where you do not have the
sea urchins; you have an abundant amount of algae.

Essentially if you have algae in an area, you do not have sea urchins in that area and if you
do not have algae in an area, this that area is having an abundant amount of sea urchins.
The question is, can predators act as push factors for an organism? In this case the sea
urchin is the predator and algae is the prey because the sea urchin feeds on the algae. How
do you discern if actually the distribution of algae is being governed by the presence or
absence or maybe the abundance of the sea urchins in that area?

Some experiments were conducted to establish the facts.

741
(Refer Slide Time: 03:11)

This is the first experiment. Now in this experiment, in early July 1959, a certain area in
the seas was cleared off of the sea urchins. Essentially all the sea urchins in that area were
removed. We are talking about an area that is having a population something like this. You
have abundant number of sea urchins and you do not have any algae in that area. Now you
experimentally remove all the sea urchins and then, you try to see what is happening to the
algae population.

In early July you removed that all the sea urchins. So, the algae population is 0. Now if we
look at late July, the algae have covered roughly 10 percent of the area because there are
no more predators to feed on these algae. Then, by August it has increased to 25 percent,
by September it has increased to 50 percent and by the next year 100 percent of that area
is now covered by the algae.

When we are looking at a push factor or a pull factor, when we said that we do not have
algae in these areas; then it is possible that you do not have algae in these areas for a
number of reasons. Probably, it was because of high temperature or say low temperature
or high salinity or low salinity or maybe some wave actions, they could be n number of
reasons.

But, when you are removing this one factor; then everything else is remaining the same.
The only change that you have brought in this system is that you have removed the sea

742
urchins and just by removing the sea urchins, you see that the algae are able to come to
these areas.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:05)

As we had discussed in the case of the transplant experiments. In the case of a transplant
experiment, we take an organism from an area where it lives to an area where it does not
live. Essentially the green one is showing you the areas where an organism is living.

In this case this is showing you these areas; this one and this one. If you take an organism
and algae from one location to another location in this green area, it is able to survive. But
then, if you take it to another area and this algae now die is off, which is what will happen
if you take the algae from here and you bring it to this area.

Because you have sea urchins, the algae will be eaten up by the sea urchins or if you take
it to some other area and the algae is able to survive then, you will say that probably algae
has not reached into that area. In this case you were taking the algae into the red region.
So, the algae was brought into the red region, but then you made just one change which
was that you have removed the sea urchins and once you did that the algae was able to
populate this area as well.

From this experiment we can say that it was because of the presence of the sea urchins that
the algae was not able to colonize this area. So, sea urchin was the push factor. This is one
way in which we can distinguish between different push and pull factors and we can tell

743
which factor is doing what. The next question would be why don’t you have sea urchins
in this area. Because you do not have sea urchins, we are saying that you are getting algae
in this area. But then, why are you not having the sea urchins?

In these areas, because they were close to the coast; so some amount of wave action was
dislodging these sea urchins. Now, what will happen if you try to push a sea urchin into
this area? If you cover this area and if you put a sea urchin, in that case the algae population
will go down because in that case what you are doing is that you are adding your sea
urchins. If you add sea urchins, in that case this area will also now cease to be a good
locality for the algae. Now the third question is, if you are able to put the sea urchin here
and you put it in such a way that is just not able to eat the algae; what will happen then?

Probably you can make use of a trap and you can put your sea urchins and then you can
hang that trap in this area and probably feed your sea urchins with something else. In that
case, if there could be another reason, probably your sea urchin was giving out some
chemical compounds because of which the algae were dying off. To counter such
possibilities you can put your sea urchin in a trap, you can give it some amount of food
from outside and you can keep the sea urchin in these areas and in those situations, if the
algae do not die off, then we can say that it is because of a direct predation that the algae
population is being governed.

The researchers came up with these 4 criteria that will tell us if the predator is governing
the distribution and abundance of a prey. The first criteria is that the organism does not
survive when transplanted to a site where it does not normally occur, unless it is protected
from the predators by the cages. For instance, if you take the algae and you take this algae
into this area and you have these predators that will go and feed on to these algae. But
then, you can take this algae put it into a cage so that the predators are not able to reach
these algae.

This is also a second experiment that you can do. So, in that experiment what you are doing
is that you are not removing your sea urchins in this experiment. But, you are taking your
algae, you are putting it here into this area and normally it dies off.

744
(Refer Slide Time: 09:39)

What you can do is you can create a trap and in this trap because you have these wire
meshes. The sea urchins are not able to enter inside and you are putting your algae into
this trap. So, you will find that your algae is able to populate in this area and the algae is
able to populate because the sea urchin is not able to feed on it. Or in a very similar way
you can take some sea urchins and you can put those sea urchins here and probably in a
trap if you put it. If you take your sea urchins you add your sea urchins here and maybe
put them in a trap. In that case also they are not able to come out.

These two simultaneous experiments can be done.

745
(Refer Slide Time: 10:23)

And it is telling you that the organism does not survive in transplanted to a site, where it
does not normally occur, unless it is protected from the predators by the cages. If you
protect it, then it is able to survive in that area, which will tell you that there is nothing
other than the predator that is causing the absence of that particular species in that
particular area.

The second criterion is that there is an inverse correlation between the distribution of the
organisms and the suspected predator or alternatively in the places where it occurs, the
organism is inaccessible to the predator which is what we had seen in this case. So, there
is an inverse relationship; if you have the sea urchins in large numbers, you do not have
algae. If you do not have the sea urchins, you have the algae. Or you can tell it in the
reverse way as well. If you have the algae, you do not have the sea urchins and if you do
not have the algae, you have the sea urchins. You can put it in both of these ways, but there
has to be a negative or an inverse correlation between the prey and the predators.

The third criterion is that the suspected predator is able to inflict lethal damage on the prey
in experiments in cages or it can be observed to do so in the laboratory. So, if you are
taking your predator and in this area suppose, let us say that you take a cage in this area
and in this cage you add a number of algae. The algae have grown up in this cage. Inside
this cage you also put a sea urchin. Once it has entered into this cage or we can have a very
similar experiment here as well. If you have a sea urchin in a cage and you also have the

746
algae, then it should be seen that the predator is able to inflict a lethal damage that is the
predator is able to kill the prey or eat the prey either in experimental cases, in the case
when you are doing it in the wild or you can see it in the laboratory.

There has to be this condition that your predator is actually able to kill the prey, and the
fourth is that there is direct evidence that the suspected predator is responsible for
destruction of the prey in transplantation experiments which means that when you are
transplanting your algae into this area. You are taking your algae into this area and you
see that when you are taking this algae, the sea urchins are going to feed on these algae
and so all these algae die out.

It should be seen even in the case of the transplantation experiments that this is the reason
that your algae are not able to survive in this area. If all these 4 criteria are fulfilled, then
we will say that it is the predator that is governing the distribution and abundance of the
prey as a push factor.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:39)

This case we observed that there is a predator which is governing the prey. It is governing
the distribution and abundance of the prey. Now, one other question that we can ask is: Do
we have also situations in nature where the prey can govern the abundance and distribution
of the predator that is the prey can act as a pull factor for the predator?

747
What we are saying is; Do we have situations where you have the prey and it governs; so,
it is governing the distribution and abundance of the predator, say as a pull factor and the
answer is ‘yes’.

Let us have a look at this particular study.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:53)

In this study we have a species of drosophila by the name of Drosophila pachea.

Drosophila are very small fruit flies that we normally see in and around our fruit stalls.
Especially, if you go and take a bunch of bananas; you will find very small flies that are
hovering around or say if you go in to take some mangos, you will very easily find these
flies. Now, these flies are known as fruit flies and they normally feed on certain fruits and
they are also used as experimental animals, as model animals in the laboratories.

748
(Refer Slide Time: 15:41)

If you want to rear a fruit fly, what you do is that you take a vial. In this vial, you will put
some amount of food in the bottom and typically this food is starch in the form of corn
plus some sugar and maybe plus some fungicides so that it stays fresh for a long period of
time and then, you will put these fruit flies into this vial and then you will cover the top
with a piece of cotton. In this case the flies have access to air from outside. So, the air is
able to reach inside there good exchange of air.

So, oxygen can come inside; carbon dioxide can go outside. The fruit flies have access to
the food here and they also have ample space here and in that case they will be able to feed
on this food and they will multiply in their numbers. This is a very commonly used model
organism. Now, the model organism that we use in the laboratory is Drosophila
melanogaster.

Now here again, if you look at the word roots it has a very interesting name Droso means
dew; Philly is affinity. So, when we say that something is hydrophilic it means that it
absorb water; it has a love of water. Similarly this drosophila has a love of droso and droso
in this case refers to the dew. So, this is called drosophila because it typically comes out
of its pupal stage when it is very early morning.

So, in the very early mornings you will see these flies coming out of their pupal stages,
when there is dew everywhere around. So, which is why we call it Drosophila. Melano is
black; Gaster is stomach. So, if you look at its stomach you will have a black color; so,

749
which is why it is called Drosophila melanogaster. But then, Drosophila comes in a
number of species and in this case there is this particular species of drosophila that is found
only in the deserts and even in the deserts it is found only near a particular species of
cactus.

There is this cactus on which this drosophila is feeding and it is living there. Now, if you
take this drosophila. You take this Drosophila pachea and you try to grow it in this vial.
You have added corn, you have added sugar, you have added fungicide. So, you have
given it everything that you give to a normal drosophila melanogaster and this drosophila
is not able to breed. The young ones do not come out; so in one generation it is all gone,
but then if you take a piece of the cactus. If this is the cactus, you just take a piece of this
cactus and probably you put a piece of this cactus inside. Once you do that the your
drosophila will start to reproduce. You will be able to maintain a population.

You can also take this small piece of cactus you can autoclave it, in which case you have
heated it to as high as 120oC for as long as same 15 to 20 minutes so that all the living
organisms that are there on that piece of cactus, they are all dead and if you put an
autoclave piece of cactus here, still your drosophila will be able to breed. Another
interesting case is that if you take this cactus piece and if you put it into a vial and you are
adding some other drosophila.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:27)

750
Let us say that you are adding your normal drosophila; your Drosophila melanogaster and
you are raising it along with this particular cactus.

What will happen is, you will see that your drosophila start dying off. This is a very curious
case that you have this Drosophila pachea that is only able to grow when you have this
cactus around and if you have any other drosophila, that will die when you have this cactus.
What is the reason? One reason is that this particular cactus gives out certain sterol
molecules. Sterols are the molecules that are typically used in the making of several
hormones. In this case the sterol molecule is toxic to the drosophila species, but then this
drosophila pachea uses this particular sterol to make its own hormones.

What has happened in this case is that because of co evolution, this drosophila has been
living on these cactuses for a very long period of time and because of this co evolution it
is now able to make use of the chemicals that are given out by this particular cactus and
every other drosophila finds it toxic and so, every other drosophila dies. But then, that this
co evolution has is happened to such an extent that if you do not give this cactus, your
drosophila pachea is going to die. Why? Because it is now so much dependent on this
cactus that it now obligately ( or it 100 % ) needs this sterol from outside from this cactus
so that it can make its own hormones.

If you do not give this cactus, this drosophila is completely unable to make this hormone
by itself. If you have such a relationship, where your predator, in this case the predator is
the drosophila and the prey is the cactus. So, your predator and prey have co evolved to
such an extent that your predator can live only on the prey population. In that case you will
have a situation, where your prey will govern the distribution and abundance of the
predator. Why? Because in the desert if you have this cactus, you will have the drosophila;
if you do not have this cactus, you will not have this drosophila.

751
(Refer Slide Time: 21:58)

We are talking about the Drosophila pachea. If you have your cactus, you will have
Drosophila pachea on this cactus. If you do not have this cactus, Drosophila pachea will
not be there.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:23)

In this particular case, it is the prey that is the cactus which is governing the distribution
and abundance of the predator by acting as a pull factor and instances such as these are
very important because we can make use of these instances as biological controls. There

752
are huge implications for biological control of pests or invasive species. We look at one
such example now.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:41)

In the case of biological control what you are trying to do is that if you have a particular
plant and this plant is, may be acting as a weed for your area, you can bring in some
predator and this predator is one that feeds on this plant. You want to bring in a predator
that feeds only on this plant because this is the plant that you want to kill. If this predator
feeds on a number of other plants; so, in that case you will have a situation where all
different plants are dying off and that is not what we want.

We want to have those predators which are extremely specific for their preys or for their
plants. An example of this is given by the pine rust.

753
(Refer Slide Time: 23:26)

Now, pine rust is a fungus and this rust affects two species; so it affects the gooseberries
or ribes. So, Ribes is another word for gooseberries. This rust affects the gooseberries and
it affects the pine. It has evolved in such a manner that it will spend some part of its life in
the pine trees and it will spend some part of its life in the gooseberry trees and typically in
the forest, you will find both of these trees together. You have a pine tree and as well as a
gooseberry tree. Because of co-evolution it has so evolved that it requires both of these
species now.

You have a predator that is now specific to two different preys. If you want to control this
predator, you can eliminate the gooseberries because we want to maintain a plantation of
pine and we do not want our pines to be impacted by this particular rust. You can eliminate
the gooseberries in which case the rust will not be able to complete its life cycle.

754
(Refer Slide Time: 24:46)

Essentially what we are saying is that you have these two species. You have the pine and
you have the gooseberry and there is a particular fungus that moves from pine to
gooseberry and from gooseberry to pine. Here you have the fungus. And this predator is
so specific that it has to move from a pine to a gooseberry and it has to move from a
gooseberry to a pine to complete certain stages of its life cycle. Now, if you want to
maintain a pine plantation and if you remove all the gooseberries from this area, so, this
fungus will not be able to complete its life cycle in which case your pine trees will be saved
from the fungus.

This is a way in which we can make use of our theories of push and pull factors for our
own use; for generating a pine plantation or you can make use of these specific predators
to kill off certain plants that you consider as weeds. These are two instances that you can
make use of by looking at the push and the pull factors.

755
(Refer Slide Time: 26:06)

We will also look at one other push factor and which is your inter specific competition.
Inter means between. Here you have competition between two species. This is an
inharmonious interaction as we have seen before. This is an example in which you have
two different species of birds. Here you have this portion, this white colonies are the
redwing territories.

You have these birds that are known as red wing and you have this other bird that is known
as a tri-colored blackbird. If you have a red winged blackbird, and here you have this field
observation that on 15th of March 1959 in this area there were so many colonies of these
red wing blackbirds that had come up. After a short while you started seeing the tri-colored
blackbird that started appearing on the 20th of March. So, 5 days after these colonies were
established, you started seeing the tricolor blackbirds in these areas. And your tricolor
blackbirds are more aggressive and they are larger in numbers.

So, they are able to push your red wing blackbirds to the periphery. In this case the central
area which was earlier the area of the red wings is now all taken up by the tricolor
blackbirds. In this case what we are seeing is inter specific competition that is regulating
the distribution of a species. So, your red wings are now distributed because of the impact
of the tri-colors. This is also another push factor that we see in certain instances. If we look
at these areas then you will not find any more nesting that is being done by the red wings
in this area because they have been completely pushed away.

756
In a short while you will see that you only have these tri-colors that are there in this area.
So, this is another push factor that we are seeing. Now we had talked about allelopathy.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:20)

We look at allelopathy in more detail. Allelopathy is a phenomenon where you have a

plant that is giving out certain chemicals which is inhibiting the growth of other plants.
Allelo is someone else, and pathy is producing some sort of a disease. How do you prove
that there is this factor of allelopathy that is working for certain species? Here is a classic
experiment that you can do.

In this experiment people wanted to show that grass has allelopathic impacts on apple
saplings or apple seedlings. How do you prove that? In this case you do 3 different kinds
of experiments. In the first experiment, you keep both of these separate. You have these 2
pots. In the first pot you have grass; in the second pot you have the apple seedlings and
you give water to the first pot, you give water to the second pot and in this case you look
at the growth of the apple seedlings.

Essentially this is a control experiment in which you are keeping your apple seedlings
separate from the grass and you are giving it water. Another experiment is where you put
water into this pot which has the grass that is growing and then, you keep this pot in a way
that you are able to gather the water that comes out of this pot. Essentially this pot is a
permeable pot; so when you are putting water onto this grass bed, the water is going
through this grass it is reaching to the roots and then if there is any chemical that is given

757
out by this grass. It gets dissolved in the water and then, it comes out along with this water
and then this water is then given to the apple seedlings; so this is the second experiment.

If you see the growth of these seedlings as compared to these seedlings, you will find that
these seedlings are very stunted. They are not able to grow properly, that is they are having
some kind of a negative impact which is being given because you have the grass here. But
then somebody would ask that it is possible that you have a negative impact, but then
probably this negative impact is not because of the grass but because of the soil. Now to
counter that, you take this third experiment in which you take a permeated pot and here
you have only soil, you do not have any grass; you put water here and then you take out
this water that is coming out.

So the water has passed through the layers of soil and once it has come out you are putting
that water into the apple seedlings. And now, you compare the growth of these seedlings
with that of your control seedlings and you find that there is no change in the growth.
Essentially what you are doing is, you are doing three experiments.

(Refer Slide Time: 31:27)

Experiment 1, which is the control; here you have apple seedlings plus water which is your
normal water and then you are looking at the growth pattern. Let us call it an A kind of a
growth pattern.

758
The second experiment is where you are putting water, this water is moving through a
grass bed and then this water is being given to the apple seedlings and then you look at the
growth pattern and let us call it a B kind of a growth pattern.

In the third experiment, you have water that is moving through a bed of soil and this soil
does not have any grass. So, it is soil only. Then it is given to the apple seedlings and then,
you look at the growth pattern and let us call it a C kind of a growth pattern. When you
look at these three observations; so, here you have the observations. You find that A is
roughly equal to C, but B is very much less than A.

The growth, when you are giving water through the grass bed, the growth is very little
when you compare it with your control. But the growth when you put it only through the
soil is roughly equal to the control. So, both of these are equal and this one is very low. In
that case you can say that, yes, there is some inhibitory effect that is coming when the what
is passing through the grass bed and this inhibitory effect is not coming because of the soil.
It must be coming from the grass only.

This is one way in which you can demonstrate your inhibitory effects. In the case of
allelopathy, you have inhibitory effects that are coming from one species and they are
influencing the other species. So, they are coming from the grass and they are influencing
another species that is apple. But then can you also have inhibitory impacts that, in which
case you have one species that is putting an inhibitory impact on to members of its own
species. Is that also possible? Before we move on to that, let us think about the reason why
any particular species would want to inhibit the growth of its own species members.

759
(Refer Slide Time: 34:25)

Let us say that you have this tree in an area and this tree has long roots. Probably it is
covering a very large area and then, this tree is giving out certain fruits which have the
seeds and then through dispersal, these seeds can come into an area from here to here. Or
probably they can go off even further. Let us say that this is the region where you have the
roots. So, you can have seeds that come here or you can have seeds that come even after
this.

In this case, this red region is showing you the influence zone of roots and the purple one
is ‘outside the influence zone’ and this is also ‘outside in the influence zone’. Let us say
that you have a plant that is say coming up outside the shade, but inside the influence zone.
Let us say that a seed fell into this region and now it is trying to grow in this region. So,
this seed; if you have a seed that is coming right under the plant and that is the first
situation, the second situation and then you have a third situation, where you have this
seedling that is coming up outside the influence zone of the roots.

In the first case, the plant is going to die. Why? Because it is not getting enough amount
of shade or enough amount of sunlight because it is there in the shade of the parent tree.
But then in the case of the second plant, it is outside the shade region, but then if it grows,
then it will also take up the nutrients that are currently being taken up by these roots. In
this case, if this plant is allowed to grow. This plant will be putting a negative influence or

760
a competition to the mother plant. If there is a competition, both of these plants will not be
able to get sufficient amount of nutrients or sufficient amount of water.

On the other hand, you have this third situation where you have these seedlings that are
coming up at a larger distance and there is no, or there is very little possibility that it would
so it would give a competition to the mother plant. Here we are considering these three
cases. In the first case, your seedling is already at a great disadvantage. Your seedling dies,
but then in the second and the third case your seedling is not at a disadvantage.

But in the second case, your seedling can give a negative influence to the parent. In the
third case it is so far away that it will not be able to give. Here you have no competition
because it is very far away. Now if you look at nature, it makes a lot of sense for the mother
tree to kill even this seedling because if it grows it will put up a negative influence or
competition to the parent.

How can you kill off the seedling when it is so far away that it is not under your shade.
You have a situation in which your mother plant will also release some chemicals from its
roots which will inhibit the growth of any of its own daughters in the surroundings. Now,
if this daughter plant grows up, you will not only have the competition in this area, but
then there will also be a lot of inbreeding because your mother plant and the daughter plant
are related to each other. Through evolution there has been a selection of these traits in
which the mother plant is able to kill the daughter plant as well. We look at some examples.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:56)

761
This is ‘Population control by inhibition’ which is the ‘Peach replant problem’. In this
case, people looked at the fruit yields in peaches. Peach was grown in these areas and there
were two kinds of these growths. In the first case, you had a peach plant.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:23)

There was a growth of these peach plants in this area. These plants were uprooted and
then, this area was again grown with peach. In the second case, you had these apple trees
that were growing in this area and these apple trees were uprooted and this area was planted
with peach. If you have a scenario in which the mother plant is giving out some chemicals
that can remain in the soil and that will inhibit the growth of the seedlings.

In this case, if we have such a scenario, we should observe that this peach should have low
growth or probably a low yield as well; whereas, this peach because it is not preceded by
one of its own species. It should have a normal growth and a normal yield. Let us look at
the results. If you have peach following apples; so you have apple that was removed and
then the area was planted with peach. On an average, on this first field you have 212
pounds of fruit per tree. In this second field you had 220 pounds of fruits per tree. So, there
was a very large amount of yield.

If you had this peach plant that was following a previous peach cultivation, here you see
only 92 pounds per tree and here you see only 145 pounds per tree. So, essentially we can
say that if you have this peach that is following the apple, you have excess of 200 pounds
per tree; whereas, if you have a peach that is following a peach plantation, so, you have

762
less than 150 pounds per tree. This is showing a negative influence in which one species
is putting a negative influence on members of its own species. Here we are seeing
allelopathy that is acting on the members of the same species.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:53)

This is also another push factor and this has been seen in even more detail in the case of
Grevillea robusta which is your silver oak. In this case, there were 3 sets of experiments
that were done. In the first experiment, you have your Grevillea robusta seedlings that are
grown on sand. In the second case, they are grown on rainforest soil and in the third case,
they are grown from another oak plantation and in each of these experiments, you have the
plants, the your seedlings that are treated with two things; one is a leachate and this
leachate is coming from a very similar experiment to what we had seen.

So, in place of grass here, you were having your Grevillea robusta trees and from those
trees we were taking out the extracts from the roots.

763
(Refer Slide Time: 42:52)

We were trying to get all that was given out by the roots into the plant medium. In this
case you have these roots. So, you add water into it. When you add water to this, water
percolates, it comes, it trickles down, it reaches to the roots and then you are taking this
water out. And you are calling it a leachate because anything that leaks out or leeches out
of the roots is now there in this water. In every set of your plants or your seedlings; so, you
have your seedlings of the same species and you can either treat it with water or you can
treat it with this leachate.

Let us look at the results; in the first case of experiments where you had these seedlings
that are growing on sand; if you put your control that is your normal water. So, in this case,
you have 40 seedlings in the control, 40 seedlings in the leachate and then in the case of
the control you see 72.5 % of seedlings remain healthy and in the case of the leachate, all
of them died out.

So, you have 0 % healthy seedlings. So, they either die out or they become very shriveled
or they blacken out and so, a number of things are seen in these. If you have your soil from
the silky oak plantation, here also you find that you have 90 % healthy seedlings in the
case of control and 0 % healthy seedlings in the case of leachate. In the case of rainforest
soil, you have 97 % healthy seedlings and you only have 30 % healthy seedlings in the
case of leachate.

764
What are these experiments showing us? The first thing is that, in all 3 of these
experiments, the health status goes down dramatically if you are putting the leachate. The
first thing that it is showing us is that Grevillea robusta is giving out some chemicals into
the water which is inhibiting the growth of its own seedlings. So, it is putting up an
allelopathy impact on its own seedlings.

The second thing is that the impacts vary with the kind of soil. If you are putting your
rainforest soil, so, here the mortality is or the mortality is much lesser or the health status
is much better. Why would that be so? Here again, we are looking at different push factors
and different pull factors.

(Refer Slide Time: 45:39)

In this case, the roots are giving out this chemical which is inhibiting the seedlings. But
then in different kinds of soils you can have different kinds of bacteria. In the case of your
rain forest soil, you have bacteria that decompose this chemical. In this case, when you are
adding the water into this soil and there are so many bacteria. So, they are able to
decompose the chemical at a very fast rate and once that happens your seedlings have less
exposure to the chemical, which means that the amount of inhibition is less.

In this case, what we are seeing is that not only do we have allelopathic impacts in which
one species negatively influences another species, but you also have allelopathic impacts
in which one species influences negatively the members of its own species. But then these

765
impacts can also be modulated by outside organisms. So, these impacts can be modulated
by say bacteria.

If you have enough amount of these bacteria in the soil, they will eat up these chemicals,
they will degrade these chemicals, and so, the negative influences will be lessened to quite
a lot of degree. When we are talking about any push factor or any pull factor, it is also
important to note what are the other things that are present in the surroundings; so that is
a learning that we can get out of this.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:38)

Similarly like in the case of your Grevillea robusta the bacteria were playing role in
modulating the impacts of the negative factors. Similarly, in the case of temperature, we
have the acclimation that plays a modulating factor.

766
(Refer Slide Time: 48:05)

What is acclimation? Suppose you have a species of fish and here you have a water body.
The water body is at a temperature of 25oC. If you increase the temperature of this water
body and say, you are seeing what is the temperature at which your fish is going to die and
you increase it to say 40oC and all your fishes are dead at this particular temperature.

Now, acclimation says that suppose you increase the temperature of this water slowly. In
place of changing it from 25oC to 40oC, you suppose take it to 30oC and then you let your
fishes remain at 30oC for a very long period of time so that they are getting acclimatized
to the ambient conditions that is of a higher temperature.

Now if you try to increase the temperature of the water again and you are seeing at what
temperature do these fishes die; in place of 40oC, it is possible that they die off at 42oC
which tells you that when you are talking about any push and pull factors, when you are
talking about a tolerable range; so, the tolerable range for any species is not fixed.

767
(Refer Slide Time: 49:34)

For instance if we say that in the case of human beings, we are very much comfortable at
say 25oC and we can live for at, as hot as 50oC or say as low as -10oC. Now in this case if
you look at the mortality of human beings, if it goes to a higher temperature. So, let us say
that the ambient temperature is not 50oC, but 55oC.

A person who is more adapted to living at -10oC, if you put this person into this
temperature of 55oC, there will be a higher level of mortality as compared to, if you are
taking a person who is already living at 50oC and you are placing this person at 55oC or a
group of such people at 45oC. Why? Because the people who are living at -10oC are
acclimatized to lower temperatures. So, they cannot tolerate very high temperatures. So
when we are talking about these curves, when we are talking about the mortality curves;
that is a function of the acclimation temperature.

768
(Refer Slide Time: 50:45)

This is what we are seeing here. On the y axis, we are seeing the lethal temperature. On
the x axis, we are looking at the acclimation temperature. Now suppose the acclimation
temperature was 10oC. Now, if you have the individuals that are kept at 10oC and you
lower the temperature even further.

So, you lower the temperature to 0oC. Do any of these individuals survive? Answer is No.
At 0oC when water becomes ice all of these individuals die off. But then, if you have
individuals that that are acclimatized to 15oC and in this case, you are putting them into
water that is colder. So, even before reaching 0oC, they will start dying off. So, they will
die off at say 5oC. If you have a higher acclimation temperatures at 20oC, maybe they will
die at 7oC. So, by plotting these different acclimation temperatures and different lethal
temperatures; for each acclimation temperature, we can get this curve.

Similarly, if you have a fish that is acclimatized at 5oC and you are putting it in warmer
waters.

So, it probably dies at say 22oC. If your fish has been living at a higher temperature. Let
us say your fish has been living at 20oC. So, this fish will be able to tolerate a higher
temperature. So, in place of 22oC, it will be able to tolerate say 23oC. By this way, we can
plot this curve. Now these curves which are telling us the lethal temperatures for different
acclimation temperatures, they will be different for different species. For instance, if you

769
look at this species, this can tolerate a much wider range of temperatures as compared to
the species.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:56)

When we were saying that every species has a range of tolerances and a species with a
narrow range of tolerance, this will die first and a species with a wide range of tolerance,
this will be able to survive better. Now, this is true, but this is also modulated by the fact
that your tolerances depend on what ambient conditions you have been living in. In the
case of this push factor, when we are saying that any particular species can only live till
this much of heat conditions or this much of cold conditions. Even this factor will depend
on, or is modulated by the ambient surroundings in which this particular individual has
been living.

Whenever we are talking about these push and pull factors they are modulated by a number
of things and one of those is the acclimation temperature.

770
(Refer Slide Time: 54:01)

Similarly it has been seen that if you look at any particular species and say, this is the
Sierra Nevada range and we are looking at plants of just one species and if you are taking
out plants from here. So, you are taking out seeds from here and you are growing it in a
lab condition. Similarly, you are taking up seeds from, say here and you are growing them
in the lab conditions. All of these are the same species, but if you take out the plants which
have been living in these areas, where there is a lesser velocity of wind that flows. These
plants have been acclimatized to a condition where you do not have a very high wind
speed. Probably these plants are taller plants.

(Refer Slide Time: 54:55)

771
Essentially what we are doing here is, you have a hill and in this hill the plants that are
growing here are probably taller plants and the plants that are growing on this top are
probably shorter plants. Why? Because the wind speed here is less and the wind speed here
is very high; so if the plant is taller, so it will have to face much greater wind pressures
and probably it will get broken. So, these particular individuals and mind you, both of
these are belonging to the same species.

These individuals have been acclimatized to different wind speed. If you take the seeds of
this plant and if you grow them in the lab conditions; so you are taking seeds from here
and you are taking seeds from here and it turns out that these plants will still remain short
plants and these plants will still remain taller plants. Even though, now they are both
subjected to the same sets of conditions. Here, what we are seeing is that the push and pull
factors that any particular individual has been subjected to or has been acclimatized to,
they retain some amount of continuity even when you are taking those individuals out of
those areas.

Whenever we are talking about push and pull factors you also need to keep these
modulating factors in mind. If you are talking about allelopathy, you also have to think
about is there any amount of bacterial degradation that is reducing the impacts of
allelopathy. If you are talking about temperatures, you have to think about whether a
particular individual has been acclimatized to a higher temperature. Because if you have
individuals that have been acclimatized to higher temperatures, probably they can tolerate
a bit more or individuals that are acclimatized to lower temperatures, probably they can
tolerate a bit more on the lower side or individuals, when you are talking about plants
living in windy areas, so, those individuals that are acclimatized to high wind conditions,
probably they will be better able to tolerate a bit more amount of wind. And these
modulating factors become very important when we are looking at the distribution and
abundance of different organisms or different species because these are the ways in which
any species can extend its range a bit more.

772
(Refer Slide Time: 57:28)

For instance, if you had all the fishes that were, say able to tolerate this temperature range
and this temperature range is, say 5oC or say 10oC to 30oC. So, if this is the normal range.
The species are able to extend this range because a fish that was that has been living in at
30oC. You can take some individuals even up to say 32oC or those individuals that have
been living at 10oC, probably you can take them to 8oC. So, this is one way in which the
species are able to extend their ranges.

(Refer Slide Time: 58:08)

773
Similarly if we look at any particular characteristic, if you have in the case of mountains,
you will see that you have tree lines basically what that means is; if you have this mountain,
you will have trees here at lower levels.

(Refer Slide Time: 58:18)

But then, there will be a particular line above which you will not find any trees. let us say
there is this line above which you have no trees. Now if you say that you do not have trees
in this area, if you ask the question; why do not you have trees in this area? There can be
n number of factors; it can be because there is lack of soil, it can be because there is a
drought in this area.

It can be because you have desiccation of leaves in the cold winter because in the cold
winter also there is a huge amount of wind that is blowing and probably the leaves are
drying out or probably there is lack of snow in certain areas because of which your plants
are more subject to winter drying because if there is snow on the plants. So, the impact of
dry winds is not that great or there is excessive snow in certain areas which is lasting when
through summer. So, the plant is never able to get out of snow or there is a very short
growing the season or there is a rapid heat loss at night or there is excessive soil
temperatures in the day because there might be certain areas here. Suppose this is the
northern hemisphere and this is the southern slope. In this southern slope, probably the
temperatures go up in your day time. They grow up in the daytime and they are very less

774
in the nighttime because of which the plants are getting killed off or because of the
mechanical aspects of the high winds. So, you can have n number of reasons.

Whenever we are talking about the distribution and abundance of any organism, we have
to look at all the alternatives that are there and then we can dissect out each and every
alternative by looking at different transplant experiments. For each of these factors, you
can construct a transplant experiment with certain modifications. If you think that lack of
soil is the reason, you can create a certain patch where you add soil and then you see if
lack of soil is the reason. If you are thinking that desiccation of leaves in the cold winter
is the reason, probably you can provide some sort of moisture or maybe be some sort of
emollients to these plants so that they are able to survive it better.

So, not only do we have to look at multiple reasons which could be leading to the observed
distribution and abundance of the organisms, but at the same time we will also have to
look at different modulating factors for all of these different reasons and only when we
have dissected each and every of these, will we be able to tell what is the exact cause for
the observed distribution and abundance of different organisms. So, this is all about the
push and pull factors in more detail. So, you have to look at various alternatives and you
also have to look at various modifying factors or modulating factors for each and every
push and pull factor.

That is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

775
 WildLife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture - 22
Threats to Species

“Namaste”,

Today, we begin a new module which is management of threatened species. Conservation

is a field in which we utilize all our learnings from ecology for the benefit of organisms
and for the benefit of habitat. We will be using all different learnings that we have had so
far in ecology to understand why some species are facing this threat of extinction and what
can be done for those particular species.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:39)

This particular module will have three lectures. The first is ‘Threats to Species’.Why are
there some species that are the threat? The second would be In-situ conservation; which is
conservation on site and third will be Ex-situ conservation; which is conservation away
from the natural or the existing habitats of the organisms.

Let us begin with the first lecture which is ‘Threats to species’.

776
(Refer Slide Time: 01:05)

If you ask this question why are some organisms facing the threat? So, we can discern an
answer from ecology. The factors that are responsible for threats to organisms are the
opposite question to why things are found, where they are found.

In one of our earlier lectures we had looked at why are organisms found in certain locations
and not in other locations. Organisms are found in certain locations because they have
situations that are useful or that are helpful for the survival of those particular organisms
in those particular areas.

For instance, if there is an organism that requires a low temperature may be requires some
specific kind of foods, may be require some specific kinds of shelters and if we have those
conditions available in certain portions of the earth, so, that organism will be found in
those particular location

A threat to that organism would be if we remove all of these suitable conditions, so if we

remove that particular source of food; if we remove that particular source of shelter or may
be remove that particular life style of the organism; may be encroach upon those habitats
so that would result in a threat. So, this is the opposite question to why things are found
where they found.

If you have a push factor everywhere and a pull factor nowhere, so that would mean that
this organism is getting a stress from all different sides to vacate this particular portion of

777
habitat, but it does not have any other place to go. That would form a major threat to that
particular species. So push factors everywhere and pull factors nowhere.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:43)

What could be these push factors? This push factors could be no suitable habitat for the
organism either, it is too hot nor too cold or there are no trees, no food, no nutrients for
this organism to survive on or if it lives in the forest and this forest is completely burnt out
or if this area becomes polluted. If there is an organism that lives in a lake and you use that
particular lake as a dumping site. So, you are adding a number of pollutants into that area
so that it is now not able to live in that particular lake or that particular… or it’s habitats
are now no more suited behaviorally; in which case we will have a look at habitat selection.

Habitat selection is a behavioral process in which an organisms selects a particular habitat.

For instance you can have a mosquitoes in paddy fields, but then different kinds of
mosquitoes, different species of mosquitoes will utilize different kinds of paddy fields to
lay their eggs. So that is a behavioral selection.

If you remove any particular habitat that is being selected by an organism behaviorally,
so, which is in terms of the organism, that is, the best suited habitat; if you remove that
habitat, so behaviorally it will not find itself comfortable in the other habitats. The other
push factor could be a lot of competition. If you have a number of invasive species in a
forest. If you have a forest in which you have invasive species like lantana. So, lantana is
now growing very fast in a number of forest and it covers a major portion of the ground

778
that is there in those forest. If you have lantana that is covering up all the land so other
herbs and shrubs would be competed out, so that is the push factor. Too many predators
or diseases in any area is another push factor or if an organism is actively being hunted, it
is actively being killed out, it is actively being poached.

So, that is another push factors or small population dynamics, they also act factors push
factors or threat factors such as things like Allee effect. Now Allee effect is an effect in
which if you have an organism that lives in large sized packs. If you have a pack living
organism, if you reduce the size of the packs, so the efficiency of this organism to get food,
to get a mate, to protect itself gets reduced or in certain situations when the density of
organisms is very less so the organisms are not able to find their mates.

In those situations we are seeing Allee effect in picture or you could have a small
population dynamics such as stochastic death. So, just by chance you have a large number
of death. These are all different threat factors. So, we have push factors that are resulting
in to threats and there are some factors that are coming out because of chance events.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:47)

These factors can be divided into two parts; one are those factors that push a population
towards a smaller numbers through population dynamics. We had a look at population
ecology, we know how populations survive how populations increase in their sizes and if
you have a scenario in which there is something that is threatening the growth of the
population, there is something that is increasing the death rate, there is something that is

779
reducing the birth rate.

All these kinds of factors that will play a role when your population is large in size and
are trying to reduce the population size through population dynamics are called as
declining population paradigm. And the other factors; there are a number of other factors
that push a small population towards extinction and they are studied in the small population
paradigm.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:49)

Essentially what we are seeing here is, if you consider any species that is under a threat of
extinction; so you will have a large population, now this large population in time because
of certain threats becomes a small population and then, when it is already a very small
population they could be some other threats that would lead to its extinction.

When we are considering this portion, how does a large population become a small
population? In that case we are talking about the declining population paradigm. So, we
are asking the question, what are those threats that are causing this large population to turn
towards to turn into a smaller population? And when we consider this portion, how does a
small population become extinct? Here we are talking about the small population
paradigm.

We looked at a number of threat factors. Now, if we ask this question what are those factors
that are causing a population to decline to smaller population and what are those factors

780
that are pushing a small population towards extinction? So, will be talking about the
declining population paradigm and the small population paradigm.

Let us look at the declining population paradigm. What kinds of threat factors would result
in smallness of a population? If you are eating up the habitat of any particular organism;
if you are causing the habitat to shrink or if you are pushing this organism away from it’s
own habitat so that it does not have enough amount of habitats left for itself or if you are
putting it in some kind of competitive pressure. For instance, in a grassland that is being
used by chitals and sambar you are taking your cows and buffaloes for grazing. In that
case the chitals and sambar are now are not able to compete with the cows and buffaloes;
so in that case they have been pushed out.

Factors such as these; non availability of a suitable habitat or reduced availability of a

suitable habitat or being completed out or being killed out through poaching, all of these
would be studied under the declining population paradigm. And the other kinds of factors
that play a role in the small population dynamics, Allee effect, stochastic deaths and so on
will be studied under the small population paradigm.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:39)

We can say in other words that there are 2 kinds of factors that are playing a role at all
times, some of these are deterministic factors which are acting at large population sizes
and some of these are stochastic factors or chance factors. Deterministic factors are those
that play a determining role in the population dynamics and stochastic factors are those

781
factors that play a chance role in the population dynamics.

Chance factors become more important when you have smaller size populations. Why?
Suppose you have a population in which you have 10,000 young ones that are born. Now
on an average we can say that 50 percent of them will be males, 50 percent of them will
be females. So, roughly 5000 male offsprings and 5000 female offsprings.

It is possible by chance that in place of 5000 you get say 4990 male offsprings and 5010
female offsprings, but that would be roughly the amount of chance variation that you will
see in the large population whereas, if you consider a very small population so suppose,
you have only 4 offsprings that are born.

(Refer Slide Time: 10:59)

In those situations, roughly you have four off springs. So, in that case we expect 2 of them
to be males and 2 of them to be females, but then by chance it is possible that you only
have 1 male and 3 females or maybe even 0 males and 4 females or you could have another
situation; you could have 3 and 1 or you would have 4 and 0.

If you have a very small population so the probability that you can have one of these
situations increases and the probability that you do not have any organism of a particular
sex also increases very much. Stochastic factors or chance factors play a much more
important role when your population sizes are small as compared to when your population
sizes are larger.

782
(Refer Slide Time: 11:51)

What are the deterministic factors and what are the stochastic factors? Deterministic
factors could be things like birthrate, death rate and population structure. If you have a
population with a reducing birthrate, so that would be a deterministic factor. It will not
lead to an extinction in the near future, but then we can say that if the birthrate is going
down, then there is some issue and this population might be vulnerable to extinction or if
there is an increase in the death rate suppose. There are some diseases that have come into
the population and so they are increasing the rates of deaths in this population.

In this case as well, we will say that there is a chance that this population is being pushed
towards extinction. It is being pushed from becoming a large size population to becoming
a smaller size population or things such as population structure, if more and more
organisms in the population are becoming old. In that case you have a population structure
in which you have less number of young ones, less number of adults and many more
number of old organisms.

All these three factors the birthrates, the death rate and the population structure play the
role of deterministic factors and may push your population from being a large size
population to being a smaller size population.

783
(Refer Slide Time: 13:15)

Next, we have the stochastic factors or chance factors which are more important when
your population sizes are smaller. Here you have demographic stochasticity, so things like
all the off springs in your litter belong to the same sex all of them are males or all of them
are females. Now that is very much unlikely when you have a large size population, but in
a smaller size population suppose you only have two offsprings.

In the population so only two offsprings there is a very high chance that both of them are
male or both of them are females or say things like death in the litters. So, every population
would be having some amount of infant mortality and some amount of juvenile mortality.
There is a chance that you had only two offsprings in the current generation and both of
them tied.

It is much less likely if you have say 2000 offsprings in a population, it is very less likely
that all 2000 of them would die, but then if you have only two offsprings it is very much
much possible that both of them die out. These are demographic stochasticity. ‘Demo’ is
population; so ‘demographic’ is, we are talking about the about the characteristics of
population and these are chance factors that act on the population characteristics.

The second chance factors are environmental variations and fluctuations. Suppose you
have a drought, suppose you have a flood. So, that would also play a very crucial role if
you already have a very small population or catastrophes such as forest fires and diseases
or say genetic processes such as loss of heterogeneity and inbreeding depression.

784
(Refer Slide Time: 15:07)

In this case what we are saying is that if you have a large size population, you have a
number of males and a number of females and when they are breeding randomly. In that
case there is a very small chance that brothers and sisters would mate with each other, but
then if you have a very small population, suppose you only have three individuals left. So,
if you have any amount of mating then there is a very high chance that you will push this
population towards inbreeding depression in no time.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:33)

Other kinds of a stochastic factors are deterministic processes such as density dependent

785
mortality on exceeding the carrying capacity of the habitat. In this case, what we are saying
is that suppose, you have a habitat and this habitat can support 100 organisms.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:47)

In this case, suppose your population size is close to around 90. When you are reaching
close to 100, so, in that case the mortality increases because your populations now reaching
towards the carrying capacity. We had seen this and the case of the sigmoidal curve. So,
when we have the sigmoidal curve, this is the carrying capacity, this is the number of
organisms and this is your time.

When the population has reached to this level, so it is very close to the carrying capacity.
In this case ,the death rate would increase or probably the birthrate would also go down
because of some behavior reasons. If you can support only ninety of organisms and
suppose you have two different kind of organisms, so here you have chital and here you
have sambars in this population.

Suppose, you have both of these as 50:50. So we have 50 chitals and 50 sambars. In both
of these populations, we will find some amount of mortality that is going on, but then
suppose stochastically if you have a situation in which you have only say, 3 chitals left
and you have 97 sambars that are left.

786
(Refer Slide Time: 17:09)

In this case, it is possible that because of this density dependent mortality these 3 chitals
by chance die out and in that case also you will be pushing a very small population of
chitals towards a complete extinction.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:35)

Next, we have migration among population. In this case, you have two populations;
population A and population B. Suppose you have these two populations as say Kanha and
Pench, and both of these are connected. You have Kanha tiger reserve, you have the Pench
tiger reserve and they are connected through some amount of forest.

787
If there is some particular species that only has a 4 organisms left in Kanha. If these four
organisms move out to Pench then we will say that Kanha a suffered a local extinction of
this particular species. So, even things such as migration among population might be
responsible for a local extinction somewhere.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:19)

The factors that are leading species towards extinction can be remembered using this
acronym HIPPO. So, Hippo is short for Hippopotamus, but then you can used to
remember H is habitat loss. So, here you also have things like habitat degradation or habitat
fragmentation, but we classify all of this as habitat loss. So, we look at these in greater
detail in a short while. I stands for invasive species. So invasive species, if they come in
to your forest they will out compete all the other existing natural species and then they will
push them towards extinction.

P stands for pollution, so pollution also leads to habitat degradation. The second P stands
for human over population because the more number of humans that you have on this
planet, the more would be their requirements and to meet their requirements, they would
be using up the resources that are available in the habitats of different organisms. So,
human overpopulation also plays a very big role to in the extinction process and O refers
to over harvesting.

788
(Refer Slide Time: 19:31)

Over harvesting is the is a process in which suppose you have a particular lake and in this
particular lake you have certain fishes and because these fishes are also reproducing. So,
their population would increase with time and so we can remove certain amount of fishes
from this particular lake to be used as food for humans.

Suppose you have 1000 fishes here. Now out of these 1000 fishes if we remove say 100
fishes. So you will be left with 900 fishes in the lake and these 900 fishes would be able
to reproduce in a manner that they are able to restock the population. But then in place of
taking out 100 fishes, suppose we are taking out 990 fishes.

In that case what happens is that we are only left with 10 fishes in this particular pond or
in this particular lake. Now 10 fishes are not sufficient to restock the whole population of
the lake, so in place of exploiting 100 if you exploit 990 that is the case of over harvesting.
Over harvesting can also push a species towards extinction and very good examples of
over harvesting are not only fishing in the lakes, but also killing of whales from the oceans
or maybe even poaching of certain animals for their skin or for their fur and so on.

789
(Refer Slide Time: 21:01)

Different species will have different levels of impacts when we are having these factors of
hippo. The most important factor is the impact of human beings. If you have a larger sized
human population, if you have more amounts of impacts of humans on certain habitat, it
would lead to a differential impact on different species.

Sensitivity of a species to human impacts would be dependent upon these factors, the first
is adaptability and resilience of the species. Now if you have a species that is r-selected,
so here we are talking about r-selected and k-selected.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:41)

790
Now r-selected species are those that have a very high birthrate then they reach sexual
maturity faster and in a number of circumstances there is little parental care. So, examples
include things such as rats or mice or rabbits. Now in the case of mice, so you will have a
male and a female that would give rise to say 20 offsprings and then they would become
sexually mature in say around 6 to 8 months and then each of them would also give rise to
20 other offsprings.

Now, what happens in that case is that you have a very high amount of ro are the intrinsic
growth rate; so you have a growth rate that goes like this. So, this is the number of an
individual’s and this is time. Now in the case of r selected species because you have a very
high ro, so the population increases very fast and when that happens, even if you are you
are removing a number of organisms from that particular species the number of organisms
that are left out would be resilience enough to restock this species.

For instance, earlier suppose you had 1000 mice in a form and you are able to kill 900 out
of them. So, 900 got killed and your only left with 100, these 100 because they have a very
high birthrate because they reach sexual maturity very fast because they have little parental
care so they are mostly independent right from birth. So, there will be able to restock this
and increase their population to come back to 1000.

On the other hand, if we talk about the k-selected species, now k-selected species are
those that have the opposite characteristics of r-selected species. So, they have a very less
amount of birthrate, they reach sexual maturity in a very long period of time and there is a
lot of parental care that is required a good example is say humans or organisms like tigers.

791
(Refer Slide Time: 24:09)

Now, in the case of tigers one male and a female would produce a litter of say two three
or four cubs. Now those 2 3 or 4 cubs will take close to around 5 or 6 years to reach their
sexual maturity and for close to around three to four years these cubs will be under the
guidance and training of their mothers who will teach them how to hunt.

Now, in these species you have a very low amount of ro there, because there you have a
very less amount of intensive growth rate and. So, if you kill of these species; if you go
into a forest and if you hunt down tigers. So, the remaining tigers will take a very long
time to restock the population. So, in that we will see that the resilience of this particular
species, say tigers towards the impacts of humans are towards poaching is less, on the
other hand the resilience of organisms such as mice or rats or rabbits is much more. So, in
that case tigers will suffer a greater brunt from the human impacts as compared to the mice.

The second one is human attention; so we are talking about which species suffer a greater
amount of impact because of human activities. The second fact is human attention.
Charismatic species such as tigers are more sensitive because humans have high demand
for their skin bones and other parts because humans have are placing much more attention
on tigers. They will go out and want to hunt tigers whereas, they are not putting so much
attention on mice. They might not go out and hunt for the mice that are found in the forest
areas. That is another factor.

The third factor is ecological overlap between humans and the species. So, the greater the

792
overlap the greater is the impact of humans on that particular species; and fourth is the
home range requirements of the species. Species that require larger home ranges are more
sensitive to human impacts and good example is the case of elephants.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:21)

Elephants require a large size forest. Even if you take off this much portion of the forest.
It will place a very high amount of impact on the elephants. On the other hand, if you
consider another species that has a small home range requirement say rabbits. In the case
of rabbits you have these small populations that are in different areas. Even if you take this
part of the forest out so even in that case the other populations will be able to survive
because they have a smaller home range requirement.

793
(Refer Slide Time: 26:59)

The next question is when we talk about threats, when quantify this threat, how real is this
threat or what is the rate at which we are using the species, what are the rate of extinction;
can we put a quantifiable figure on to this? In this case, we can make use of another
ecological learning which is that of biogeography. Now there is this Island biogeography
model by Macarthur and Wilson that says that species richness of an island is given by the
following expression.

S = C x AZ

(Refer Slide Time: 27:35)

794
Here we are asking the question, if you have an island, you have, say this island that has
an area of A1 and suppose you have this another island that has an area of A2. What will
be the number of species that are found in A1 and what will be the number of species that
are found in A2? So, that has been worked out and we say that the number of species or
the species richness of an island is proportional to AZ, so that is it is proportional to some
power of A. So, now, that power could be say A2 or it could be A3 or just A or it could be
A1/2 and so on, but then it is proportional to some particular function of A.

Why do we say that? Because if you have a larger sized island, so this larger sized island
will probably have more diverse habitats because as we had seen in our biogeography
lectures, in the case of a smaller island probably you have sand everywhere, but then in
the case of a larger size habitat you probably have a sand on the beaches, but then on the
insides you might have say some hills or maybe you could have even a small stream that
is draining out into the ocean or you would have some areas that have some grasses or you
could have some areas that have certain herbs and shrubs. So, a larger sized island is able
to support more amount of habitats which would then support more number of species.

Secondly, it also supports more number of organisms because this has a larger size that
supports more home range species, that is if you have a very small island you will not be
able to have organism such as, elephants that have large home range requirements whereas,
if you have a larger size island you can even incorporate those species that have larger
home range requirements. So, the number of species that will be found in any area would
depend on the size of the island and this has been computed as S = C x AZ, where C and z
are both constants.

795
(Refer Slide Time: 30:03)

Now, we can use this equation to compute how many species will lose out, if the amount
of habitat that is available to these species reduces or if you are reducing the size of our
forest. Now it has been seen by looking at a number of ecosystems that z varies between
0.15 and 0.35.

Now, let us take a middle value of 0.3, so in that case if you have an area of A1, so you
will say that the number of species or the species richness is C x A1Z which is 0.3. Now
we let this area decrease by as much as 90%.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:49)

796
So, what we are saying in that case is earlier we had this much of forest and then this much
amount of the forest has been encroached up for say human activities. So, only 10% of the
forest remains, so in that case how many species would remain in that area. So, we have
A2 that is the amount remaining is just 10% or 0.1 of A1.

So, in that case S2 which is the number of species that are found in this 10% area of the
forest now will be given by C x A1Z ; here A = 0.1x A1 and z = 0.3, so it will be given as
C x 0.1 A10.3. Now we can compute the ratio of these species. So in the first instance in
the whole of the forest we had the number of species that is given by S1 and in the second
instance we have only these many species remaining which is given by S2 and we are
finding out the ratio S2 / S1.

Now, the larger area is A1 and the smaller area is A2 which is 0.1 of A1. So, we already
know that A2 / A1 = 0.1, now if that be the situation what is S2 / S1?

(Refer Slide Time: 32:15)

Now, if we plug in the values will find that S2 / S1 = 0.10.3 ,which roughly comes to 50%.
So, even if you have reduced your area by as much as 90%, the number of species that
remain is as high as 50%. So, even though you have removed 90% of the area you are not
loosing 90% of the species, you are only loosing 50% of this species, but then those would
be the species that preferentially required a larger sized of home range or probably those
are the species that have a very specific habitat requirement. So, they are more specialized
species.

797
(Refer Slide Time: 32:59)

We can use such a theory to compute how many species are we losing out by say losing
out our different habitats, such as the habitat in the tropical forests

We know from satellite studies that the rate at which tropical forest are actually decreasing
is around 2% per annum 1.8% per annum and if we even take the lowest value of z. So,
here we are not taking z is equal to 0.3, but we are taking z is equal to 0.15, we are taking
the most conservative estimate, it would translate to a loss of 0.27% per year and we are
estimating that the number of species that we have in the tropical forest is close to around
10 million species

If you are losing 0.27% of 10 million it means that we are losing as high as 27000 species
per year, which is a conservative estimate of the number of species that we are losing and
similarly we can estimate the losses from the other ecosystems.

Now, what are these species? If you ask somebody, he or she would say that yeah we lost
a few species, we have lost the Yangtze dolphin, we have lost the dodo, but then most of
the people will not be able to move more than say 10 species, that have been lost
throughout the whole process, but then we are losing around 27000 species per year and
most of these species are those that we do not even know that they exist. A number of
herpetofauna, a number of frogs species, a number of snake species, a number of lizards
species and all of them are also very important for the biodiversity of those area.

798
(Refer Slide Time: 34:45)

Which species get lost is not the same across all the species. So the amount of susceptibility
of a species to extinction is not the same across different species. The susceptibility
depends on the rarity of the species and if you have a species that is more and more rare,
so there is a greater chance that it gets extinct, because if you already have a rare species
it means that it has very less number of habitats that it can make use of or it already has a
very small population size. So, the number of stochastic phenomena that can play havoc
to this species are very high. Rarity is a function of the ecology and evolutionary
characteristics of the species.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:29)

799
Why are some species rarer? Some species are rarer because of three reasons. The first
reason is habitat selection and evolutionary characteristics such as restriction to an
uncommon habitat. So, a species that is found in the desert springs will be extremely rare
because it is a very specialized, it is a very uncommon habitat, we do not have a number
of deserts, we do not have a number of springs in any desert. So, the number of deserts
springs already is very less. So, the number of useful habitats for this species already very
less.

The second one is a limited geographical range those species that are found in a single
lake. So, if you lose out this lake, you lose out all this species that are found in this
particular lake; and third is low population densities example because the larger animals
require more space. So, these are three reasons why certain species are rare and these
species are much more susceptible to extinction.

We were talking about the habitat loss or the impacts on habitat and the impacts on habitat
can be divided into four different categories. We have situations of habitat degradation,
fragmentation, displacement and loss.

800
(Refer Slide Time: 36:43)

We look at all four of these, habitat degradation is the process by which the quality of the
habitat for given a species gets diminished. For instance if you are living in a city and the
air in the city becomes more and more polluted. It is an example of habitat degradation
because now the habitat or the urban habitat for you is not as good as it was before, so the
habitat is getting degraded.

(Refer Slide Time: 37:05)

This degradation can be because of contamination, air water pollution, eutrophication

pesticides, accumulated toxins and so on.

801
(Refer Slide Time: 37:13)

So, we talked about the phenomenon of eutrophication earlier. So, that is an example of
habitat degradation.

(Refer Slide Time: 37:19)

We talked about bioaccumulation earlier, so in the case of bioaccumulation if you spray

some pesticides on the grass. So, this pesticide is also taken up by the insects then it moves
up the food chain and the amount of pesticides that is available more and more up as you
go increases.

So, even if you have a very small amount of pesticides that was sprayed here, the

802
concentration in the larger birds would increase to such an extinct that they would start
dying off. Even a very small amount of pesticides would be enough to degrade the habitat
especially for the large size birds or you could have things such as trash. Trash is also
another way in which we are degrading the habitat.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:07)

Ghost nets and plastics; ghost nets are those nets that have come out into the ocean. So,
essentially there was somebody who was using these nets and probably a small portion got
torn off and it drifted away into the waters or probably there was a storm and the whole of
this net was lost into the sea.

Now, if there are nets in the seas, it will still be catching up organisms. These organisms
once they occurred they die when they are in these caught up in these nets and so the these
are very important factors of habitat degradation or things, such as entanglement.

803
(Refer Slide Time: 38:45)

(Refer Slide Time: 38:47)

Or even in the case of mountains here we are observing a species which is Nilgiri tahr and
here we are observing plastic bottles. So, we are seeing degradation of habitat everywhere.

804
(Refer Slide Time: 38:59)

These hyenas that are near a trash side, now if you have these hyenas that are feeding along
these trash sides probably they will also be feeding a some amounts of plastics because if
we have some food that is wrapped in a plastics the hyena does not know that plastic is not
something that is to be eaten.

So, it will eat up the plastics as well and once it eats up the plastics that will get lost into
its intestines and in the stomach and once it gets lost in the intestines of the stomach the
amount of nutrients that this hyena will be able to absorb from the surroundings would
reduce further. So, this is another example of habitat degradation.

805
(Refer Slide Time: 39:41)

Or things such as soil erosion and forest fires. If you have a fire in a forest so that would
also degrade this habitat because earlier you had a number of plant species that were
available as food, as shelter for different organisms, if you have a forest fire so, all these
species are lost and so, this habitat has become more and more degraded for those
organisms that are dependent on those small plants.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:05)

Other examples of habitat degradation are water overexploitation. We observe this in

Tamil Nadu in which case we had a tiger reserve and right next to the tiger reserve were a

806
number of villages.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:15)

Now these villages were using quite a lot of water for irrigation once that is happening,
the small water bodies that we had in the forest areas were getting dried out. Now if you
have a forest area in which the amount of water is less. So, the habitat is not as good for
the survival of animals as it was before. So, water over exploitation or deforestation; these
are also examples of habitat degradation.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:45)

In this case here we observe that we have very good forest and then this is an area that has

807
been cleared off. The organisms that were dependent on the forest will not be able to utilize
these areas. This is an example of habitat degradation that is going on or things like
desertification, over grazing of the plant species or cultivation practices that are leading to
more amount of water being used.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:11)

If there is over grazing because of these goats. So, they will be eating up all of these small
plants that are remaining in this area and so the soil will not be held up by these plants, it
will start floating around. In a very short period of time, this whole area will convert into
a complete desert. So, that is also an example of habitat degradation or activities such as
draining of water bodies, dredging of water bodies, damming of water bodies or over
exploitation of certain species or introduction of exotic species. All of these degrade the
habitat.

808
(Refer Slide Time: 41:47)

So, in the process of degradation, the quality of the habitat is becoming lower and lower
for a particular species. Now, if this quality becomes low to such an extent that the
organism is now no more able to use this habitat. In that case, we will say that habitat
degradation has become so much that it has now resulted in the loss of the habitat; the
habitat is now completely lost. That is an extreme level of degradation.

(Refer Slide Time: 42:13)

Another factor that plays a role is habitat fragmentation. Fragmentation occurs when an
natural habitat is broken up into smaller parcels of natural ecosystems isolated from one

809
another in a matrix of lands dominated by human activities and it involves both loss and
isolation of habitats. In the case of habitat fragmentation, we had earlier a large size habitat
and now we are dividing this habitat into smaller portions.

(Refer Slide Time: 42:55)

For instance, if we have a number of roads; earlier in the whole forest, you did not have
these road and if you had a snake say at this location and this snake wanted to reach this
location it would very easily able to reach, but now if you have so many roads in this area,
this snake would have to come on to a road to cross this area and once it comes on top of
this road, it is possible that it gets over run by some vehicle and it dies.

So, fragmentation is also a very important phenomena that is leading to extinction or death
of species.

810
(Refer Slide Time: 43:25)

We have seen before that larger sized forest or larger sized habitat support more number
of species. Why? Because one, they have more number of habitats; consider the case of
larger sized islands where we have hills, we have rivers, we have a springs, we have
grasslands, we have shrubs which are not there in a smaller size island.

Second larger fragment is more likely to have both common and uncommon species
whereas, smaller fragments are more likely to have only the common species and third
smaller fragments have smaller populations, So, the chances of getting extinct are also
large.

811
(Refer Slide Time: 44:07)

So, what we are seeing in this case is that, if you have a large sized forest and this forest
supports say around 10,000 organisms of a particular species.

Now, in the process of fragmentation you have divided this forest into very small parcels
of land and say this particular parcel is able to support say 10 individuals of this species.
Now in the earlier case where we had 10,000 individuals who only had deterministic
factors that were playing a role in the population dynamics, but when we have only 10
individuals will also have the rule of stochastic factors.

So, the chances that this particular patch becomes extinct. So, there is a local extinction in
this particular patch is very high similarly it is very high in this patch, it is very high in this
patch. So, just by dividing the whole forest into smaller patches we have ensured that the
extension probability in all of these smaller patches is very high and in that case it is very
likely that will have a local extinction and all of these patches and the species will die out
completely. So, this is also another way in which it is bad to have these smaller patches.

812
(Refer Slide Time: 45:23)

How do we fragment a habitat or what are the factors that are leading to fragmentation of
habitat? Here things like roads, railways, dams and other structures. Now these structures
lead to mortality when an animal is run over by railways or they had run over by vehicles
that are going on the roads or they act as physical barriers. So, the animal is not able to
cross to the other side because it acts as a very big barrier for the animal or it act as a
psychological barriers.

So, if you have a road that is a very much teaming with traffic, so the animal will find it
extremely psychologically stressful to cross that particular road or it increases access to
the anthropogenic influences. So, if you have roads and railways in an area so, more
number of human beings will reach that area and so the amount of human influences will
also increase or access to invasive species and exotic species. So, that is one way in which
we are a fragmenting the habitat.

813
(Refer Slide Time: 46:31)

The second one is diversion of land for agriculture. Suppose, we have this forest and
suppose we divert this particular portion for agriculture. If that happens we have already
divided this forest into those smaller patches.

(Refer Slide Time: 46:43)

814
(Refer Slide Time: 46:49)

Third is linear infrastructure. Linear infrastructure includes things such as pipelines or

creation of a dam; dam also play the very important role in habitat fragmentation because
now organisms that are there on this side of the dam find it very difficult to reach this side
whereas, earlier there was a connecting land passing, so which they were able to move.
Now that would again depend on the size of the dam, but then this is also a very big factor
in habitat fragmentation.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:11)

815
Now, habitat fragmentation, how does it actually occur when we look at the forest
situations.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:17)

Suppose this is a forest. The habitat fragmentation would start by dissecting of this forest.
So, in the first place we have a set of these roads. So probably this is a national highway
that is connecting two large towns and then these are small roads that are constructed. So,
that some small hamlets that were inside are now more connected to the forest or to the
main roads.

Fragmentation begins by this process of dissection once dissection happens. Humans are
finding it more and more possible to access these areas the accessibility has increased once
you have more amount of accessibility so people would want to come and live in those
areas. Probably now, there would be a small hamlet here, probably there would be one
person who sets up a house somewhere here because now it is accessible for this person,
probably there would be some people who would start some amount of farming or some
amount of dairy or probably people would want to set up a farm here so that the people
who are plying on this particular highway have now an access to say milk or milk products
and these persons also see a livelihood opportunity because they have a ready market in
terms of the people who are plying on these roads. So, in a number of forest area they will
see that there are people who are sitting on the side of the roads and they are trying to sell
you something, probably vegetables probably fruits or milk or milk products and so on.

816
So, this stage is known as perforation. Now when perforation happens, you are increasing
the impacts of the human beings because if you have these cattle here, if you have some
amount of grazing that is going on these cattle will go into the forest areas to graze and
once that happens they are going to compete with the wild animals. So, we see livestock
in the forest.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:11)

Once perforation has happened, the next thing would be fragmentation because we had
this small settlement here and now they would want to join with the main settlement. So,
they would increase in their size. So the size of this hamlet is now increasing. Once that
happens this whole area becomes a settlement, this whole area becomes a settlement and
it joins with the other settlement here because this settlement is also increasing in size.
When that is happening once all of these have joined together.

Now, if an animal wants to move from this side to this side, it will have to cross this
particular village, then it will reach a small patch of forest and it will have to reach cross
this particular village and then it will be able to reach this side. In this case, what we are
observing is fragmentation of the habitat because in place of a large sized forest now we
have smaller sized patches that are remaining.

817
(Refer Slide Time: 50:09)

So, this is how a fragmentation would look like. So, here we have forests on this side, on
this hills, we have the forest and this whole area has now been taken up for plantations.
Now this is fragmenting this habitat. After fragmentation the next stage is that of attrition.
Now, attrition is the process in which those smaller sized patches that were remaining there
also now being taken up for human use.

Once you have all these villages once you have so many cattle here and there is a good
market in terms of the people who are buying this product. So, government would also
want to set up some schools, government would also want to provide the facilities of say
hospitals in this area, probably there would be some small industries that would come up
in these areas, probably there would be an access to electricity as well and when all of
these happens, it lays a positive feedback because if you have this area that has such good
environments plus it has a ready market plus it has so many people plus it has electricity.

So, more and more people would want to come and live in this area. Probably, there would
be some people who would want to buy up these lands for investment purposes. Once that
happens the whole amount of human dominated landscape would increase and these
patches would become even smaller in size with time. This is the process of attrition.

818
(Refer Slide Time: 51:37)

And this is a good example of attrition in which this whole hill which was earlier full of
forest, now only has this much amount of forest left, rest all the places have now been
taken up for human use and a good example of these processes is seen in the case of
Amazon rainforest.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:51)

819
(Refer Slide Time: 52:01)

So, here we are looking at a rainforest in Brazil and we are looking at 1975 images. Now,
in 1975 the whole area was forest, then there was a road that was constructed and then the
amount of influences increased and then by 2001 the whole of the area was taken up and
then by 2009, we can see that there is hardly any national habitat that is remaining in this
particular area. So, this is an example from the satellite images.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:29)

So, earlier while we had this whole big sized forest that was available as a habitat for so
many species.

820
(Refer Slide Time: 52:33)

Now, because of the road that was set up all of these areas have now been taken up and
only very small patches are remaining. So, that is the process of habitat fragmentation and
this is an example of an extremely fragmented habitat.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:45)

Recently, the supreme court has acted upon this habitat. What people had done was that,
we had these forest and all these areas where taken up for the setting up of resorts. Now,
supreme court came down harshly on these resort and all of these resorts were then closed
down because they were fragmenting this habitat. If you had an elephant that had to move

821
from point one to this point, it could not move without passing through all these human
habitations.

(Refer Slide Time: 53:21)

Besides human habitat fragmentation, the other phenomenon that is playing a big role is
known as habitat displacement. Habitat displacement is shifting of wildlife to non-prime
or subprime habitats. Examples are hills or rocky patches.

(Refer Slide Time: 53:39)

This is again something that we have seen earlier in ecology, the good example was you
have some grasslands and then you have this hill and this area has lots of grasses and this

822
area probably is bolder region. So, you do not have many grasses on the hill side.

Now, earlier you had a number of wild life that were using these areas because they want
grasses to feed up on. Now if you have human beings that come with their cattle, so you
have cattle and they are also coming with dogs. Once that happens the wildlife will not be
able to compete with the cattle. So, in that case the wildlife will have no other option than
to move to these hilly areas. So, once that happens, you will not have any wild life that is
left in this area, all the wildlife is now found here and all of this area, the grasslands have
been taken up by the cattle.

So, this was a prime habitat because it provided a lot of grass or a lot of fodder to the
animals. Now this habitat was taken up by the cattle and the animals were shifted to this
particular habitat which is a sub prime habitat because it is all full of rocks and it does not
have ample amount of fodder available for the animals, once that happens we call it as
habitat displacement.

It is shifting of wildlife to non prime or subprime habitats example hills or rocky patches.
So, we can see that there are a number of processes through which the wildlife is losing
their habitat.

(Refer Slide Time: 55:33)

We have the process of habitat degradation where the quality is reducing. If the quality
reduces to a very high extent, we will have a habitat loss. We can also have habitat

823
fragmentation in which a big parcel of land is now getting converted into small parcels of
land or we can have situations of habitat displacement, where the wildlife is shifted to
nonprime habitats or subprime habitats and all of these are processes that we can
understand in the science of ecology.

Now, we also saw that different animals or different organisms will have different
susceptibility to extinction because of factors such as how specialized are those organisms,
do they require a specialized habitat or are they generalist or what is the process of habitat
selection for this organisms or how close is the overlap of their habitats with humans. Now
all these susceptibility factors are also things that we study in ecology.

The third set of factors is the population size or the population dynamics. Do we have
deterministic factors that are acting on these populations because they are large in size? Or
do we have stochastic factors? Now all of these are different subtopic or different sub
fields of ecology that we have seen and we can use information from all of these to be put
into the cause of conservation. So, we can say that, if we wanted to conserve these pieces
how do we avoid habitat degradation or habitat loss of fragmentation or displacement or
how do we identify those species that are very much highly susceptible to becoming extinct
or how do we understand the population dynamics of these organism?

We can choose all of these information to understand the threat that is being perceived by
different species and one way in which this done is known as population viability analysis.

(Refer Slide Time: 58:05)

824
Population viability is the ability of the population to persist or to avoid extinction. What
we are asking here is, suppose we have 2500 tigers in our country, what is the probability
that after 100 years we will still have tigers in our country? Or what is the possibility that
all of these tigers will die out, they will become extinct in our country?

(Refer Slide Time: 58:35)

Population viability analysis is an analysis of the viability of a population or it is a process

by which extinction probability of a single species population is assessed by integrating
data on life history, demography and genetics of the species with information on the
variability of the environment, diseases, stochasticity etc, by utilizing mathematical
models and computer simulations in order to predict whether the population will remain
viable or go extinct in a decided timeframe under various management options.

This is one place where we are using different sub disciplines of ecology, we are looking
at population ecology, we are looking at genetics of different species, we are looking at
environmental variations or ecosystem level perturbation to understand whether a
population is going to persist for a long time or not. So, that is population viability analysis.

In this lecture we looked at why certain species are under threat of extinction, what are the
ways in which different species become exposed to different threats, what are stochastic
factors, what are deterministic factors and how through the process of habitat degradation
loss fragmentation and displacement, we are putting a stress on a number of individual.
Now all of these are ecological learnings that we are making use of to conserve different

825
species.

That is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

826
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture - 23
In-situ conservation

“Namaste”,

We know that there are species that are under the threat of extinction. What can we do to
conserve them? What are the ecological processes that we can use? Or what are the
conservation strategies that we can use to protect those species to save them from the brink
of extinction?

(Refer Slide Time: 00:33)

In this context, we have two different kinds of strategies which are In-situ conservation
and Ex-situ conservation. And, in today’s lecture we will have a look at In-situ
conservation.

827
(Refer Slide Time: 00:43)

As always, we begin with the word roots; in situ means on site. So, this is conservation
that is done within the natural habitat. On the other hand ex situ conservation, ex situ means
off site, which is conservation that is done outside the natural habitat. In situ conservation
would be conservation that you are doing within the natural habitat. So, things such as
national parks wildlife sanctuaries come under in situ conservation, because you already
have organisms that are living in those areas and so, you are conserving the organisms on
the site.

Ex situ conservation is when you are trying to conserve the organisms outside their natural
habitat. If you are setting up a seed bank, and taking out seeds from the natural habitat,
and storing them there in the seed bank. So, that if something happens to the natural habitat
you can use the seeds bring them to the natural habitat and you can regrow the plants back.
So, that would be an example of an ex situ conservation or things such as zoos.

You have a zoo in Delhi. So, those animals are not naturally living in Delhi, but they have
been brought from different areas of India, in different areas of the world, and then they
are kept in the Delhi zoo. So, zoos are an example of ex situ conservation.

828
(Refer Slide Time: 01:53)

The process of in situ conservation would be that areas in the national habitat are
designated as reserves, national parks or protected areas. So, you classify the natural
habitats or you look for those areas in the national habitat, that you can classify as reserves,
national parks or protected areas. And, then in these areas ecological monitoring and
interventions that is active management are done and legislations are required to maintain
these areas as protected areas.

What you are doing is you are taking out some areas of the natural habitat. And, you are
saying that these areas will be protected areas, you are putting up some legislation. So, that
people are not able to intervene into these areas, or people are not able to divert these areas
for some other applications. And, once you have done that you do habitat monitoring and
some amount of interventions.

Now, these interventions could be say if you are observing that the wild dog population in
your area in that actual habitat is going down. So, then you would ask the question what
is the reason. Probably your wild dogs are not getting enough amount of food or probably
they are suffering from some disease. So, the intervention in this case would be to intervene
at the level of food or at the level of disease.

Suppose they have some disease. So, you might give them some antibiotics or maybe you
could try to vaccinate them if that diseases leading to a high amount of death rate and so
on. So, that is the process of in situ conservation.

829
(Refer Slide Time: 03:25)

Whereas, in the case of ex situ conservation you designate areas with suitable conditions
and facilities are created in those areas. So, when you are setting up a zoo, you designate
certain area in your city or outside your city and you say that ok, we are going to construct
this zoo here, then you create facilities in those areas. So, you create enclosures, you create
pathways so that people can come visit these areas. You create pathways through which
feed will be brought for these animals; you create pathways so, that where you can bring
in more animals from outside or maybe take some animals outside. You create facilities in
terms of veterinary care, what are those designated areas in your zoo where if an animal is
suffering from a disease, you can take it out and give it some amount of veterinary
treatment.

All these facilities are created and once you have these facilities, the species are moved
into this designated areas for their survival in breeding. In a number of areas you also do
captive breeding of these animals. And, then the third stage is optional when the species
are later released into their natural habitats. So, that is the ex situ conservation.

830
(Refer Slide Time: 04:37)

Now, in situ conservation gives a certain amount of advantages over the ex situ
conservation. And, at the same time it also suffers from certain disadvantages as compared
to the ex situ conservation. So, when we are talking about in situ conservation you can
think about say a tiger reserve. Should you keep a tiger in a tiger reserve or should you
keep a tiger in a zoo? In both the instances we are trying to conserve the tiger. Now, in the
if you are keeping it in a tiger reserve it would give you certain advantages.

Species continue to live in their natural environment a zoo is an artificial environment

whereas, a tiger reserve is a natural environment, it is less disruptive and less costly. So,
you are not required to take the animal away. So, if you are taking a tiger out of a forest
area and to keep it into a zoo, you need to engage a number of people, this tiger will have
to be immobilized and then put into a cage, and then transport it to another location, and
then once it has been moved into a zoo then, it will have to be fed. And, all these feeding
arrangements will also require quite a lot of cost whereas, if you are keeping it in the
natural environment, the tiger is going to hunt by itself, you do not have to go there and
feed this tiger everyday.

So, it is less disruptive and less costly. Also natural behaviors are maintained. If, you have
tigers that are living in the wild conditions, in those situations, the cubs that are born will
be trained by their mothers on how to hunt? They will remember and they learn these
processes of hunting whereas, if you are keeping a tiger in a zoo so, a tiger will vary easily

831
forget how to hunt and because it is getting a food in a premade format. So, the animals
are already killed and probably already cleaned before giving it with the tiger. So, it will
lose out it is natural behaviors very easily.

Protection of natural habitat provides protection to other species as well. In the case of a
tiger reserve, when you are protecting the tigers you are at the same time also protecting
the Chitals, the Sambars and a number of other species leopards and so on by protecting
the tigers. Whereas, in the case of ex situ conservation, if you are keeping it in the zoo. So,
if you are only keeping a tiger in the zoo, then in that case you are not protecting the other
organisms.

Now, even in the case of ex situ conservation, the animal will need to be released
somewhere. Because, if you are keeping tigers in a zoo, you are doing captive breeding
and from say 5 tigers, now you have 50 tigers. Now, if you have 50 tigers, what do you do
with these 50 tigers? They will have to be released somewhere, because keeping a tiger is
extremely costly.

If you have in situ conservation sites, then these sites will provide suitable areas for such
releases later on; so which is also why you need to maintain in situ conservation areas as
well. And, also reserves double as places for scientific studies and public awareness, which
is also why we keep in situ conservation methods.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:27)

832
However, it also suffers from certain disadvantages. It requires very large areas. So, in the
case of tiger reserves, it will have tens or even hundreds of square kilometers of area.
Whereas, to have a zoo, you might set up set up a zoo in a very small area, say a few square
kilometers. So, in situ conservation has this disadvantage that it requires the very large
area. Also less intensive protection and management, because the areas may be enclosed
upon or the animals poached.

So, here we have the classic example should you keep all your eggs in one basket or should
you keep your eggs in different baskets. In the case of a zoo when you have all the animals
in a very small area, you can give a very good amount of protection to those few number
of animals.

Whereas if you are keeping the animals in very large size forests. So, you cannot be there
in the forest at all places at all times. So, it is possible that some poachers might get inside
and poach some of the animals, or maybe some people would try to encroached upon some
areas of the forest, but that is a possibility. So, which is there in the in situ conservation.

Then, there is a threat of diseases and disasters. Because your level of intervention in the
case of in situ conservation will not be very high whereas, in the case of a zoo a diseases
much easily controlled because you have access to all the different animals. So, you can
give medicines to all different animals on all days whereas, in the case of in situ
conservation that is not possible. And, also large establishment is required in each case, if
you want to maintain a tiger reserve. So, you will require a large number of forest cards a
large number of rangers some SDOs, some DFOs and so on. Whereas, in the case of a zoo
the level of establishment is not that high, because it is a smaller facility.

833
(Refer Slide Time: 09:13)

Now, if we are trying to go with in situ conservation. So, in this lecture we will concentrate
on in situ conservation. If you are going with in situ conservation, what should be our
strategies? So, basically we are asking the question, where should we make these reserves?
We said that we wanted to create these in situ conservation reserve, we want to make a
tiger reserve. Where should we have this tiger reserve?

Second, what should be the size and shape of these reserves? Is there any ecological
concept through which we can determine what should be the shape and size of this reserve?
Should we have large reserves, should we have smaller reserves, or should we have
reserves that are say linear, or reserves that are circular, or reserves that are square in size,
or square in shape, what should be the size and shape of the reserves?

What are the ecological principles through which these would be guided? And, third
question is how are we going to manage these reserves? So, we begin with where to make
the reserves.

834
(Refer Slide Time: 10:11)

Traditionally reserves have been created in areas that are beautiful areas. So, areas that
have lush green mountains, lakes, beaches, example the Dachigam National Park in
Srinagar, it is a very beautiful area.

Earlier, when kings wanted to make a reserve they would choose a very beautiful serene
environment and create a reserve or we could create reserves in those areas that have a
high species diversity. So, we can use our knowledge of ecology or our understanding of
ecology to say, that we should create a reserve in an area that has a high species diversity.
So, that we can conserve a large number of species if you create a reserve an example is
the Silent Valley National Park in Kerala. So, this area has a very high species diversity or
another way of creating a reserve is those areas that harbor unique animals.

For instance, we have this Gir National Park in Sasan Gujarat, because we have lions there.
The only reason we have this natural park there is that we have this unique animal lion that
has not found anywhere else. So, these were three ways in which traditionally we have
been creating reserves, but then these could become very haphazard and based on the
whims and fancies of the reserve creator.

For instance, if I am not interested in lions and probably I had to set up this reserve, I could
even say that lions are not important for us. Let us create a reserve for say gharials. Now,
gharials are also important species, lions are also important species, but then I can make a

835
decision that I should have a reserve where we have gharials and not lions and somebody
else may say that we should have a reserve where we have lions and not gharials.

Now, is there a way? Can we use our ecological understanding to reduce this amount of
whims and fanciness so that everybody can come to a common platform? And, so, the
process of reserve creation becomes more and more systematized.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:11)

Now we look at the scientific ways of creating reserves. Scientifically or ecologically we

can say that we should have reserve in those areas that have high species richness, because
in that case when you construct a reserve, you will be conserving a large number of species
automatically. We also require an area that have a high degree of endemism.

836
(Refer Slide Time: 12:37)

Because, if we have an area in which you have a particular species say lions. So, if lions
are only found in this area and not found anywhere else if we construct a reserve in this
area, will be conserving this population of lions, because if we lose our population of lions
in this particular area, will lose the lions completely forever.

We also require need to have reserves in those areas that have a high degree of species
endemism. And, also we require reserves in those areas that have a high number of species
that are under threat. Threat, richness and endemism are three things that should guide our
process of selecting areas where the reserve should be set up.

837
(Refer Slide Time: 13:25)

How do we begin with that? We will begin by plotting where different species are found.
So, things such as global mammalian richness can be plotted to see, what are the areas
where we have a larger richness of mammalian species.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:39)

Or we could do it for amphibians species, or we could look at the IUCN lists of which
different species are under threat.

838
(Refer Slide Time: 13:47)

And, we can plot those species. So, global mammalian species that are under threat. So,
here again we can see for instance that the areas in Southeast Asia have a larger amount of
threat or a larger number of species that are under threat.

Probably we require more amount of conservation in that area or amphibian species under
threat.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:05)

839
We can use our knowledge of the concepts of biogeography to state that, because different
species are found in different areas, because different areas have different habitats, and
because the species under threat are found in different areas. So, which are the areas in
which we need to set up our reserves.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:31)

One way in which we can collate all of this different information is by looking at
biodiversity hotspots. So, as we have defined before biodiversity hotspots are areas that
have high species richness, high degree of endemism and high degree of threat.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:49)

840
We have quantified all three of these, we have plotted these things together to look at the
areas that have theta Biodiversity hotspots. So, even in our country we have this Tarai
region, we have the western ghats and we need more amount of conservation in these areas.

Now everybody can come to this platform and say that yes, we need to conserve more and
we need to construct more and more reserves in these particular areas.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:11)

When we are talking about threat, there is this other concept of setting up a triage. Now,
triage; ‘tri’ is three. So, triage says that we need to look at the level of threat that can be
perceived by us.

If there is an area that has a very high degree of threat. So, there is a very small piece of
forest. Suppose, this is a very small piece of forest and this forest is surrounded on all sides
by different villages, and all of these villages are putting a very high amount of influence
on to the small piece of forest.

841
(Refer Slide Time: 15:35)

There is a very high degree of threat that this forest is perceiving. So, should we set up a
reserve here? Well the answer would be yes and no, yes if this area has some endemic
species that we need to protect at all cost, but then we could even go for the answer of no,
because we already have such a huge amount of human influences then probably it is
already a lost cause. Because, even if we set up this reserve, we cannot remove all of these
humans from these surrounding areas. So, this is already a lost cause.

(Refer Slide Time: 16:31)

842
Secondly, if the level of threat is very less so, why can we have situations say do we have
the level of threat that is very less, we have a very large size forest. And, in this forest there
are only these areas that have the villages. So, the amount of threat that is in this forest is
very less and especially in these areas, it is extremely less. There is practically no amount
of human influence in these areas. Should this area be a priority area for us, should we set
up a reserve in this area?

So, the principle of triage would say that, no, we should not set up a reserve in this area,
because this particular area can wait for a while. Even, if we do not set up a reserve in this
area, the species in this area are already protected, because there is a very less amount of
threat that we have in this area. So, which areas should be should be preferred for making
a reserve, that should be the areas that have a medium level of threat that is where most of
the focus is or should be.

Essentially, in this particular forest if you need to set up a reserve, it should not be in this
area, because this area already has a very high amount of human influence, it should not
be in this area. Because, here as well we have a very less amount of threat, but a reserve
should preferentially be constructed in these yellow areas, which have a medium level of
threat. Because, if you do not set up a reserve in this area, then probably with time, the
human influence that is now concentrated in this area would then move into this area.

Now, if we are setting up a reserve in this area, because currently these areas are not being
used by human beings. So, it becomes much more easy to convince the policy makers or
the administrators, that we need to set up these areas as it reserves. And, probably there
would be a very little amount of opposition from humans that are living in these areas,
because they are already not using these areas. And, if we are setting up a reserve in this
area because these are already a very high human use area then there would be an
opposition.

The principle of triage tells us created in those areas that have a medium level of threat in
the highest preference. On the other hand if you have some area that has a high level of
threat or a very low level of threat and there is some other factor. There is some amount of
endemism or there is some policy issue, that after a while we might lose these areas as
well, then it would make sense to create a reserve in those areas as well because they would
also move into the medium threat category in that respect.

843
(Refer Slide Time: 19:17)

Another way in which we can look for areas where to set up a reserve is through the process
of gap analysis. Now, this approach tries to identify holes in the existing network of
protected areas that are primarily in locations that are or were historically uninhabitable
for humans due to their high prevalence of diseases etc.

Now, creating some protected areas in human dominated areas may fill the gap allowing
a different set of species to thrive. Now, what it says is that consider a hill.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:51)

844
Now, in this particular hill, those areas that were say on the very top and were very cold.
So, these are the coldest areas. So, these were not used by human beings. And so, probably
there was a reserve that was set up in these areas. Then, on though low lying areas, suppose
there were a number of marshes so, this was a marshy area. So, it had a very high amount
of infestation because of mosquitoes and so, because this area was not being used by
humans that was also a reserve that was historically set up in this area.

We have 2 reserves one is this reserve and the second one is this reserve that already exists.
Now, if we have another hill nearby should we also construct a reserve in this area and in
these areas? Now, gap analysis would say that no, because we have seen in the case of
biogeography that different species have different requirements. Hence, by constructing
these 2 reserves, we are conserving those species that live in cold areas and that live in
marshy areas, but what about those species that are living in these areas; they have not
been given any amount of protection so far, because these areas are extremely human
dominated.

If we could take some area out of here and probably convert that into a reserve, then there
is one school of understanding that says, that this would be the most preferred location
where we should be setting up a reserve. Because, if we do that we would not only be
providing a continuity between both of these existing reserves, but at the same time this
would be an area whose habitat has not been afforded any amount of protection so far.

So, gap analysis says that we should identify the gaps in the existing network of protected
areas and set up a reserve in those areas where we can see a gap.

845
(Refer Slide Time: 22:03)

An example is the Khangchendzonga National Park in Sikkim.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:11)

If you look at the area and if you look at this area in 3 dimension, we will see that most of
the area is a very great height and so is very cold and so, this area has been set up as a
national park. But, then those areas that are not at that great height and are not set up as a
national park, probably those are the areas where we should also devote some amount of
our attention.

846
(Refer Slide Time: 22:41)

Once we have decided what are the areas where we should have the reserves, the next
question is what should be the shape and size of those reserves? Are there any ecological
principles that should guide the shape and size of those reserves. Now, let us look at the
principles of reserve design.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:57)

The first principle is that big is better than small. If you have a larger size reserve, then
probably that is better as compared to a smaller size reserve; now, Why? Again, because

847
if you have a larger sized reserve then probably you will have a greater amount of habitat
diversity.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:19)

Because, if you have a smaller size reserve, that will have say ‘N’ number of habitats, if
you have a larger sized reserve, you will have more number of habitats. More number of
habitats would then support more number of organisms, more amount of species diversity,
which is why we should have larger size reserves. Also, in the case of larger size reserves
you can even protect those species that have a large home range requirement, which is not
possible in the case of smaller sized reserves.

And, also administratively it is more secure and easier to manage per unit area, because
one larger populations are less susceptible to extinction. Because, in the case of larger
reserves, if we have larger populations, you only have deterministic factors that are playing
a role, but stochastic factors will not be playing a role, but in the case of a smaller reserve,
if you have a smaller population, then a stochastic factors will also be playing a role.

Second, when you go for a larger sized reserve, you have a small parameter per unit area,
which means that you have a less cost of protection. What does that mean?

848
(Refer Slide Time: 24:27)

Let us consider a circular reserve of say radius r. Now, the area of this reserve will be given
by π r 2 and the circumference of this reserve or the perimeter of this reserve will be given
by 2 π r.

Now, the most amount of protection that we need to do is on the circumference, because
it is on this circumference that people will come and get into the reserve. So, if there is
some person who wants to come into the reserve for poaching, he or she will have to cross
this perimeter. So, all of this perimeter needs to have a high degree of protection. So, our
costs are proportional to the perimeter of this area.

Now, if we look at cost per unit area, will find that it is proportional to 2 π r which is the
perimeter divided by π r 2. So, π / π get cancelled out. And so, this is equal to 2 / r. So,
your cost per unit area is proportional to 2 / r. Now, if you increase r, this value of 2 / r
reduces. So, if you have more r. So, 2 / r is less, which means that you will have a lesser
cost per unit area, if you have a larger amount of r.

So, larger the reserve is, it means that you have less cost of protection per unit area. And,
third is that it is less vulnerable to catastrophes since smaller catastrophe will not impact
the whole area.

849
(Refer Slide Time: 26:21)

If you have a very small size reserve, this is the reserve and if you have a fire the whole of
the reserve might be lost to fire, but then if you have a large size reserve, and then you
have a fire here a probably a larger sized fire, then you might be able to save the other
areas. So, there was a fire that destroyed this much of portion, but then these areas would
still be saved.

In that case, we say that the larger size reserve is less vulnerable to catastrophes, because
you will not lose the complete population. The population that is left or that you were able
to protect in the case of a larger size reserve might be sufficient in most cases to restock
the whole reserve later on. So, smaller catastrophes do not impact the whole area. So, this
is also another reason why we prefer to have large size reserves.

850
(Refer Slide Time: 27:07)

Now, it is not just a area, but also the connectedness; one big reserve is better than then
several smaller reserves of the same total area. So, here you have one big reserve here you
have 4 smaller reserves. And, the total area of these 4 smaller reserves is equal to the area
of the big green size reserve green colored reserve.

In this case also we will see that this reserve is better than having these 4 smaller size
reserves.

(Refer Slide Time: 27:41)

851
Why? Because here we are saying that you have this one big reserve and then you have
these 4 smaller sized reserves. In the case of smaller sized reserves, because the
populations are not connected with each other. The animals that are here will not be able
to move to this other area. So, they will behave as small populations. And, again in the
case of small populations will have more amount of stochasticity.

In the case of the one large reserve in this reserve will only have deterministic factors that
will play a role in extinction, but in the case of these reserves will have the stochastic
phenomena, that will also play a role alongside the deterministic phenomena. So, the
chances of all these four suffering from local population extinctions is very high.

At the same time if you have these 4 smaller reserves, the total cost of maintaining these
results will also be very high, because here again if you have a smaller size. So, the
parameter per unit area is very high.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:49)

Next, if you cannot have a situation where you have a large sized reserve, you have to go
with smaller size reserves. In that case we say that closer reserves are better because they
minimize isolation. So, this left side, green colored four reserves, this configuration is
better than having this reserve why, because if you have these reserves that are close by.
So, there the animals will be able to move from one area to the other area. Because, there
is a very small amount of patch that has anthropogenic influences whereas, if you have

852
this population and this probably needs to move to this area, then it will find it very much
difficult.

If these populations are able to mix with each other. In that case these reserve, if it suffers
from local extinction you will have animals that are coming from this small reserve, this
reserve and this reserve that will restock this population. The amount of stochastic
population loss that you will observe when the reserves are close by will be less.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:53)

Similarly, not only should these reserves be close together, but then in place of having
them in a linear fashion, we should have them in the form of a cluster. Because, in the case
of a linear fashion, if this portion suffers from an extinction, a local extinction only animals
from here will be able to come here, but animals from here will find it very difficult route
to reach this reserve.

Whereas, if you have it in the form of a cluster, if you have local extinction here the animals
from here will be able to repopulate, the animals from here will be able to repopulate. So,
cluster is always better than having a linear arrangement. This is also another learning that
we are learning from ecology.

853
(Refer Slide Time: 30:33)

Circular reserves are preferred as compared to linear reserves, because they have less
amount of biotic pressure.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:45)

What do we mean by that? If you have this reserve. In this case and you have say villages
in the periphery. In this case, the central portion of this reserve will have a very less amount
of biotic influence, because it will be protected from all of these using all of these buffer
areas. Whereas, if you have a reserve that is linear in shape and suppose you have the
villages here like this. In this case, the influence of these villages would be much higher

854
as compared to when it was a circular reserve, or to put it in other words suppose, from
any village the cattle are able to go say 10 kilometers inside.

Now, if you have a reserve that is in a circular fashion. In that case you will have 10
kilometers. So, this much area will suffer a heavy amount of influence, because of the
biotic pressure whereas, in this case because this area itself is 10 kilometers. So, the whole
of the reserve will face biotic influences.

In that case to reduce the amount of biotic influences to reduce the amount of
anthropogenic influences, it is preferred to have a reserves that are served to have results
that are circular as compared to the reserves that are linear.

(Refer Slide Time: 32:27)

And, a good example in this case is our Mudumalai tiger reserve in Tamilnadu. In this case
this black line is showing us the reserve. As you can see, this is more or less a linear
reserve.

In the case of this linear reserve and these blue areas are the settlements that are there in
inside the reserve. And, if you look at the biotic pressure, we see that this 10 kilometer
buffer completely covers the reserve. In that case, just because this reserve is linear in
shape, the amount of biotic pressure is too high.

855
(Refer Slide Time: 33:03)

Another thing is the level of connection that we have, if you have reserves that are
connected with each other. So, you have these three smaller populations, but then because
they are connected with each other they will behave like a larger population. And so, only
deterministic factors will play a role in population dynamics that could lead them towards
extinction, but a stochastic factors will not play that bigger role.

Because, even if you have a local extinction here, you will have animals, that will migrate
from this reserve and from this reserve to restock this area. And, so, the chances that you
will lose out your population and all 3 of these reserves together will become very less.

Whereas, if you have reserves that are not connected with each other, you can have a local
extinction here and then there is no animal that will come and restock this area. After a
while you can have a local extinction here, again you would not have any animals that will
restock this area. And, if you have a local extinction here as well, you will lose out your
species in all three of these reserves. And, if these three are the only reserves where you
have your species so, you will lose your species completely because of this process.

These are the factors that we need to keep in mind, when we are designing a reserve. We
looked at where a reserve should be located and we looked at what should be the shape
and size of the reserve. It should be large in size, it should be as close as possible to the
other reserves; there has to be some amount of connectivity, it should be as circular as
possible and so on.

856
If nothing else works, if we are not able to have a large size reserve and you have to go
with the smaller size reserve, at least try to maintain connectivity between the reserves.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:41)

Because, in that case your animal will be able to move from one area to the next area and
prevent the local extinction, restock the populations and avoid the stochastical deaths in
the smaller populations.

But we are observing that even that is increasingly getting more and more under threat as
can be seen from this example from Manas.

857
(Refer Slide Time: 35:07)

Here we have a satellite image of the Manas Trans Boundary Conservation Area in the
year 1985. Now, in this image we have classified this image so that this dark green areas
are forest areas the light green areas are grasslands or agriculture, the yellow areas are bare
land so, there is hardly any yellow area in this case, the blue areas are water, and the white
areas are sand or clouds. So, like this area is sand area.

Now, I would want you to focus your attention in this area. So, here we observe that we
have a forest that is coming now like this and then going up and it is surrounded by the
grassland so, the agricultural fields. And this is the image from 1985. Now, let us look at
this area in 2003. So, here we can observe that this small portion, that we had here is lost
when we move from 1985 to 2003. And, now further look at this area from 2003 to 2017,
we have further lost it. All these forests are now getting lost, but then more importantly, if
you look at these portions, if you look at this portion, if you have an animal and this area
also has a number of elephants. If you have an elephant that wants to move from this area
to this area.

Here you have these small patches that are probably habitations. And, if you had an animal
that wanted to move from this area to this area you have this small corridor and you have
this small corridor.

Now, if we look at this area from 2003 to 2017, we observe that we are losing out these
corridors as well. So, now, there is complete disconnect between both of these areas. So,

858
even the corridor connectivity that is so important for the animals there is now getting
more and more lost with time.

(Refer Slide Time: 37:09)

We looked at way to make the reserves, we looked at shape and size of the reserve. The
third question in the case of in situ conservation is, how do you manage your reserves?
Once you have created your reserves, what next do you need to do?

(Refer Slide Time: 37:25)

859
In this case, we look at the 5 tools of habitat management that are used in the case of
reserves. And, these tools come from the works of Aldo Leopold and he said that we have
5 tools of habitat management. We have the axe. So, axe can be used to cut a tree that is
not required in your area or it can be used to cut climbers that are not required in your area.

The second tool is cattle. So, you can use cattle to graze up any area, if you want to reduce
the amount of grasses that you have in an area. The third tool is the plow. The plow can
be used to remove weeds from an area or it can be used to add more and more grasses to
an area by seeding them with the grass seeds.

The fourth tool of habitat management is the gun that you can use to keep certain
populations under check. If, there is some population probably of an invasive species that
is growing up very fast in your area, probably you can cull it down using a gun and the
fifth tool of habitat management is fire.

Fire can again be used if you have an area that is extensively covered with weeds. So, you
can burn that area down so, that your native vegetation can come up again. If you look at
all these 5 tools of habitat management that classically we have been using, the axe, the
cattle, plow, the gun and the fire, these also incidentally turn out to be the tools of habitat
destruction.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:55)

860
Because, gun is used for poaching, forest fire is used to destroy forest, plow is used in the
case of encroachment when people want to convert a forest into agricultural land, cattle is
used again as a competitor against our wild animals and so on. And, also axe is used for
deforestation. So, all of these are also tools of habitat destruction.

The key is how to use these tools, we can use them for habitat destruction or we can use
them for habitat conservation.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:33)

We will consider one example and this is the example of livestock and community
interactions. So, if you have cattle that are coming into your forest that can have a positive
role or that can have a negative role.

The negative role that we all know is things such as competition. So, competition when
species are using the same resource that is land, so, all these animals are grazing in the
same area. So, you will observe situation of habitat displacement or you can have a
competition when the land is in short supply, or at least one of the species loses the fitness.

This is what we have seen in the case of ecology; a competition which is an interspecies
interaction will occur when both the species are using the same resource, that resource is
available in a quantity that is not plenty for both these species to live together at the same
time. And, so, there would be a loss to at least one of these species, because of which we
call it a negative or an inharmonious interspecific or interspecies interaction.

861
In the case of livestock competing with wild life and in most cases the livestock wins and
the wildlife is the organism that has to suffer the brunt or the negative impact. And, those
negative impacts can be in terms of displacement. So, we looked at habitat displacement
in the last lecture as well. So, displacement of wildlife to non-prime or subprime habitats
like hills or rocky patches, or it could lead to encroachment of wildlife corridors and
migratory routes, or even degradation and loss of habitats, or fragmentation of habitat, or
changes in behavior of the wild animals, or in the phenology of some plants.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:19)

Or it can even lead to spread of diseases. If you have cattle that are bringing in ‘foot and
mouth’ disease from outside. So, they can spread it to the wild animals as well, or if you
have dogs that are bringing in canine distemper or rabies then that can also get spread to
the wild animals.

Other negative impacts are reduced nesting sites for game birds and waterfowl, because
there is a lot of trampling of these nest by the livestock. And, also because these by the
action of these livestocks, a number of small bushes get lost. Also, this might lead to
overuse of pastures and other resources, soil compaction and so on.

862
(Refer Slide Time: 41:59)

It could even lead to reduce water quality and eutrophication in the water bodies,
disturbance to mating and fawning behaviors of animals, reduced covers for birds that
require tall grasses because of changes in species composition or situations of conflict such
as retaliatory killing.

Retaliatory killing is something that happens when there is a farmer or a herdsmen, that is
bringing his or her cattle into the forest areas and because we have predators in the forest
areas. So, there is a chance that a tiger might go and kill a cattle for food. And, once that
happens the villager would think that the tiger is killing my animal. So, we should kill the
tiger. And so, in retaliation he or she might go and kill the tiger. So, retaliatory killing is
also a negative influence of the livestock.

863
(Refer Slide Time: 42:53)

We all know all these negative influences, but then the livestock can also have some
positive influences. Positive influences such as you can have an improved forage quality,
because removal of coarse, tall grasses allows soft and palatable grasses to grow.

If you have coarse grasses, if you have tall grasses and if those grasses are eaten up by the
livestock. So, after they are eaten up, new leaves would come in and those new leaves
might then be used by the by life. So, it leads to an improvement in the forage quality or
availability of insects to birds like egrets.

Now, we saw this in one of our earlier lectures in which there are birds like egrets that
come and set and wait for these livestock and when these livestock come. So, by their
feeding, by the grazing moment the insects get disturbed, and when these insects are
disturbed the egrets are able to feed on these insects. So, the livestock can support birds
such as egrets that are present in the wild areas.

Also removal and reduction of cover benefits small rodents as well as birds of prey. If you
have less number of shrubs in an area, so, the birds such as eagles or hawks will be able to
spot mice and rabbits in that area and that will benefit these birds. Also you can have
patchy grazing that creates structurally dense habitats with lots of ecotones and species
diversity. Now, this is also something that we have seen earlier in the case of ecology.

864
(Refer Slide Time: 44:25)

If you have this area that was a grassland and all of this area was one and the same, if you
can make your cattle graze in say these two areas. So, in that case the habitat of these 2
areas will become very different from the habitat of the surrounding areas.

So, it will lead to more number of habitat small amount of eco tones, which would also
support a greater amount of biodiversity, but again if you can make them to graze in this
patchy manner. Other positive impacts are opening up of dense canopies when required.
If you have a very dense canopy if you have a number of trees in an area. So, light is not
able to reach to the ground.

865
(Refer Slide Time: 45:05)

But, if you remove these canopy; if you reduce the amount of canopy load that is there in
an area, so, sunlight will reach to the bottom, that might reduce say some pathogens or that
might even lead to the growth of some other species. Establishment of shrubs that benefit
browsers, creation of travel corridors with selective grazing, reduction of weed spread, fire
risk reduction by reducing fuel load, provisioning of food to carnivores through livestock
depredation. So, there are a number of positive impacts that we have because of the
livestock that are grazing in the area.

(Refer Slide Time: 45:45)

866
Now, the role of the management is to reduce the negative consequences and to promote
the positive consequences. So, if we can do that using proper management. In that case we
can use all these 5 tools of management for the conservation of wildlife. So, even in the
case of the livestock we can convert them from competitors, from negative influences to
the wildlife habitats to cooperators and to positive influences to the wildlife habitat. The
only trick is to see that the negative influences are reduced and the positive ones are
improved.

(Refer Slide Time: 46:17)

Essentially, the aim of management is that if there is a habitat that is good to maintain it
in a good state and if there is a habitat that is degraded to improve it. And to improve these
habitats that are degraded we can make use of all these 5 tools of management. So, when
we see improvement, what does that mean?

867
(Refer Slide Time: 46:37)

If there is a degraded habitat what are the options that we have with us. The first option is
recovery or neglect. Essentially, you leave that area as such and let nature take it is own
course. And so, it is possible that with time some species would come up into that area,
there will be some amount of succession. And, nature would be able to bring this area back
to the prime conditions, but then in a number of cases this is more of a visual thinking then
what actually happens.

Because, if you leave a degraded habitat as such and if you are not removing the causes of
degradation then this area might become even more and more degraded. So, as we saw in
the case of areas that are becoming more and more desertified. So, you have a lot of over
grazing in those areas, say in the case of goats that we saw. These goats are eating up the
herbs and shrubs in that area and converting these areas into more and more degraded
areas.

Now, if you do nothing with these goats then probably this area will completely convert
into a desert. So, neglect might lead to some amount of recovery or it might degrade the
habitat completely and only to habitat loss. The other option is that of rehabilitation or
reclamation, which is shifting the degraded habitat towards a greater value, which might
not be the original state, but which would be something that is better than the existing
situation.

868
(Refer Slide Time: 48:05)

The next one is restoration. In the case of restoration, you are trying to bring the habitat
back to the original state. And, enhancement is improving the value of the habitat. Example
is construction of water holes for animals. So, in the case of rehabilitation or reclamation,
you are trying to bring it towards the original, but you are not completely reaching the
original state. In the case of restoration you are completely able to reach the original state.
In the case of enhancement, you are trying to improve the value of this habitat which may
or may not be towards the original state.

(Refer Slide Time: 48:41)

869
One other option that is available is that of replacement, so, in place of converting it
towards the original habitat you convert it into a completely new habitat. For instance,
there was a forest this forest was cut down for mining purposes. So, you have these mine
pits. And, in place of converting these mine pits back to the forest you fill them with water
and you convert these into water bodies. So, that would be an example of replacement.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:05)

This figure tells us what are the improvement options that are available with us. So, you
have a degraded habitat you can neglect it, you can do nothing to it. In that case it might
restore to some extent or it might become completely degraded or you could go for a
reclamation. So, in the case of reclamation, you are trying to convert it towards the original
habitat and you reach somewhere in between. You have not reached to the original habitat,
you have reached to somewhere in between, that is reclamation.

The third one is restoration, in which case you convert this degraded habitat completely to
the original forest. And, then if you move it even further it would be an example of an
enhanced habitat.

So, in place of having just these trees, you are now having even more amount of
biodiversity or other option is that of replacement. So, in place of this degraded habitat
you have converted it into a wetland habitat. So, these are the improvement options that
we have with us when we are talking about the in situ conservation.

870
(Refer Slide Time: 50:05)

Now, knowing all of these options is also important, because these are also mitigation
options for proposed development. Suppose you have an area where you are doing in situ
conservation.

(Refer Slide Time: 50:17)

There is this big sized forest that is available with you and the society also has it is own
needs and wants. Because of that, this area needs to be converted into a mining site.

871
Now, the question is, if this area needs to be converted into a mining site, how can you
best use this area so that you have maximum amount of conservation for maximum number
of organisms? What are the options that are available with us? So, these options go by the
name of the mitigation options.

There is something bad to the biodiversity that is happening and what are the ways through
which we can mitigate the level of harm that could be there.

(Refer Slide Time: 50:57)

These mitigation options could include things like avoiding development at important
habitats. So, if we have designated an area as a tiger reserve, we say that these are the areas
where there will be no development at all. And other areas we can say that we should go
for restoration of the site after the work is done. So, example is mining sites; you did this
mining, but then later on you have to fill these holes and you need to plant trees.

If restoration is difficult due to the permanent nature of work, replacement of another

nearby degraded site in lieu. So, for instance in this case you were not able to restore this
particular mining site, it became completely degraded. So, then another option would be
to take another area that is nearby and then convert that into a forest.

So, that is also another option that is available. And, other option is protection and
management of other habitats in lieu of the one being lost. So, in this case what we say is
that, this is the area that you are converting into mining. And, if you are converting this

872
into mining, you should give sufficient amount of resources that would lead to protection
of this big area or maybe habitat improvement in this big area. So, even by losing a small
area in totality we can work for the conservation of this species

(Refer Slide Time: 52:23)

Now, what are the activities that are actually taken up for habitat management out there in
the field? So, we looked at what different things need to be done, we looked at how habitats
need to be improved, but then, what are we actually doing out there in the field for habitat
management?

(Refer Slide Time: 52:37)

873
One thing is control of unregulated fires. So, we have this application known as
SimplyFire through which we get to know where we are having a forest fire in real time.
And, once we know that there is a fire here, we can we go to those areas and we extinguish
the fire. We also work with things such as fire lines.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:55)

In the case of a fire line, if you have this big sized forest you will convert it into smaller
areas by just clearing of very small strips. In this case we are not fragmenting the habitat,
but we are still converting a very small section to a non-tree section so that if there is a fire
in any area, this fire will not be able to jump to the surrounding forests and will be
contained to that area.

874
(Refer Slide Time: 53:23)

We also make use of equipments such as InstaAlert which give us a real time notification
if there is a fire in our forest areas.

(Refer Slide Time: 53:29)

As, also we make use of Fire Map. Fire map is a way in which we are able to concentrate
our efforts. For instance, in the case of these are the reserve forest in Balaghat and here we
can see that we have more fires in these three areas. So, we deploy our resources
preferentially into these areas by using this these technologies.

875
(Refer Slide Time: 53:49)

We also make use of fire breakers to substantiate the fire lines.

(Refer Slide Time: 53:55)

Also other activities are control of invasive species.

876
(Refer Slide Time: 53:57)

So, we make use of local people. And, in this case these people are removing the weed
species; the invasive species that have come up into our forested areas. Because of these
weed species the grasses are not able to grow and so, the amount of fodder availability to
the wild animals less. So, we approved these species, we remove these species from these
areas so that the habitat becomes much more improved for the wildlife.

(Refer Slide Time: 54:23)

Other is provisioning of water holes in salt lakes.

877
(Refer Slide Time: 54:27)

So, in those areas where we have a scarcity of water, we could even go for construction of
a small waterhole, and in this water hole people would come and bring water in tankers
and would fill these water holes so that even in the case of the peak summers the animals
are having some access to water or we could go for salt licks.

(Refer Slide Time: 54:45)

Salt licks are areas in which we are putting some salts and we are also adding some mineral
nutrients. So, that if there is an area where we observe some amount of mineral deficiency
in the wild animals, we could construct some salt licks. So, in this case we will have some

878
salt and we will mix it with some other minerals. So, that the animal will come lick at these
salt licks and will get the minerals so that their health improves. Other is involvement of
locals and stakeholders.

(Refer Slide Time: 55:21)

So, we work with the locals, we give them different facilities, we set up health camps for
them so that they also work for the cause of conservation. The idea here is that, if we are
working for a common cause, if we are friends for this common cause, in that case, people
also want to protect the forest. Only because of the forests, they are getting these benefits.
So, they would try to prevent poachers that are coming into these areas.

879
(Refer Slide Time: 55:49)

We also do a lot of habitat monitoring. In the case of habitat monitoring, we also make use
of technologies such as auto camps. In this example, we are observing wild dogs and there
are 7 puppies in this wild dog den. In this example, by habitat monitoring what we are
doing is, we are trying to get a grasp of the population dynamics of different of different
species.

For instance, here if we see that there are 7 puppies. So, there is a good amount of natality
that is there in this population. So, it is not that much suffering from the stochastic
phenomena that could lead to it is extinction. This kind of habitat monitoring is also done.
And so is plantation drives, trash collection and so on.

880
(Refer Slide Time: 56:31)

Plantation drives are done to convert certain areas that are devoid of vegetation, to have
some amount of foliage cover in those areas so that the animals have access to shade, they
also have access to certain fruits and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 56:47)

Trash collection is also done so that the amount of habitat degradation that is there because
of the influence of humans is also reduced.

881
In this lecture we looked at in situ conservation. We began with defining In situ
conservation saying that it is conservation on the site itself. So, ‘on site’ means you could
create reserves you could create say, national parks, or wild life sanctuaries and so on. So,
that your animals remain there and they are able to live in their natural habitat, they are
able to retain all of their cultural characteristics, they are able to retain their natural
behavior.

Now, this is contrasted with ex situ conservation in which you have conservation that is
off the side. For example, construction of zoo, or construction of aquaria, or construction
of a seed bank and so on. Now, in a number of situations we have found that the ex situ
conservation is more costly as compared to the in situ conservation, but then in situ
conservation also has it is own pros and cons like animals are able to retain their behaviors
and even protection of certain species also conserves a number of other species, but then
the minus point is that it requires a very huge area, very huge establishment, and you do
not have that amount of control over things such as diseases, because you have a very
extensive area.

So, we began by looking at in situ conservation. Now, in the case of in situ conservation
we have these 3 basic questions. Where should you have the reserves? What should be the
shape and size of these reserves? And what should be the management interventions that
we need to do for in situ conservation? So, we began with, where should the reserve be?

So, reserves should be in areas that have a high species richness, high species endemism
and a high amount of threat, or probably a moderate amount of threat if you go by the
triage principle. We also looked at gap analysis, which tells us that we should construct
reserves in those areas that have so far been left out.

Then, in the case of shape and size of reserves, we looked at principles of reserve design,
you should have a large size reserve, you should have reserves that are close together,
reserves that are connected to each other, reserves that are in a cluster format, reserves that
are more circular as compared to a linear reserve and so on.

And, in the case of management interventions, we looked at different options that are
available with us. We looked at neglect, we looked at restoration, we looked at replacement
and so on. And, we looked at different mitigation options, what should we do to prevent
the harm that is there to the species that are residing in those areas.

882
Finally, we looked at various different interventions that we are already doing in the field
in the case of in situ conservation. So, we should remember this point, that conservation
biology is the practical application of the knowledge of ecology for the benefit of certain
species. This is what we are doing in this particular module and in situ conservation is a
very important part of our conservation strategies. So, that is all for today. In the next
lecture we will look at ex situ conservation which is conservation off the site.

That is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

883
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture - 24
Ex-situ conservation

“Namaste”,

We move forward with management of threatened species.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:19)

Today, we will have a look at Ex-situ conservation.

884
(Refer Slide Time: 00:20)

We looked in the previous lecture at the differences between in-situ and ex-situ
conservation. In-situ is onsite conservation; conservation within the natural habitat such
as construction of reserves, national parks or wildlife sanctuaries and ex-situ conservation
is conservation that is off site, outside the national environment such as zoos or aquarium.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:46)

So, if we have in-situ conservation option that is available with us, why should we go with
ex-situ conservation? What is the requirements of setting up an ex-situ conservation
facility? Well, it is required for critically endangered species that require a very heavy

885
amount of attention, because we have very few number of individual that are left, because
it provides urgent intervention to these species.

For instance, if you have a species that has say around 20,000 individuals left in the world.
So, you probably will not require an ex-situ conservation facility to conserve that particular
species, because that can be taken care of by the in-situ conservation facilities. But,
suppose you have an individual that has only around 15 individuals that are left in the
world.

Those 15 individuals cannot be left in the wild, because in absence of a very large amount
of attention to those species, probably those 15 individuals would die off in a very short
period of time. Because, probably there are people who want to poach those animals a very
good example is that of German rhinoceros. We had these rhinoceros in Java and such
huge was the demand to poach these animals that even though we had very few numbers
left and it was very extensively documented that we have very few numbers people went
there and continued the poaching.

In the case of ex-situ conservation, we can take some of these individuals out, and we can
give them an extra amount of protection, an extra amount of care. We can protect them
from all different diseases so that at least this species continues to survive. At the same
time, ex-situ conservation also is required so that you can bring in more funds for the cause
of conservation.

For instance, if people come into a zoo, if people get can come to an aquarium and see that
there are so many varieties of fishes that are there are available in this world. So, people
would get encouraged towards the cause of conservation. They would become champions
of conservation themselves just by observing all these different species. So, that is also
another importance of setting up an ex-situ conservation facility because for those species
that are living very deep inside the forest or very deep inside the oceans, it becomes very
difficult for a large population to go and visit those species, to know more and more about
those the species. But, if you can bring some individuals out, then they also get a chance
to see those individuals.

What is the process of setting up an ex-situ conservation facility? Firstly, you designate
areas with suitable conditions and facilities are created for in those particular areas, then
these facilities include things such as feeding, enclosure, veterinary support and so on.

886
Then, you select certain individuals of these species, move them into these designated
areas for their survival and breeding and if necessary, after a while, some individuals from
these conservation facilities can be then taken out and then released into the wild in the in-
situ conservation areas. So, that is an optional step that can be done in certain-situations.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:05)

Ex-situ conservation provides certain advantages especially over in-situ conservation. It

allows better control of variables such as climate, disease, diet and so on. So, for instance,
if you have a snake species, snakes prefer to live in environments that are neither too hot
nor very cold.

887
(Refer Slide Time: 04:30)

So, in a snake facility in herpetarium, you will see that there is this chamber and this
chamber would probably have a small light bulb here. Now, this light bulb not only
provides light, but it also provides quite a lot of warmth to the animal, then you will have
small trees that would be growing here with lots of branches. So, if this particular snake
wants to live in a more warm environment, it will probably come and reside here, if it
wants if it does not want the warmth, it will probably go and reside here.

So, in a very small area you can provide all different sorts of facilities to the animal,
different temperature control; you can even have things such as humidity control in this
area. So, it should not be a very wet, because if it is very wet then probably your snake
might get might start getting some fungal infections. It must not be very dry; because in
that case it is a skin might start getting cracked. So, in this very small area, you can give a
very good amount of climate control.

Secondly, you can have a very good control over diseases and diet. So, you can ensure that
your animal is neither overfed nor is it underfed. You can also ensure that your animal is
not suffering from any diseases, it does not have any ectoparasites on its body. Probably a
veterinarian would go and observe these snakes and if there are ectoparasites on it is body,
then probably it will be given some treatment for that. It is very crucial if you have very
few number of snakes of that particular species that are left in the world, so they need to
be given more amount of attention and care.

888
It provides opportunity for close observation to better understand the species and the
proximate causes of its extinction. So, proximate causes are those causes that are nearby,
so, the near causes of its extinction. So, for instance, you can observe that in this small
area, you see that these particular snakes hunt at say a very particular time.

Suppose, these snakes have a behavior, that they are only doing their hunting say 4 to 5 in
the evening. And if that happens and we have observed this behavior here in the in-situ
and in the ex-situ conservation facility, then we can make a correlation that are in-situ
conservation facilities such as the reserves are not providing good habitats for this
particular species because we have our tourists inflow during 4 to 5 pm. And if that be the
situation the learnings from the ex-situ conservation facility, the learnings about the
behavior of the species can then be used in the in-situ conservation facilities as well. That
is another advantage of setting up in ex-situ conservation facility.

Thirdly, it permits intensive interventions including in-vitro fertilization, embryo transfer

and so on. So, these are intensive interventions. Even, in the case of this particular snake
you might go and have a collection of its eggs, collection of the embryos, you might try to
put them into hatcheries, you can give individual attention to all the offsprings. So, this is
the utility of setting up an ex-situ conservation facility or these are the advantages.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:36)

At the same time, the ex-situ conservation facility also has a number of disadvantages. It
does not prevent loss of habitat, because you are conserving these species in this very small

889
area, but then it is possible that its original habitat gets lost during the process. So, you are
conserving these individuals, but the whole habitat became lost and so, now, these animals
are destined to live in ex-situ conservation forever, because they do not have any habitats
left at all.

Secondly, it can be planned for only a few species at a time, it is extremely cost intensive.
You cannot have an ex-situ conservation facility for all the species that are found in a
natural habitat. Only a few of them can be brought and given suitable conditions and
studied and kept in there ex-situ conservation facility. Some wild behaviors may be lost,
because even in the case of your snake, the snake would not learn how to catch its prey in
the wild situations. Because, it is getting mice that are kept into its chamber at fixed times
every day or your tiger might not even learn how to hunt, because it is getting a dead
animal, that is added carcass that is kept into its enclosure every day. So, a number of wild
behaviors get lost in this process.

Captive-bred and raised individuals may find it difficult when reintroduced, because they
have lost a number of their behaviors. It may increase chances of inbreeding if not planned
properly. Because, you only have a few number of individuals that are kept in the ex-situ
conservation facility, again because it is costly and it requires space and it requires a very
huge amount of interventions. So, if you have a few number of individuals, the mating
between those might lead to inbreeding and then as expectedly, it is extremely costly.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:22)

890
The examples of ex-situ conservation include zoos, aquariums, captive breeding facilities,
botanical gardens, bambuseta; bambuseta are areas where different bamboo species are
grown, arboreta; where different tree species are grown, seed banks, cryopreservation
facilities that cater to tissue cultures, sperm banks, ova banks and so on. These are all
different examples of ex-situ conservation facilities.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:51)

Now, it is not possible or it is not worthwhile to have an ex-situ conservation facility for
all the species. For instance, in this particular paper compared the population growth rates
in-situ, that is in white and in ex-situ, that is in black conditions for different species.

Here we observe that for certain species, we see that the ex-situ conservation facility
provides a better environment for the animals. Because, the growth rate in ex-situ is much
greater than that in the in-situ conditions. Whereas, in certain organisms the in-situ growth
rate is much greater and when you put the animal in an ex-situ conservation facility, the
population does not grow as fast. So, it does not make any sense to keep this animal in the
ex-situ conservation facility, you will have to go for the in-situ conservation facility only.

891
(Refer Slide Time: 10:39)

Besides, if we compare the cost between in-situ and ex-situ conservation, we find that
normally the cost for the ex-situ conservation facility is much greater. For some organisms
it is a little greater for some organisms, it is very high whereas, for some organisms it
might even be lesser in certain circumstances. So, if you have a very small species, for
example, if you have a species of rodents you can grow them in this particular room itself
whereas, in the while you would require a forest that needs to be used for that particular
purpose.

(Refer Slide Time: 11:16)

892
So, if you compare the cost; the cost have a lot to do with the size of the organism. For
organisms with a low body size, the ex-situ costs are typically lesser than that of the in-
situ cost. Whereas, for larger sized organisms the ex-situ cost are much greater than that
of the in-situ cost.

Typically we can say that this is the size range within which your captive breeding might
be cheaper. And in these circumstances if the organism is responding well to captive
breeding then ex-situ conservation makes a lot of sense as compared to in-situ
conservation.

(Refer Slide Time: 11:50)

However, we need to note that there are certain genetic implications of ex-situ
conservation. One is stochastic sampling of alleles. When samples are taken for a seed
bank for instance, the sampling may select some alleles while discard some other alleles,
in a stochastic manner, in a random manner or in a chance manner. Thus, some amount of
national variation will get lost in the sampling process, this needs to be compensated by
extensive sampling from different geographical locations and a meticulous collection of
natural variations in the form of alleles.

So, what this is saying is that for different organisms, you have some amount of variation
that is present between different individuals of the species. For instance, even in our case
different human beings will have different heights, they will have different skin color,
different eye color, different color of the hair and so on.

893
Now, if you are selecting a few individuals for your ex-situ conservation facility, then
because by definition it is a very costly process and because by definition you are
constrained by the size and you will only keep a very few number of individual into your
ex-situ conservation facility, so when you are selecting individuals, then probably are a
number of traits will get lost.

For instance, in the case of tigers, if you look at tigers of Sundarbans; sundarbans is a very
marshy area and tigers have to do a lot of swimming. And so, it is typically seen that the
tigers there are much lighter as compared to tigers of Madhya Pradesh, which live
predominantly in a very dry environment and they also have a very large body size.

Now, if you set up in ex-situ conservation facility for say tigers and if you only selected
tigers from Sundarbans or only selected tigers from Madhya Pradesh, then the other
variations that are present in the natural population will get lost. To compensate for that it
is essential that, you go out and look at different variations that are present in the
population and make an active attempt to bring all those variations into your ex-situ
conservation facility. So, that is one generating implication.

Second implication is that you observe erosion of genetic variation in the absence of
natural selection. So, in the ex-situ conservation facility all the individuals are getting
sufficient food, all the individuals are getting sufficient care, veterinary care, medicines
and so on. So, there would be some amount of genetic variation that becomes lost because
you are not actively selecting for those genetic variations as is done in the case of natural
selection.

For instance in the case of tigers, the natural selection would select for those individuals
that are able to hunt properly. Whereas, if you keep your animals in the zoo generation
after generation because you are not selecting for those particular variations, some of those
variations might get lost, after a few generations.

Third is genetic correlations or pleiotropy. For example, some gene may increase
cryopreservation stability, but decrease the number of seeds produced. Then selection of
plants producing seeds with better cryopreservation stability will also result in selection of
plants with less number of seeds, which would be antagonistic to the objectives of
reintroduction.

894
What it says is that when you are setting up an ex-situ conservation facility, then the
environment that you are providing to the organisms in the ex-situ conservation facility
are very different from what you are providing in the in-situ conservation facility or in
their natural habitat.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:24)

For instance, if you have a plant that is found in different heights in the mountain, and
suppose you are setting up an ex-situ conservation facility in this particular area. Now,
what you are doing is that you started by looking at different variations, you brought all of
these plants into your area and then you started growing them. So, you brought these seeds,
you went ahead and planted those in your ex-situ conservation area, and then you took out
those plants that were giving out the largest number of seeds and then you store those
seeds.

What happens in that case is that because you can have a trait that is regulating the number
of seeds that is being produced by the plant and is probably also regulating some other
trait. So, by selecting for those plants that are giving out more number of seeds, you are
also selecting for some other trait.

Now, that some other trait might not be useful for the plant in a natural conditions. So,
probably when you were doing an in-situ conservation, so, that particular trait was not
being selected, that was not useful to the plants, but when you are shifting it to the ex-situ
conservation facility, so in that case that particular trait is now getting selected because of

895
the pleiotropic effect, because the same gene is regulating more than one traits in this
organism.

If we have a situation of pleiotropy, then it is possible that we might be selecting for those
traits that are not useful to the plants in the in-situ conservation scenario or in the national
habitat. So, later on when we use these seeds and we plant them out in the natural habitat
to restock the population, then it is possible that all of these plants would die off. So, that
is also another genetic implication of ex-situ conservation.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:12)

And the fourth one is the genotype-environment interactions. Those genotypes showing
favorable phenotypes in the ex-situ conservation environment may not show favorable
phenotypes when put backward re-introduction. So, like coming back to our example of
these plants that were growing in the hills. Now, probably the environment that you have
here is very much correlated with the environment that you have in this particular area.

Now, your plants grow in these areas, they are not growing in this area. Now, when you
are taking these seeds out and you are growing them in your ex-situ conservation facility,
then it is possible that we are only selected for selecting for those plants that are able to
grow well in this particular environment and not in these particular environments.

Later on, when you put your plants back into the wild, it is possible that they might not
show good results, which is because of the genotype environment interactions. So, those

896
genotype types showing favorable phenotypes in the ex-situ conservation environment
may not show favorable phenotypes when put back for re-introduction.

It is also possible that when you are looking for say seeds, you are looking for seed
production; you want to have those plants that involve the most amount of seeds. When,
you are putting them into your environment of ex-situ conservation, then the number of
seeds that are being produced by every individual is very different from what it would
have produced when it was there in its natural habitat.

Because of this genotype environment interaction, you might be selecting for a wrong
individual or an individual that is not the best fit for release when it is released back into
the environment. So, that is also another implication.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:04)

Let us look at three ex-situ conservation facilities in detail. These are zoos, botanical
gardens, and seed banks and cryopreservation facilities, to understand what these ex-situ
conservation facilities are, how do they work, what do we do there.

897
(Refer Slide Time: 19:17)

Let us begin with Zoos.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:20)

Now, zoos are defined as, “Zoo” means an establishment, whether stationary or mobile,
where captive animals are kept for exhibition to the public and includes a circus and rescue
centers, but does not include an establishment of a licensed dealer in captive animals. Now,
this is the definition of zoo under the wildlife protection act 1972.

Zoo is any establishment, it can be stationary or it can be mobile. So, you can even have
mobile zoos where animals are taken from one place to the other place. And in this

898
establishment captive animals are kept for exhibition to the public. So, the main purpose
is to show them to the public and it includes a circus and rescue centers.

So, if you have a circus; A circus by definition is a zoo and will be regulated by the same
rules as govern the zoos and it also includes the rescue centers. So, rescue centers are areas
where you bring animals that are say diseased or say that are suffering from some injuries
or that have strayed out and you bring them into an area to treat those animals and probably
later release them into the wild or probably keep them there in captivity for a very long
time. So, rescue centers are also zoos under this definition. And it does not include an
establishment of a licensed dealer in captive animals.

(Refer Slide Time: 20:49)

Now, zoos are governed using master plans. So, master plan is a document that will tell
you what are the facilities that are available? What are the objectives of management and
how are we going to attain those objectives of management?

899
(Refer Slide Time: 21:07)

So, zoos are governed under master plan. A number of zoos are involved in conservation
breeding. Conservation breeding is where you do some amount of captive breeding of the
animals to conserve their species.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:21)

And for these conservation breedings, there are also studbooks that are maintained.
Studbook is a document that tells you, the genetic ancestry of any particular individual.
These are important to ensure that you do not breed between individuals that are very
closely related to each other.

900
To prevent situations of inbreeding depression you maintain these documents, which tell
you that for any particular individual who was its mother, who was its father, who were
was the mothers’s relatives ( In the case of the mother, who was the father of the mother,
who was the mother of the mother, in the case of the father; who was the mother of the
father, who was the father of the father) and so on.

So, it maintains a genetic ancestry of all the animals. If you want to conduct captive
breeding between 2 individuals and if you find that both of these individuals share an
ancestor in the near past, so, in that case you will not go for a breeding between these
individuals. Now, to understand what we do in a zoo, we will look at the case study of
Mysore Zoo.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:28)

In a zoo the animals are provided with conditions that best suit their requirements and that
best suit their behaviors. For instance, in the case of these tigers, they are given a plain
area that has ample number of trees to provide shade, that has these grasses, that has this
waterfall to provide cooling comfort. In the case of their enclosures, they are given these
logs so that their scratching behavior that they normally show in the wild to mark their the
territories and so on are also maintained in these areas.

901
(Refer Slide Time: 23:02)

Feeding is a very important part of maintaining any animal and so, like these cobras are
being given these white colored mice that are bred for this purpose. Then you also maintain
a very good amount of sanitation in your area so that all the fruits and vegetables that are
brought for different animals are washed, cleaned, cut and then served to the animals.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:31)

And then feeding is done in a very timely manner and it is done with a lot of precaution.
So, this is the outer portion of the enclosure of a tiger and here we have this gate and this
person is opening up this gate so that the animal can get inside. And inside you have

902
already put the meat that needs to be given to the tiger. When you open this gate from
outside, the animal is able to reach to the inside room and is able to feed.

Now, these feeding times, the amount of feed that needs to be given, the timing of the feed,
the regularity of the feed, all are very carefully governed in a zoo.

(Refer Slide Time: 24:11)

And this is done not only for the indigenous animals, but also in the case of exotic animals,
they have very exotic requirements. So, a number of plants that a giraffe eats are, may not
be available in India. So, giraffe might be given some special food to take care of it is
dietary requirements. Similarly for zebras, for cheetahs and so on.

903
(Refer Slide Time: 24:33)

And all of these are maintained in the form of a documentation. So, the feed charts will be
maintained, when an animal was treated in a veterinary facility, what was it treated for,
what kinds of diseases did it have, what are the kinds of vaccinations that are given to this
animal are all properly documented.

(Refer Slide Time: 24:54)

And then you also have a number of facilities for providing veterinary care to these
animals. So, we looked at this example of a squeeze cage. So, in a squeeze cage, the animal
is brought inside to this cage and then these balls are then moved together. So, that the

904
animal gets squeezed between the walls and then you can very easily handle this animal,
if you want to take out a blood sample for laboratory analysis or if you want to give it
some injection of an antibiotic or so on. So, it can be handled in that way.

You also have facilities for doing X-rays of animals, for performing surgeries on these
animals, you have an operating theatre and so on. So, all these different facilities are
maintained for the benefit of these animals.

(Refer Slide Time: 25:40)

Then, not only are these animals provided with these facilities, but also their behavior is
also studied in these ex-situ conservation facilities. So, research becomes an integral part
of an ex-situ conservation facility so that we learn more and more about these animals and
these learnings can be made use of in the in-situ conservation facilities as well.

And not only is research done, but at the same time in-reach is also done. So, you also call
experts from different areas and you ask them what more can be done for these animals.
You also maintain a number of samples for these animals. So, a number of embryos that
were aborted or the shells of the eggs of different birds from which the young ones have
hatched, they are also kept here in a curated manner.

905
(Refer Slide Time: 26:31)

At the same time ex-situ conservation facilities play a very important role as areas where
we can look out for ecofriendly alternatives. So, they also become areas for
experimentation. If you observe some ecofriendly mode of transport that you can use in
these areas and probably some of these learnings can also be translated back into the in-
situ conservation facilities.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:55)

906
Then, we also work on a number of other projects such as how to convert say dung into
manure, how to reduce the parasitic load that is there in the dung so that it can be made
use of in other places and so on. Such other activities are also done.

(Refer Slide Time: 27:13)

Now, a very important role of zoo is that they permit people to come and visit and observe
the animals. Caring of people also becomes a very important part. For instance, you will
observe these notices. So, you have disable friendly environments, you have even
wheelchairs that are available in these areas, you have facilities for drinking water, you
have facilities for doctors, you have facilities for golf carts so that people can move in
these areas, you have places for people to sit and so on. So, the ex-situ conservation
facilities also need to cater not just to the needs of the animals, but also to the needs of the
human beings.

907
(Refer Slide Time: 27:58)

And in that case, image building, revenue, ticketing also play a very important part.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:04)

Also in the case of ex-situ conservation facilities, you can also have facilities such as these
areas where you grow, where you cultivate orchids or an in house aviary or an open aviary,
on an area where you have cultivation of cacti. All these cactuses are brought from
different areas and they are cultivated in this area so that you are able to conserve this
cactuses well. So, different organisms are kept in the ex-situ conservation facilities for
their conservation.

908
(Refer Slide Time: 28:36)

Zoos also include the rescue centers. An example of a rescue center is this rescue center at
Agra. This is the bear rescue facility, in which any bears that are orphaned or that have
been rescued from kalanders are brought to this area.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:55)

They are provided large enclosures in which they can lead their life, they are provided with
ample amount of food and care and nutrition and so on.

909
(Refer Slide Time: 29:08)

Another rescue facility is that of the lion rescue facility that is there in Bhopal or turtle
rescue facility that is there in Dwarka.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:12)

Now, in this rescue facility, the eggs of the turtles are brought to these rescue facilities,
because turtles have this habit that they come to the sea beaches and there they make a
nests and there they lay their eggs.

910
With time, we have observed that there are a number of street dogs or pariah dogs that
come into these nests and eat up the eggs. So, when that happens the population of turtles
suffers a decline.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:46)

To avoid that, what people do in this rescue facility is that they bring the eggs from the sea
beaches and then in this covered enclosure where you have these wire meshes all around
so that dogs cannot enter into this area. There they make a hole in the form of the nest and
there they keep all these eggs inside these areas. And once the turtles have hatched, so,
then they are moved into these in house areas so that they can grow to a particular size and
after that they are released back into the seas.

911
(Refer Slide Time: 30:22)

Now, in the zoos, it is also important that you need to pay a very huge amount of attention
to the behavior of the animals. Here what we are observing is a stereotyped behavior. What
this elephant is doing is that it is just moving right and left in this repetitive manner,
because it is getting a sense of boredom.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:48)

When that happens, you need to provide the animal with certain amount of behavioral
enrichment. This animal should have something to do. So, behavioral enrichment also
forms a very important part of the zoos as part of the ex-situ conservation measures.

912
(Refer Slide Time: 31:02)

The second ex-situ conservation facility that we will discuss is a Botanical garden.

(Refer Slide Time: 31:05)

A Botanical garden is a garden dedicated to the collection, cultivation and display of a

wide range of plants labeled with their botanical names. Here you bring plants from
different areas, you cultivate them and you display them along with the botanical names.
So, that there can be some amount of research, there can be some amount of education that
people can have if they come and visit these botanical gardens.

913
(Refer Slide Time: 31:35)

These botanical gardens play a number of roles. They help in conservation awareness, they
help to develop this interest in gardening, information network for propagation of scientific
information, access to seeds and plant transfer sites, repository of biodiversity, educational
sites, especially for relation between plants and ecology, sources of botanochemicals. So,
some amount of research can also be done on different plant chemicals that are there in the
botanical garden, availability of plants for scientific research, study of plant diversity and
identification. For people who are interested in or are learning the sciences of taxonomy
and systematics, a botanical gardening plays a very important role, because you can visit
these areas and look at trees, their different adaptations, their the patterns of their leaves,
the patterns of their branches and so on, so that you are able to make a sense of how to
identify a particular species? And they also play a very important role in the protection of
rare species, because here you are providing a very controlled environment to the rare
species when you are cultivating them. So, the rare species will also get sufficient amount
of nutrition, fertilizers, water and so on.

914
(Refer Slide Time: 32:52)

To know what a botanical garden looks like, we will have a look at the case study of
Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, Cape town.

(Refer Slide Time: 32:57)

Kirstenbosch happens to be a world heritage site.

915
(Refer Slide Time: 33:01)

So, it has these Kirstenbosch forests which are very unique to that particular ecosystem,
they go by the name of Flynbos forest.

(Refer Slide Time: 33:13)

In this case, the botanical gardens are set up in a location where you can have a variety of
habitats. Here you have these hills and then you also have the scarplands and then you
have the plane lands. All of these different areas provide a wide variety of habitats for the
plants to grow.

916
(Refer Slide Time: 33:34)

And after cultivation, these plants are also made available for exhibitions. This is one
exhibit in which you have this road and you can take a walk on this road and you can look
at different plants and all of these plants are labeled with their names. So, you can
understand what kind of plants grows in what particular habitat conditions and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 33:55)

917
(Refer Slide Time: 33:58)

People visit these areas to look at plants, to even, people who are interested in studying
insects can come to this area to study different kinds of pollinators or different kinds of
birds that are there in this area or even things like snakes that are found in these forests.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:04)

918
(Refer Slide Time: 34:08)

(Refer Slide Time: 34:13)

919
(Refer Slide Time: 34:14)

They provide an access to nature and play a very important role in educating people. You
would observe that some parents would come to this area with their kids and they would
be telling what are trees, what are leaves, how do they make food, what is photosynthesis
and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:30)

People can spend time here, they can even spend family time here between the nature.

920
(Refer Slide Time: 34:31)

And the idea here is that the more time people spend with nature, the more they can relate
to the cause of conservation. And so, when people are coming to this area every day, if
later on there is a proposal that this garden should be closed. So, in that case there will be
so, many people who would vehemently oppose such a proposition. At the same time,
because these people know what different plants look like, if there is an area that is
suffering from a decline in species, there would be a number of people who would write
to policymakers, who would who would write to lawmakers to conserve those species. So,
this is the idea.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:18)

921
So, you can spend a lot of time, here you can observe different species.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:20)

And just to ensure that people have a quality time you also have a number of shops, you
also have a cafeteria so that people can just spend their time there.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:28)

922
(Refer Slide Time: 35:29)

(Refer Slide Time: 35:34)

Again, in the case of an ex-situ conservation facility, it is extremely important that people
should be able to visit these facilities.

923
(Refer Slide Time: 35:40)

(Refer Slide Time: 35:41)

There are also some attractions in the form of canopy walk.

924
(Refer Slide Time: 35:43)

This is the canopy walk. What they have done here is that, here you have the canopy of
trees and there is this bridge, and this bridge moves through the canopy of trees and in
certain locations it moves above the canopy of the trees.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:02)

So, essentially if we look at any tree, for any large sized tree, when we are observing the
tree we are generally at this level. So, we are able to see the stem of the tree, we can also
observe the leaves of the tree, but we can never observe the canopy of the tree. For
observing the canopy, you have to be at this level. Now, the canopy walk is a large bridge

925
in which, while walking through this bridge you can get to the level of the canopy, so the
canopy is at your eye level and you can even go above the canopies.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:42)

This is how it looks like. So, you have different trees and this canopy walk is even above
quite a number of stems.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:52)

And here also you have a number of educational placards. So, like this one is telling you
what is the tree canopy, what are different kinds of canopies, this is the canopy, this is
middle story, this is understory, this is forest floor and so on. So, the ex-situ conservation

926
facilities play a very important role in giving and imparting education to the people who
are visiting these areas.

(Refer Slide Time: 37:15)

This placard tells you about life in a tree canopy. What are different kinds of birds that live
in this area, what are different kinds of organisms that live in this area, how they work
together in a food chain or in a food web and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 37:32)

It also tells you about the biodiversity that is there in the canopy. These are all birds that
are found in the canopies. When you go to these areas you can get a sense of what is the

927
level of biodiversity in different parts. When you are walking on the ground, you can see
different biodiversity, when you are walking at the level of the branches, you can see
different biodiversity, when you are walking in the canopy you can see a different
biodiversity. Or things such as how this canopy walk is constructed so, engineering
learnings and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 37:59)

(Refer Slide Time: 38:07)

928
(Refer Slide Time: 38:07)

Then you have historical learnings, you have learnings about the geology of the place.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:10)

929
(Refer Slide Time: 38:13)

You have learnings about the habitat requirements of different species. For instance, this
particular placard tells you that there is this species that lives in the shade of the trees. So,
here you can observe that you have tall trees and then you have this particular bush like
species that is living in this particular area.

This placard is telling you what are the adaptations, why this species prefers this particular
area? Now, when you go to these areas, you get a very good idea of what is biodiversity
and why different species live in different areas, what are what do you mean by niches that
are used by different species.

930
(Refer Slide Time: 38:53)

Then, it also gives you a message about conservation by talking about dinosaurs or by
talking about different areas which have different species or by talking about the
indigenous species, the ground covered species, the kinds of adaptations that are there in
different species and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:01)

931
(Refer Slide Time: 39:04)

(Refer Slide Time: 39:10)

So, essentially in a botanical garden what you have is, you have an area which is an ex-
situ conservation area, because all of these species are not naturally found in this area, they
have been planted in these areas. So, seeds were brought from different areas and planted
here. Then, they are given a lot of care and attention.

And once these species have come up into this area, then these species are used for
conservation in a number of ways. One way is that by having these plants here, even if

932
their natural habitat suffers a decline, you still have these species here and you can always
collect seeds and you can repopulate the original area. Or you can substantiate the
population of the original area or by observing these different species, you can make a
correlation about the require of these different species, when do these plants flower, when
do these plants produce fruits, when are the seeds that are there in the fruits, when are they
alive, when are they dead and so on.

So, all these information can be made use of in the in-situ conservation facilities as well.
Then, they are very important for conservation, because they provide access to people to
nature. So, in this case, when people are coming to these areas, they can look at
biodiversity, they can understand what our adaptation, they can understand why do we
need so many different kinds of species to exist on this planet.

Because, on a very superficial understanding some person might say that ok, you have
trees in this area that is good enough because you are getting photosynthesis, you are
getting carbon dioxide that is getting sequestered and oxygen that is getting released. Why
should you have so many different kinds of species, but then once you have been to such
an area you get this idea of why these different species are important.

Then, you also get an idea of what are the adaptation that are there in these different
species. You also get an idea of how these species are related to each other? How is the
plant kingdom related to the animal kingdom? Which particular trees provide nesting sites
to different birds? Which particular trees provide fruits to different birds?...and so on.
Hence, by allowing people to understand nature, the idea of a botanical garden is that
people would become aligned to the cause of conservation.

933
(Refer Slide Time: 41:47)

(Refer Slide Time: 41:57)

Now, the third ex-situ conservation facility that will observe is a seed bank or a
cryopreservation facility. Now, the idea of a seed bank or a cryopreservation facility is that
even if you have seeds that are very old say, even 30,000 year old seeds and if they have
been kept in a very cold area, then they continue to survive and then even if you take those
seeds today, so even after 30000 years you can plant them and they will give out the plants
and the flowers.

934
(Refer Slide Time: 42:08)

(Refer Slide Time: 42:23)

Or those seeds that are kept in very dry atmospheres, even after thousands of years, you
can take those seeds and you can grow plants out of them.

935
(Refer Slide Time: 42:27)

Essentially, if you take a seed and you keep it in an environment that is cold and in an
environment that is dry, you are able to retain the viability.

(Refer Slide Time: 42:37)

And if you are able to retain the viability so, if you want to conserve a number of species
you can do a very simple thing that you can collect the seeds from all these different species
and then you can keep them in cold and dry conditions and that becomes a very good
repository of all these different species. So, that is the idea behind a seed bank or a
cryopreservation facility.

936
(Refer Slide Time: 43:17)

Let us begin by looking at what a seed is? A seed is an embryonic plant that is enclosed in
an outer protective coating. Essentially, this is an embryonic plant. So, given suitable
conditions, it will give rise to the plant. That is the most important thing and it is covered
in a protective coating.

(Refer Slide Time: 43:33)

And seeds are found in fruits. So, here we see some fruits of a tree and these fruits have
so, many seeds inside. So, you can collect these seeds.

937
(Refer Slide Time: 43:45)

If you want to construct a seed bank where these seeds can be stored, what are the steps
that you will do? The first is to construct a seed stand; a seed stand is an area in which you
have trees that give out a lot of seeds so that you can collect these seeds from there. Or
else, if you are not constructing a seed stand, you can directly go into the forest area and
collect the seeds of different trees, but then seed stand helps because you can have access
to a massive amount of seeds.

Once, you have collected these seeds, you treat these seeds. Now, treatment consists of
things such as deep pulping. So, seeds are there inside the fruit, if you have the pulp along
with the seeds. Pulp has a lot of moisture, it also has a lot of feeding materials, it has sugars,
it has carbohydrates and so on. So, you will have animals that will come and eat up these
seeds or you will have some amount of fungal infestation in these seeds.

To remove that possibility you treat these seeds. So, you remove the pulp and then you dry
these seeds. After, drying or after this treatment you store the seeds under proper
conditions. And those conditions are cold climate and dry climate and if required you
recollect seeds from the wild or by replanting, because even when you are putting these
seeds into these cold and dry conditions, you can retain the viability for some time, but
this viability is not an infinite viability. So, if you have seeds with time and here you have
the viability.

938
(Refer Slide Time: 45:14)

If you have a seed that is there in the wild then you might have a viability that goes down
very fast, but then in the proper conditions you will have a viability that goes down in a
slow manner. This is your 100 percent viability and let us say that this is your 100 percent
viability, because even seeds that you collect from the wild will not have 100 percent
viability, this is 90 percent viability. And suppose you have a condition that you should
maintain at least 80 percent of the viability.

Now, if you just kept seeds as such, so probably they will lose their viability in say 2
weeks, but once you kept them in your facility, they are able to retain at least 80% viability
up to say 2 years. At the end of 2 years, you have seeds that have 80% viability, but then
if you wait further then the viability will go down below 80%.

To reduce that possibility, what you do is that you recollect seeds from the wild to restock
your seed bank or else what you can do is you take these seeds and then you replant them.
And once you have replanted these seeds and especially for those species that are very
vigorous in their growth and are very fast in their growth, so you can replant those seeds
and then you can collect the seeds again and then you can restock. This is the process in
which you maintain a seed bank.

939
(Refer Slide Time: 47:06)

The first stage what we had seen was construction of a seed stand. Now, a seed stand is an
area where you are keeping the trees themselves. So, that they make the seeds available
again and again in a large quantity. Now, if you want to construct a seed stand, how would
you do that? The first step would be sampling of the source population, because again you
will have a very great amount of diversity, a great amount of variety that is available in
nature. And through the sampling you will come to a conclusion about what different
varieties you should collect so that your seed stand is a representative of the natural
population.

Next, you go for a site selection. Site selection will make use of the ecological principles.
If there is a plant that grows in the desert, so the site where you should set up your seed
stand should also be a desert area or if there is a plant that grows in a very cold area, so,
your site should also be there in a very cold area and so on.

Once, you have selected the site and you have sampled, next you decide on the plantation
size. How many trees should you have in your area so that you are able to map the diversity
that is there in the nature. So, you should have a very large number of trees, but not so
large that you are not able to manage that. So, you decide on plantation size.

Once, you have done that, now you establish the plantation. So, establishment of the
plantation would mean that in this site, for this many size you bring the seeds or you bring
the plants from the wild and you plant them. So, that is establishment of a plantation. Next,

940
you manage that plantation, you do breeding operations, irrigation, fertilization and so on.
And then, once all these plants have become mature and they are giving out fruits and
seeds, so you regenerate this stand, you collect the seeds, probably, you replant some of
these seeds and so on. So, that is the process of construction of an ex-situ conservation
stand.

If you are not constructing a stand, if you directly want to put it into a seed storage facility,
so in that case you need to know about, what are the characteristics of good seeds, what
are the characteristics of a good seed bank and then bring two and two together so that you
get a very good amount of viability of these seeds.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:33)

Next we look at the characteristics of good seeds. Good seeds are well ripened and healthy,
pure and free from inert materials and weed seeds. Inert materials include things such as
dirt or hay or some other husk portion of the fruit or of the seed and so on. And it should
be free of weed seeds so, when you are planting them again into the wild you should not
be having any weeds. They should be viable and have good germination capacity; uniform
in its structure and appearance, free from damage and should not be broken and infested
by pests and diseases.

941
(Refer Slide Time: 50:13)

Now, you can determine the best days for seed collection using laboratory methods and
field methods. Essentially, when you are collecting the seeds the fruits should be
completely mature. And their maturity can be assessed by looking at their density, looking
at their colors or visual examination of the seed contains after cutting, or by looking at
laboratory methods, such as maximum weight that can be attained by the fruit that has
been attained. So, that would tell us that the fruit is now completely mature or we can have
a chemical analysis of fat and nitrogen content or we can look at embryo; at embryonic
development and endosperm of sample seeds using X-rays or we can look at moisture
content of fruits and so on. So, there are a number of ways through which we can
understand, what is the best time to collect these seeds?

942
(Refer Slide Time: 51:01)

Then we also determine what are the best trees to collect these seeds from? We normally
collect from a dominant or codomain increase, because these trees get ample amount of
sunlight and they are generally very vigorous and very healthy and their seeds also have a
very good germination capability.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:36)

And we collect from a number of trees, because we want to have variety in the seeds, we
collect from trees that are far apart from each other to avoid collecting from half siblings
or parents because if you have a tree; so, if you have a tree here and it is giving out fruits

943
and it is giving out seeds. So, those seeds might fall in this particular area. And so, if you
have another tree, that is so close to each other, to the first tree, then it is possible that this
tree is the parent tree and this is the daughter tree; in which case, because both of these
trees are so closely related, so, we might be losing out on the diversity.

So, we try to collect seeds from trees that are far from each other. Before collecting, we
mark the individual trees and collect equal number of cones, fruits or seeds per tree so that
we are able to get ample amount of diversity and then mixing of seeds can be done for
large scale collection. So, that would depend on your management objectives.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:31)

Then, we use large number of trees per gene pool, random sampling including poorer than
average trees, because again when we say poorer than average trees, there could be a tree
that is not that tall that is not that healthy looking, but then probably that has some amount
of disease resistance genes that is not present in the taller trees. So, we even need to collect
from those trees that are not that good looking or poorer than average trees because we
want to maintain as much amount of diversity as is available in nature.

Then, collection in better seed years for better representation of parents. So, seed years are
those years where trees give out a very huge copious amount of seeds. So, we collect in
good seed years so that there is more amount of seeds and a better representation of the
parents. And large quantity of seeds to be collected for each provenance or for each
different geographical region.

944
(Refer Slide Time: 53:28)

Next, for a proper seed collection we need to go for an organization of good collecting
teams. We need to make arrangements for transportation, equipment, records, permits,
seed extraction from fruits and so on. Because, all of these things are time bound; if you
have collected the fruits and if you have not removed the seeds fast enough, so, it is
possible that your fruits might get infested and the seeds might also get infested. So, all of
these need to be properly managed.

(Refer Slide Time: 54:02)

945
Now, the ways of collecting seeds include natural seed fall in which you can make use of
certain cones.

(Refer Slide Time: 54:15)

You have this tree and in the seeding season this tree would naturally release the seeds
outside. Probably you could set up a cone like arrangement of cloth. So, all these seeds
when they fall from the tree they get collected in this cone and from there you can collect
them for your storage facility.

You can make use of seed fall or you can shake the trees manually or mechanically or you
can make use of tree funnels as we have seen or you can make use of raiding of animal
caches like squirrels and ants. Squirrels generally tend to store a large number of nuts seeds
into their caches and we can raid those caches and get all those seeds or we can collect by
plucking or we can collect by cutting breaking and sowing of the trees.

In a number of cases natural seed fall is not used if not together with this tree funnel
because if there is a seed that is fallen to the ground, then there is a good possibility that,
some insects or maybe some fungi or some microbes have already come into contact with
that seed. Similarly, raiding of animal caches is not a very preferred option, because here
again the cache of a squirrel might have a damp situation in which you might have fungal
infection on the seeds.

946
(Refer Slide Time: 55:41)

Then, the other operations include depulping, removing of the pulp, drying under the shade
sun drying, artificial drying, dewinging, threshing, sieving, sorting, blowing, grading and
so on. Essentially, by all these methods what we are trying to do is that we are trying to
get to the best possible seeds in the best possible state, which is a seed that is devoid of
any other fruit contents, it should not be having any amount of pulp or any amount of husk
with it and it should be in a dry state. Grading is also performed to get the best quality
seeds, so, they are mostly large sized seeds.

(Refer Slide Time: 56:20)

947
Now, if you look at natural longevity of seeds, we can divide seeds into 3 categories
microbiotic in which the seed lifespan does not exceed 3 years, mesobiotic where the seed
lifespan is from 3 to 15 years and macrobiotic where the lifespan is greater than 15 years.

(Refer Slide Time: 56:43)

And whether or not we can dry a seed, by this process, we divide seeds into 2 main classes;
one is orthodox seeds, where the seeds can be dried down to a low moisture content of
around 5%. The second one is recalcitrant seeds, they often have very high oil content and
they cannot survive drying below a relatively high moisture content, greater than 20%.
And so, they cannot be successfully stored for long periods whereas orthodox seeds can
be stored for very long periods and good examples are grass, bamboo or grain seeds.

948
(Refer Slide Time: 57:17)

In the case of our seed banks, it is important to note the factors that affect the longevity of
the seeds; the seeds need to be in good condition. Seeds should be matured, free of
mechanical damage, should not have any infestation, the initial viability should be high,
the age of the seeds has to be good. So, you cannot have seeds that are very young or that
are very old, because in that case they will not have ample amount of viability in long term
storage.

Then the storage conditions have to be optimum, the atmosphere should have low level of
oxygen. So, we generally seal these seeds, the moisture level should be low, the
temperature should be low and the light should also be low or absent.

949
(Refer Slide Time: 58:01)

And in this case, the underlying principles are that when you are collecting these seeds,
when you are storing these seeds, then these seeds need to have clear cut accession
numbers, you need to have passport data which tells you, where this seed was collected,
who collected it, when was it collected and which species does it belong to if there is any
particular variety or any subspecies that it belongs to; that also needs to be maintained.

Then the seeds have to be maintained in conditions of good viability and propagability,
genetic integrity needs to be maintained, when you are doing a long term storage,
maintenance of germplasm health so that the seeds are free from diseases and pests. So,
they should be able to germinate when we are putting them back into the soil.

Then, your facility has to have a good amount of physical security, including safety from
earthquakes, floods, fires and global warming. Availability and use of germplasm, so, you
need to decide on the policies, when and how do you make this germplasm available to
different people. If, people wanted for research, if people wanted for restocking, are you
going to give it to them? What are the processes involved are there any costs involved?
And the availability of the information regarding what are seeds are available, what all
seeds are needed and so on.

950
(Refer Slide Time: 59:20)

A good example of such a storage facility is the Svalbard global seed vault in Norway.
This is the seed vault, it is located in a location where there is permafrost. So, all over the
year, this area is well below the freezing temperatures and this is also at a very great height
so that if there is global warming and if there is flooding, if the ocean levels rise, even then
this facility is saved.

(Refer Slide Time: 59:47)

And we keep the seeds in these different containers in these racks after properly naming
all of these different germplasm.

951
(Refer Slide Time: 59:59)

Similar to plant seeds, we can even have a cryopreservation facility for animal cells and
tissues including sperm cells, ova sells, embryos, tissue samples and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 60:09)

In this case, you can have it even in a laboratory, where you can have these chest freezers,
which are maintained at a very low temperature, say -80oC.

952
(Refer Slide Time: 60:18)

In these chest freezers, you can have these different boxes in which the different samples
are kept. So, this is another example of a cryopreservation facility.

(Refer Slide Time: 60:21)

In this lecture, we looked at ex-situ conservation, what does it mean, why is it required,
when do we do ex-situ conservation, when do we go for an in-situ conservation method?
And then we looked at 3 different case studies of ex-situ conservation facilities, we looked
at the Mysore zoo to understand what zoos are how do they work, we looked at
Kirstenbosch botanical garden to understand, what are botanical gardens, what do people

953
do in botanical gardens, why are they important, how do they work and so on. And we
looked at the cryopreservation facilities in terms of Svalbard and in terms of the animal
cryopreservation facilities.

So, ex-situ conservation facilities are extremely important for conservation, they not only
support the in-situ conservation methods, but at the same time for certain species that are
extremely critical, they are probably the only choices that we are left with.

That is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

954
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 25
Introduction and impacts

“Namaste”,

Today, we begin a new module which is topics in Human Ecology. Throughout this course,
we have seen what are the different biotic and abiotic factors that play a big role in
deciding, where an organism will be found; how would that organism will be distributed,
how any organism gets energy or nutrients from its surroundings and so on. These days,
the human beings are able to exert a very large amount of influence on all of these
ecosystems because of our huge populations, because of our technological advances,
because of our affluence and so on.

So the impact of human beings on ecology becomes very important. And also we can make
use of the principles of ecology to understand how the human population is growing. So,
these are the things that we understand in human ecology.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:14)

This module is going to have three lectures. The first one is Introduction and impacts. Why
this field is important? What kind of things do we learn in this particular field? and so on.

955
The second lecture will be human population growth in food requirements. In this case,
we will make use of the learnings from ecology, especially the growth of populations to
understand the growth rate of the human population. What is the rate at which we are
growing? Is there a cap to this particular growth rate? or Are we going to have an ever
increasing population? or Is this population going to reduce after a time or maybe becomes
stabilized after a time? What are the factors that are responsible for that? And we will also
look at our food requirements.

There is this particular Malthusian theory that we had referred to even in our introductory
lectures; now we will look at that theory in more detail. According to Thomas Malthus,
this theory tells us that the human population increases in a geometric progression. So,
essentially from 1 to 2 from 2 to 4, then 4 to 8 and 8 to 16 and so on. So, it becomes a
geometric progression increase. Whereas the food requirements only increase in arithmetic
progression; so, from 1 to 2 then 2 to 3, then 3 to 4 and so on. Malthus had predicted that
the food requirements will ultimately act as a cap on the growth rate of human populations,
because if you do not have food; so people will get into misery and they will start dying.

But then this theory had predicted that will have a severe food shortage say in the early
19th century, but even today we do not have a food shortage. We will have a look at what
are the factors that have enabled us to move out of the Malthusian trap. We will look at
those topics in more detail when we are talking about sustainable development. Because
sustainable development is one mode of development in which we use our technologies in
such a way, that we are able to use the resources but at the same time, we are also able to
save the resources for the future generations.

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(Refer Slide Time: 03:38)

Let us begin with the first lecture. Here, the question is, Are there any limits to growth? Is
there a limit to the growth rate of population? Is there a limit to the growth rate of
technology? Is there a limit to the impacts that we are going to have on the biosphere? and
so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:59)

In this context, Paul Ehrlich had written this book The Population Bomb. This book, it is
a bit Malthusian in its outlook, but then this book also states that the human population
growth is moving at such a rapid stance that it is a severe problem these days. And then

957
this is a ticking time bomb that needs to be stopped. Why do we say that human beings or
the size of our population has now becoming an issue for the biosphere?

(Refer Slide Time: 04:42)

There are a number of reasons and the most important is that these days, we are living in
the Anthropocene era. Anthropocene is a geological time scale which some scholars
believe that it started with the atom bomb testing or the trinity testing in 1945. And we
take this particular time point as that the point from where the human beings started to
have an impact on the ecosystem that was much greater than any other impact.

If we consider the impacts of say carnivores on an ecosystem and let us consider the impact
of human beings on an ecosystem; so the impact of human beings is much greater than
even those of the keystones species or those of the top carnivores or the apex predators
and so on.

When we say that our impact has become so large that we have demarcated this geological
time scale as Anthropocene. Now, anthropoce as we know is the human beings. So,
anthropocene is the time period of the human beings or the latest time period where the
human beings are having a great amount of influence.

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(Refer Slide Time: 05:55)

It is a proposed epoch. Epoch is a time duration dating from the commencement of

significant human impact on human on earth’s geology and ecosystems including, but not
limited to anthropogenic climate change.

It is a proposed epoch, there are some scholars that have already started using this term.
But then there are some others who still call it a proposed epoch because it has not yet
been finalized. Whether we take this 1945 as a date from which we started to have a very
substantial impact or maybe the industrial revolution or maybe somewhere in between and
so on.

But then we define it as a proposed epoch dating from the commencement of significant
human impact on earth’s geology and ecosystems. Now, not only are we impacting the
ecosystems, the biotic organisms that are living on earth, but also the geology of the earth
and this is including but not limited to anthropogenic climate change.

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(Refer Slide Time: 07:01)

What are the kinds of impacts that we are talking about? The first impact is that of
overconsumption; more number of people, so more amount of resources that are required,
plus for every particular individual human being, the amount of consumption has increased
through the ages.

For instance, if you talk about your grandparents. Your grandparents might not be having
televisions in their homes, they probably did not have a computer in their homes, they did
not require Wi-Fi, there were very less number of air conditioners that we had in this
country.

The amount of resources that were consumed by them was much limited. They probably
either never flew in their youth or probably the only flew for a few times. But then, these
days we are using aeroplanes as a very common medium of transportation. The amount of
resources that we are consuming, so if you talk about moment on land versus moment on
an aeroplane; an aeroplane consumes much more amount of fossil fuels.

If you talk about say the consumption of cotton. The earlier generations used to have a
fewer number of clothes as compared to what we are having today. If we talk about the
amount of electrical energy that is being used. These days, our amount of electrical
consumption is much greater than those of our ancestors; or if we talk about the amount
of fossil fuel that we have been using.

960
These days, most of us are moving in cars and those cars are probably air-conditioned
whereas, if you talk about the earlier generations they probably were using bicycles or
maybe scooters. So, the amount of fossil fuel that has been consumed anywhere and
everywhere, it has increased drastically. When you talk about overconsumption, there are
two reasons; one is that the population has increased. So, more number of people so more
amount of resources are needed and second the per capita requirement or the per capita
usage of different resources has increased a lot; so that is overconsumption.

If we even talk about the amount of agricultural resources that we have been using, so if
we talk about say, the population of the earth say, 100 years back. So, they required less
number of food grains.

So, they required less number or less amount of water to irrigate their fields, but then these
days the amount of land is more, the amount of water requirement is more. So, there is an
overconsumption in a number of sectors. The second impact is that of habitat destruction.
Now, this is very closely related to overconsumption. If you have a requirement for more
amount of iron and steel. So, you require more amount of iron ore, you require more
amount of coal, more amount of limestone. In that case, where are you going to get all
these resources from, because you require all of these resources to satisfy the needs and
the wants of the existing population.

So, you are going to get these resources by mining in different areas. Now mining leads to
a heavy amount of habitat destruction in a number of areas. Or let us say, talk about in the
agriculture sector. In the case of agriculture, earlier we were using less amount of
fertilizers, maybe more amount of manures, less of fertilizers, then there were not many
pesticides that were available in those days and so on.

These days, because we have a huge population to feed, so it is essential that you have
more amount of food grains that are being produced. Now to produce more amount of food
grains we are using more and more amounts of fertilizers, we are using more and more
amount of pesticides. Throughout this course, we had this theme running that if you are
using pesticides and suppose the food grains now have pesticides on them and even in
those areas where the concentration of pesticide is very less, even in those areas as you
move up with the food chain. So, if there is say, a grasshopper which is there on your fields
and when you sprayed your fields with pesticides. So, a number of grasshoppers died off,

961
but then their carcasses still remain there. Now there could be some birds that come and
feed on these grasshoppers.

In that case, they are getting exposed to the pesticides or maybe the concentration of
pesticide that was sprayed was not large enough to kill all the grasshoppers. So, there are
a few that are still living in that area or probably there are a few grasshoppers that now
have become resistant to the impact of pesticides, because we have seen that there is this
natural selection that is acting at all times.

Even in the case of a grasshopper population, you will be having some individuals that are
more susceptible to the impact of pesticides.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:30)

Let us consider a big population of grasshoppers and suppose grasshoppers are one pest
that we are trying to counteract using the pesticides. Now, even in this population there
will be some individuals that are more resistant to the impact of pesticides and then there
are some individuals that are less resistant to the impact of pesticides. Now when you spray
pesticide on this population, there will be a large amount of mortality in this particular
population.

Suppose all of these die out, but then still there will be a few that will remain. So, these
three individuals have now remained probably because their bodies were much better at
pushing these pesticides out of their system or probably because they had a behavioral

962
response, so, they were sneaking into the crevices that were available in the soil so that
they were not exposed to the pesticides. So, there could be n number of reasons or maybe
the amount of metabolism in their bodies is such that they are able to counteract the
pesticides. Now in this particular situation when you have a huge amount of mortality; let
us say all of these individuals have died out.

So, all of these individuals are now dead and you are only left with three individuals and
all these three individuals are those individuals that are resistant or slightly resistant to the
impact of the pesticides. Now what would happen in the next generation?

(Refer Slide Time: 14:18)

So, there are these three individuals that are surviving. They will mate they will give rise
to eggs and then in the next generation, when we again have a large population of these
grasshoppers, now in that case, either all or probably most of these individuals will now
be more resistant to the impact of these pesticides.

Now, what happens? You spray the population with pesticides again and again those
individuals that are not resistant they die off, but here we can observe that there are lesser
number of mortalities or lesser percentage of mortality as compared to what we had seen
in the previous instance. In the previous instance, everybody except these three
grasshoppers were dead because of the impact of pesticides.

963
In this case, there are only these five individuals that die off and then, you have all these
individuals that are surviving.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:19)

What will happen in a few generations from now is that everybody that is there in this
population will have these resistance genes; because these resistance genes are what are
making these individuals more fit for survival.

When we are talking about the term fitness, here we have this particular gene or this
particular trait that is providing these grasshoppers fitness, either because of the chemical
metabolism that they have or probably because they are better at taking these pesticides
out of their system or some behavioral adaptations. If there are some grasshoppers that
they prefer living in the crevices. So, they come out, feed and then move into the crevices.
In this case, most of these grasshoppers will now have these kinds of behavioral selections.
So, they will always prefer living in the crevices and once that happens, what will happen
is that you will have to spray more and more amount of pesticides to have the desired
impact; because the farmer wants to have this field that is free of pests.

So, the farmer would have to spray pesticides, but then the amount of pesticides that will
have to be sprayed will go on increasing with every generation because with every passing
generation, the insects or the pests that are there in the system are becoming more and
more resistant. So, the amount of pesticide that needs to be incorporated will also increase.

964
What will happen to all these pesticides? These pesticides after a while, they will leach out
into the groundwater because you have ample amount of pesticides everywhere; so if there
is rain, so along with the rainwater that seeps and becomes a part of the groundwater table,
these pesticides will also become a part of the ground water table or probably these
pesticides will move along with the different streams.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:22)

If you have this particular area which is a farm land and when you have rainfall in this
area. So, you can always observe that there are some small streams that are moving away
from these agricultural forms. And then these streams then join together and then they
become a part of the river and from there it can move into the seas or probably this will go
and drain a small pond somewhere.

Now what will happen to all these pesticides is that they will either go into the ground or
they will start accumulating in the water bodies. Of course, there will be a large amount
that will degrade with time, because there are also a number of influences or the impact of
a number of elements such as there would be oxygenation of the pesticide which would
probably render it harmless or probably these pesticides when they are exposed to the sun’s
rays; so that will also lead to some amount of scission reactions as we had seen in the case
of plastics.

But then, whatever happens there would be some amount of pesticides that would start
leaching into the groundwater table. Here we have the groundwater, so some amount of

965
pesticides will start getting into the groundwater or they will start reaching into the lakes
or they will start reaching into the rivers.

Once that happens, we will see the impacts of these pesticides not only in these particular
fields, but also in the wider ecosystem as well. Let us say that even if they are not able to
reach into these water bodies, what will happen is that they will start accumulating in the
soil. Now these pesticides were meant to, say, kill off the grasshoppers which are feeding
on the crops, but then when your soil starts becoming saturated with these pesticides, they
will start impacting a number of other organisms. Probably they will start killing off the
earthworms. Now we have seen earlier that earthworms are decomposers, so they are
detritus feeders. So, if there is any amount of organic matter that is there in this soil, they
will feed on it, they will break it up into smaller portions, and then those smaller portions
will be preferentially acted upon by different microorganisms. Now what happens if you
have an ecosystem? Here we are talking about the farmland ecosystem and this farmland
ecosystem is devoid of all the detritivores or divide of all the decomposers. Now if you
have such a system, this system will start to collapse in a short while.

So, if there is any leaf that has fallen onto the soil. So, this leaf will not be eaten up; it will
start accumulating then and there. Now, there are also a number of other impacts that we
will see, so, like we talked about the fertilizers and if you have fertilizers that reached into
a lake, you will start observing algal bloom here. If they start reaching into the rivers, so
here now we are talking about the fertilizers, fertilizers will also start moving into the
rivers; once that happens again you will see a larger amount of primary productivity.

Every act of the human beings is now putting a lot of influence on the different ecosystems.
What happens to these fertilizers? So, let us talk about say ammonium sulfate. Now, if we
have ammonium sulfate and in this particular system the nitrogen is taken up by the plant,
what happens to the sulfate? This sulfate starts accumulating in the soil. Once that happens,
the soil starts to have more and more amount of these salts. It leads to salinity in the system.

966
(Refer Slide Time: 21:39)

We had seen in the case of the Chilika lagoon; so when we talked about Chilika lagoon,
we said that we have this big sized lagoon and then, it is separated from the seeds with this
sand bars and here we have the Bay of Bengal and you have a number of streams that are
coming to the Chilika Lake.

In this case, the amount of salinity that we have will be very high here, which is close to
the seas and it will be very less here. And in this case, we say that we have different
organisms that occupy this sector, different organisms that occupy this sector and different
organisms that occupy this sector. Now in your farmlands, if you start having more and
more amount of salts, you are again changing the ecosystem in a way that it becomes
difficult for a number of organisms to live there. Now with all of these, we are talking
about the destruction of a number of habitats.

Another influence of human beings on the ecosystem is that of habitat destruction. This
habitat destruction may at times lead to desertification as well; now we have seen the
causes and impacts of desertification in earlier lectures. So, if there is a heavy amount of
over grazing in an area, or the plants are eaten up by say, goats or sheep, in that case the
soil becomes exposed; because there is no longer the root system to hold the soil. And the
soil starts moving, it starts drying and in a short time you have converted this very fertile
area into a desert; that is also another impact of human beings on the environment.

967
Let us talk about ocean acidification. What is happening is that we are using a huge amount
of fossil fuels in our vehicles, for power generation, in a number of industries and so on.
Now when we talk about the use of fossil fuels what we are doing is, we are taking out
these fossil fuels which are accumulated carbon which is say millions of years old. They
were forests a few million years back that because of some reason, they got submerged
into the earth. Probably, there was some amount of earthquake and because of that
earthquake, all these forests they moved inside the earth. Now with the high amount of
temperature and the high amount of pressure and over long periods of time, the other
chemical constituents started moving out and what remained was the coals.

If you take these coals out and you start to burn these coal; so in that case, you are taking
out all these carbon that was stored inside the earth for a very long period of time and by
burning this coal, you are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

(Refer Slide Time: 24:49)

If you have carbon dioxide, so if you have CO2 and when it reacts with H2O you get
H2CO3, which is the carbonic acid. Now where do you get so much amount of water? You
have a huge amount of water that is stored in the oceans. So, by releasing a huge amount
of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we are increasing the concentration of carbonic
acid that is there in the oceans.

So, that is again changing the pH of the oceans and as we know for every organism there
is a very definite level of environmental conditions that it can tolerate. We talked about

968
the Shelford’s law of tolerance. So, probably there will be a number of organisms that will
not be able to tolerate a low pH, an acidic environment.

(Refer Slide Time: 25:43)

For instance, if you take a beaker and in this beaker, say you put a few shells of the
mollusks. Here you have a few shells of the mollusk or probably you are keeping a few
corals inside. You just keep a few corals inside and then, you fill this beaker with an acid.
Let us say you fill this beaker up with carbonic acid, what will happen is that all the calcium
carbonate that was stored in all of these animal bodies that will start releasing off the
carbon dioxide.

You will see all these carbon dioxide bubbles that will start coming out and in a short
period of time all of these organisms, their bodies will be completely dissolved in the acid.
Now when we are talking about ocean acidification, this is something that has continuously
happening in the oceans. If you want to have a shell and that shell has to be made out of
carbon of calcium carbonate. So, you need to have a basic environment or probably a
neutral environment, you cannot have an acidic environment. So, with more in more
amount of ocean acidification we are seeing the deaths of a number of organisms such as
corals.

So, we see that the coral start bleaching off and in a short period they start dying off. And
corals being keystone species they will also impact a number of other organisms. So, that

969
is also a big human impact on the environment or let us talk about ozone depletion. Now
if we release chlorofluorocarbons they eat up the ozone that is there in the stratosphere.

The layer of ozone is what protects the life on earth from the UV radiations of the sun.
Because that is able to use up the UV radiation and so the amount of UV radiation that
reaches to the ground is less. Now if you take off the ozone layer, more and more amount
of UV radiation will start coming to the earth, what will that lead to? That will lead to
things like cataracts or maybe burning of the skin of different animals or probably more
amount of mutations that we will start seeing in a number of organisms and so on.

So, that is another impact of human beings on the environment. Or changes in the
biogeochemical cycles such as the nitrogen cycle; naturally there is a fixed amount of
nitrogen that can be taken up by the soil because of the natural processes, such as lightning
or say biological nitrogen fixation. But then using our industrial processes such as the
Haber process that we have seen earlier, we are putting in much more amount of nitrogen
into the soils.

So, we are playing with different biogeochemical cycles such as the nitrogen cycle causing
other impacts on the environment; or loss of biodiversity and extinctions that we had
discussed before. Or changes in the distribution of organisms or changes in biodiversity,
especially because of climate change.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:04)

970
In this case we have seen that if you have certain organisms which have say, this particular
range and this is south, this is north and then if you have more amount of global warming
or more amount of climate and then probably the range will shift more northward so that
there is a lower temperature that is available for these organisms.

So, changes in distribution of organisms, changes in biodiversity, also things like soil
erosion and changes in geo morphology or deposits that are derived from concrete, lime,
mortar and other calcareous materials outside the cave environment. Here what we are
seeing is that if you have more amount of tillage on the ground, if you are ploughing your
fields often so there will be more amount of soil erosion; because now the soil is more or
less unbound.

If there is any wind or if there is water flow, this soil will get eroded away and then it will
move to other areas. It will lead to changes in the geomorphology. For instance, if we talk
about the Sundarbans area.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:15)

In the case of any delta so let us say that here we are representing the Sundarbans delta.
You have a number of distributaries that are coming out of the rivers and then, because
these rivers have been bringing huge amount of sediments; in these deltas because you are
now exposed to a saline environment because it is close to the seas.

971
These sediments start coming out of the water and they start getting deposited here which
is how we form a delta. So, in the case of a delta the sediments that were brought by the
rivers from the upper areas such as the mountains or the plains, they come to these delta
areas and they get deposited here. Now if we play with the amount of sediment load, say
if you have more amount of ploughing in the upslope area. There are a number of
agricultural fields and they are not being managed properly. So, there is a heavy amount
of sediment that is coming into the rivers, what happens in that case? The size of the delta
increases, because you have more amount of sediments that are now available in this area
or suppose you reduce the amount of sediments. Let us say, we constructed a dam here
and because of this dam all the sediments that this river was bringing it gets accumulated
here only.

So, it does not reach the deltas; in that case, the size of the deltas will start reducing. These
impacts of human beings are leading to soil erosion, they are leading to changes in the
geomorphology; also because we have created a number of artificial materials such as
concrete, lime and mortar, we are seeing some amount of stalactite like substances that are
coming, not in the cave environment, but outside.

(Refer Slide Time: 32:32)

What are stalactites? If you have say a cave and in this cave this area is a full of calcium
carbonate and you have water that is dripping from the top to this bottom. In this case,
some amount of calcium carbonate will start accumulating here because it is getting

972
deposited along with the water and if it is getting crystallized there. And then, we will also
see some amount of calcium carbonate deposit that starts building up at the bottom. So,
the upper portions are known as stalactites and the bottom portion is known as stalagmite
and if both of these continue for a very long period of time. So, they go on increasing in
their sizes and then after a while, they will meet each other and once that happens; the
whole thing will be called a column.

Now, these formations such as stalactites, stalagmites and columns which were earlier seen
only in the cave environments produce some very specific ecosystems and very specific
habitats for a number of organisms. But now, what is happening is that, you go to a parking
lot and in this parking lot, you see some amount of water that is dribbling out and then you
will start seeing these formations that are there in the parking lots as well. So, we are
changing the habitats in a number of areas which is also a big impact of human beings on
the environment.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:22)

Let us talk about the changes in stratigraphy due to increased sediment load and deposition
as in the case of deltas or talking about the changes in the elements in the atmosphere, such
as Carbon-12 that is released from the fossil fuels and radionuclides that are released from
nuclear fallout and atomic reactors. What we are talking about here is that, if we consider
the element carbon and carbon is there present in the case of carbon dioxide.

973
(Refer Slide Time: 34:44)

So, carbon is present in two isotopes: so carbon can be either carbon-14 or it can be carbon-
12. Now carbon-14 is continuously being produced and this element which is radioactive
element, it starts degrading with its own half life. And so the amount of carbon-14 to
carbon-12 that is there in the atmosphere, it remains constant because you have a constant
amount of carbon-12 and there is carbon-14 that has been produced at a continuous
constant rate. Now what happens when we burn up the fossil fuels is that the carbon that
was stored for a very long period of time so that has a very low amount of carbon-14.

Practically, you can say that it is more or less pure carbon-12, when you are burning it off,
so, you are changing the elementary or the isotope composition that is there in the
atmosphere, because you are increasing the amount of carbon-12 that is there in the
atmosphere.

When we talk about other radioactive nuclides or elements that have being released
because of the nuclear fallout in atomic reactors. Let us say you talk about strontium.
Strontium is not something that you normally find in the atmosphere or in the soil, but then
if there is a nuclear fallout say because of fukushima. So, you will see that there is a huge
amount of strontium that has been released into the atmosphere and has come into the soil.

What is very specific about strontium is that it is able to replace calcium that is there in
our bodies. Strontium might start getting deposited in the bones of different organisms and
because it is radioactive, so it will start killing off the bone marrow cells, it will start giving

974
up cancers to different organisms. So, these are the kinds of changes that we are bringing
about in the environment or changes in the soil; we can have water logging; especially in
those farmlands that are extensively being irrigated or in those areas where you have
constructed a dam.

In those areas there is so much amount of water that is now mixed with the soil that it has
created conditions of water logging, in which case the soil does not have any amount of
air that is left; it is completely saturated with water or desertification or buildup of
pesticides and other chemicals in the soil or introductions of a species and invasive species.

When we talk about lantana, lantana is an invasive species in our country. It is a big
problem for us because once it enters into a forest ecosystem, it is able to outcompete most
of the native vegetation, most of the native flora and then you will have a forest that is
only full of lantana. Now this invasive species was brought by human beings from Africa
to India so that it can be used in the case of gardens because it has beautiful flowers.

When we are bringing any species from one place to another; we can bring in those species
that might become a very invasive species in the new environment. And that is another
impact of human beings on the environment.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:39)

It could also be pollution, including light pollution. Take the case of organisms such as
turtles. Turtles, when they have given birth, when they have laid their eggs on a sea beach,

975
let us say that this is a sea beach and here you have the oceans. And suppose there is a
turtle and it has made a small nest here and then it has laid a number of eggs. Now when
the young ones hatch out then they make use of the moon that is there or some amount of
light that is there in the ocean side to guide them towards the oceans, because they need to
move towards the oceans. Now in the case of our human influences, suppose you have
these streetlights that are now giving out much more amount of light that is there on the
oceanic side, these young turtles they get disoriented and they start moving towards the
roadside.

Light pollution is also one big impact of human beings on the environment or things like
coral bleaching and wars that are now going on. So, all of these are different impacts of
human beings on the environment which is why now it is becoming more and more
important to understand the rules of human beings on the environment; because they can
change the ecosystems in big ways and also to see if we can reduce these impacts.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:02)

So talking about the impacts, we can quantify the impacts using this equation. This is an
empirical equation which says that the amount of impact of human activity on the
environment is given by the population in that area and when we talk about an area this
area could be as large as the world in total. For instance, for cases like climate change or
global warming this area would include the whole of the world.

976
We will consider all the human beings that are there on this planet. So, P is the population
in the area multiplied by A, and A is the affluence of the human beings that are there in
that area. So, affluence tells us the average consumption of each person in the population.
Remember, when we were talking about your grandparental generation versus the current
generation. Now affluence will give you an indication of how much are you consuming
and how much were your grandparents consuming in their times and affluence is generally
measured through the values of GDP per capita.

The more amount of money that you have per person, the more amount of resources that
you have per person, the more amount of consumption that is possible per person;
multiplied by T. And T is the technological advancement or a measure of how resource
intensive the production of affluences. If we are talking about say the requirement of food
grains, the food grains can be manufactured in the old technique which was more or less
in some sort of organic farming with some amount of manures that were put into the system
or because of technological advances, we can be making more and more use of pesticides
and fertilizers.

Here, T will tell us that for the same number of people, for the same amount of
requirements, you can produce these food grains either in an organic manner or by using
pesticides and fertilizers. So, the amount of technological advancement is also playing a
bigger role on the quantum of human impacts on the environment.

(Refer Slide Time: 42:16)

977
So, this is the formula that we need to remember.

The impact I = P x A x T

where P is the population, the number of people, A is the affluence, and T is the
technology. Now we will look at all these three one by one.

(Refer Slide Time: 42:40)

Let us begin with the population. If you look at the world population, so, here on the x axis
we have the world population from 10000 BC to present and also some future predictions
and here you have the population on the y axis. So, we can see that from 10000 BC till
right up to say around 1500 AD there was hardly any population growth; because the
number of births were being matched by the number of deaths. In certain instances, if you
had a big epidemic like bubonic plague, you could have situations where the number of
deaths even exceeded the number of births.

So, both of these were in sync. Now with the industrial revolution, we started having more
and more amount of resources that were available to us. Now everybody did not have to
work in the field. There could be some people who could devote themselves to other
professions as well, you had more and more amount of medical advancements that came
in. And because of that the death rate reduced drastically, but then the birth rates did not
reduce as fast as the death rates reduced. In that case, the population started moving
exponentially.

978
Here we can see that the population till around 1800 was less than a billion and now it is
reaching close to or it is crossed close to around 7 billion. So, when we talk about this
equation I = P x A x T; the P portion is increasing with time and not only are the numbers
increasing, but then we can also look at the density of population in different areas.

(Refer Slide Time: 44:26)

If we talk about see the people of Russia, they might not be able to bring about a very huge
amount of impact on their ecosystem because the density of people is less.

So, there are less number of people per unit piece of land or say people in Australia or
people in Canada, but then in these areas where we have more number of people per unit
area, the impact of the human beings will be much greater.

979
(Refer Slide Time: 44:56)

In the case of certain countries or certain territories such as Monaco, the population is as
high as more than 20000 people living per square kilometer.

These population densities they have also risen with time. So you can see an exponential
increase in the number of people and in the number of people per unit area. Now let us talk
about the next thing which is the affluence. Now affluence tells you how much is the
amount of material that is available to you per person, or how much is the amount of
purchasing power that you have. Now suppose you have purchasing power; suppose you
have say 1000 dollars with you, but then there is nothing in the market that is available so
that 1000 dollars do not make any sense. So, affluence has to be matched by the production
of things.

980
(Refer Slide Time: 45:57)

If we look at changes in the industrial output with time; here on the x axis, we have the
time and we have started it from 1270 and it has ended in 1870 and here on the y axis we
have the output of key industries. Here we can see that right about around 1600, which is
the point where we see that the industrial revolution began, here we can see that the
industrial output, it started rising. So, more and more amount of things were available for
different people.

(Refer Slide Time: 46:33)

981
So, the affluence started increasing and if we look at the world GDP through a time, we
can see that the GDP has also increased with time. So, say around 1500 AD, the world
GDP was not much, but now it is coming close to 100 trillion dollars of GDP.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:00)

And even if you look at GDP per capita, now earlier we were looking at the density of
population. Now we are talking about the GDP per capita. Now, the people who are having
more than GDP; the people who are having more amount of purchasing power, more
amount of things that they can use, more access to resources they will also put up more
amount of impacts. So, in this case, if we talk about the European countries or say the
continent of North America or the continent of Australia. In these cases, the amount of
GDP per capita is very high or we can say that the amount of consumption per capita is
very high. Now the more amount of resources that we are consuming, the more is the
impact on the environment that you will make.

982
(Refer Slide Time: 47:48)

If you look at the changes in the GDP per capita with time, here also we can see that the
GDP per capita has been increasing roughly exponentially in a number of areas. So, we
can say that when we are talking about the affluence, it is increasing with time.

(Refer Slide Time: 48:13)

So, the population is increasing the affluence is increasing and if you look at this particular
chart, here on the x axis we have GDP per capita in 1960 and here we have GDP per capita
in 2014 for all these different countries. Now there are only a few countries for which the
growth rate has not been enough. So, in which case, the GDP per capita in 2014 is less

983
than the GDP per capita in 1960, but for most of the countries we can say that the GDP
per capita in 2014 is much greater than the GDP per capita in 1960.

We can say that for a majority of countries in the world; the GDP per capita has been
increasing, it is not the case for just a few of the countries. Now let us now talk about the
third factor of impact which is the technology. Now, what is the level of technological
advances that we have been making?

(Refer Slide Time: 49:12)

We will look at a few case studies. The first thing is the number of transistors that are there
in your micro processors. Here again, you have on the x axis you have the years, we have
started from 1971 and here you can see that the number of transistors per capita it has been
increasing exponentially; or we can say that at least in the field of computers we are having
an exponential increase in the technological advance.

984
(Refer Slide Time: 49:36)

Same thing with the amount of super computing power that you have. How many number
of floating point operations you can perform per seconds in the supercomputers, and here
again from 1993 till date, we can see that it has been increasing exponentially; or things
like microprocessor speed, it has been increasing exponentially.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:58)

985
(Refer Slide Time: 50:08)

Not only is this technological advancement limited to the computing sector, if we look at
say, sectors like biology, what is the cost of a sequencing a particular portion of genome?
So, in this case we are asking the reverse question; for 1 dollar how many number of base
pairs in the genome can you sequence?

If you can sequence more number of base pairs per dollar, it means that your technology
has been increasing, you are becoming more and more efficient. On the x axis, you have
the years from 2001 till 2015 and here again you can see that the increase has been
exponential.

In all these cases, the increase in technology has been more or less exponential; it has been
increasing. Now if impact is population into affluence into technology, population is
increasing, affluence is increasing, technology is increasing. What will happen to impact?
The amount of impact will also increase.

So, which is why, now we can understand why the impact of human beings has been
increasing with time. Now what are the ways available with us? How can we reduce our
impacts? Well one thing would be to say that we should try to reduce the amount of
population that we have, but then reduction of operation will take a huge amount of time.
So, that is not something that we can do say in the next 2 to 10 years. This will take say
100 years or say 200 years. So, this is not something that we can change very fast.

986
If we talk about affluence, if you try to reduce the affluence, what you will be saying is
that more and more people should be converted into poor people. They should have less
access to resources which is not something that we as a society can agree to. What about
changes in the technology? Should we say that we should stop making any technological
advances; even that is not possible because we need access to more and more technologies.

If this is not possible, this is not possible, this is not possible and how are we going to
reduce the impacts? In this case, we can play with the technologies that we have; we can
make use of such technologies that are able to reduce the impacts on the environment. One
good case study is that of plastics.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:44)

Here on the x axis we have the years from 1980 till 2015. And we are looking at the global
plastic waste by the modes of disposal. Of the 100% plastics that were produced in 1980,
the amount that was recycled or the amount that was incinerated to produce energy was
practically 0, but then if we talk about 2015; we can say that, say around 10% or 15% of
the plastics is getting recycled.

We have developed technologies through which we can reduce the amount of plastics that
needs to be thrown out into the environment. Now of course, if we look at the 100% in
1980 that was much less than the 100% that we have today, but then at least we have
started moving in this direction. So, technologies can be made use of to reduce the impacts
of the human beings on the environment.

987
(Refer Slide Time: 53:54)

The second thing is, even in the case of populations, when we are saying that there has
been an exponential increase in population; if we look at the growth rate of the world
population it peaked somewhere in the 1960s.

Here you have a peak growth rate of 2.1% every year, but then now if we look at the
growth rate of population it is close to around 1% or say 1.2% every year. So, the world
population it has not started decreasing, but at least the rate of increase has reduced. And
if this reduction continues then after a short while we will have case in which the world
population will start behaving more and more steadily.

We will have reached some peak. In this case, the world population has been increasing
so far, but then because the growth rate has been reducing. Now, we are seeing that it is
now becoming a bit more flatter. So, that is another silver lining. Even in the case of the
population, you can say that we can reduce it or we have already started to reduce the
population or started to put brakes on our rate of increase, but then it is going to take some
more time.

988
(Refer Slide Time: 55:14)

Next, if we look at the fertility rates or the number of children that every woman had. So,
in the 1950s here we see that there were a number of countries in which you had this
fertility rate of as high as 6 or 7, but now if we look at the current scenarios, we have only
a few countries in which you have a fertility rate as high as 4 and in a number of countries
it has now even come to less than 2.

(Refer Slide Time: 55:53)

We are having even lesser number of children per couple or if you look at the population
pyramids with time. If we see this population pyramid that was there in the year 1950. In

989
the year 1950, from this population pyramid we can see that there is a large sized base,
which tells us that more and more number of children were being born in this time. If you
look at the current population pyramid, now the amount of more children that are being
introduced into the population that has reduced as compared to the adult population.

So, now we are having say, lesser number of children per adult as compared to that in
1950; and in the case of the projected growth population pyramid in the case of the year
2100 we will be having lesser number of children that are being born as compared to the
number of adults that we have.

You can observe that in this particular equation I = P x A x T, we are now developing
more and more technologies that will reduce the impacts that we have on the environment.
The affluence is going to increase with time because this is not something that we would
want to put our brakes on, but then in the case of population as well, we are now seeing
signs that the population will start reducing; the population growth rate has already
reduced, but then in a short time will start moving towards a period of stability.

(Refer Slide Time: 57:25)

If you remember the case of the population growth curves, here also we said that the
number of individuals in a population versus time, it will show a sigmoidal pattern. Now,
in the case of the human population we have so far been in this area. So, there has been an
exponential increase till this point, which is why because this area as the log phase. But

990
then, now we are entering into this area in which we are seeing that the population growth
rate has started to reduce.

In this particular lecture we looked at the importance of looking into human ecology. What
are the kinds of impacts that we are making into the environment? And those impacts have
now become so huge that they are now eclipsing any other impacts by any other causes
such as say natural changes in the radiation of the sun, that has been much more eclipsed
by the climate change or the natural rate of extinction that has been much more eclipsed
by the anthropogenic extinctions that are happening in the environment or natural levels
of habitat change that they have been very much eclipsed by the amount of habitat changes
that we are bringing into the system. So, that is making a study of human ecology more
and more relevant.

In the case of human ecology, we look at the impacts of human beings on ecology and we
also look at the applications of ecological principles on to the human beings. So, in this
current anthropocene era; when we say anthropocene; it means that this is a geological
time scale, this is an epoch in which the human beings are having a relatively very huge
impact on the geology, on the ecology, on the biosphere and so on. We will look at these
topics in more detail in the next lecture.

That is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

991
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Indian Forest Service, M.P.
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 26
Human population growth and food requirements

“Namaste”,

Today we move forward with our discussion on Human Ecology and in this lecture we
will look at Human population growth and food requirements, especially the theory of
Thomas Robert Malthus.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:23)

We had seen Thomas Malthus in our first module in the lecture on the history of ecology.
He was an English cleric and scholar who lived between 13th February 1766 and 23rd of
December 1834. And in 1798 he wrote a book “An Essay on the Principle of Population”
and this book has had a very deep impact on the study of population ecology. What did he
write in this book?

992
(Refer Slide Time: 01:03)

Basically the tenets of Malthusian growth models are these. The first point is that
population grows in geometric progression roughly doubling every 25 years. Now this 25
years is a time frame that he noted from his particular times, but then later on we will see
that this 25 years no longer holds valid.

But, more or less what he said was that the population grows in geometric progression. So,
if you have say 1 million people somewhere so, from 1 million in 25 years that will become
2 million, then in the next 25 years it will become 4 million then 8 million and then 16
million and 32 million and so on. So, if we see that this one is 25, 50, 75, 100, 125; so in
125 years it has moved from 1 to 32.

However, if we look at the food supplies they do not increase in geometric progression,
but they increase in arithmetic progression. So, in this period; in 125 years, it will go from
1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, 5 and 6. So, suppose in the beginning, we had 1 million people and
say 1 million kg of cereals so, at the end of 125 years we will be having 32 million people
and only 6 million kgs of, tons of cereal. So essentially it says that, the population tends to
overrun food supply.

Suppose, you try to increase the food production for some particular point of time so, in
that period because the population is dependent on the food. So, the population will
increase very fast and even if you start with a larger amount of food, in a very short time

993
the population will overrun the food supply. So, this creates an imbalance so, you have
more number of people and less number of resources.

If you remember our talks on Darwinism, that also said a very similar thing that every
organism tends to over produce, but then the resources are limited and so, there is a
struggle for existence. Now, in the struggle for existence, there are some organisms that
die out.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:33)

When you have overpopulation; so, suppose you have 10000 individuals of any particular
species, let us say that we are considering a Chital population. Now you have 1000
individuals, but the carrying capacity is say 700 individuals. In this case, 300 individuals
will die off, why would they die off? Because you have limited amount of resources, more
number of individuals, everybody is fighting and so in that case there would be some
individuals who will be dominant and some individuals who will be not so dominant or a
bit recessive.

The dominant individual is able to get more amount of food because it is able to drive
everybody away. For instance, things that we talked about in the case of intra specific
competition, so, there will be competition and there will be some individuals in any
population that will be able to drive off the other individuals. When you have this driving
off of other individuals, so there will be some individuals in this population precisely 300
individuals who do not have access to sufficient amounts of food; so they will suffer from

994
malnutrition, maybe they will suffer from some diseases and slowly and steadily they will
die off. Ultimately, we will come to a situation where you have only 700 individuals left
which is equal to the carrying capacity. Now, these are the tenets of Darwinism.

Here, what we are talking about is an intra-specific competition. In the case of Malthus,
what he says is that here also you have a population that grows very fast, you have a food
supply that is growing not so fast, now in this case the food supply we can correlate it with
the carrying capacity of the environment. In the case of Darwinism the carrying capacity
was more or less fixed, but in this case Malthus saw that the food supply is increasing; so
he stated that it goes on increasing in an arithmetic progression. But here is well you will
have a situation in which the population tends to overrun the food supply and when that
happens then nature would bring in some sorts of checks and balances.

Malthus also said that this imbalance is corrected by positive checks. So, these deeds of
people he is referred to as positive checks. And he said that these positive checks are vice,
misery, famine, war, disease, pestilence, floods and other natural calamities. He said that
in his theory, we are not talking about intra specific competition and some people who are
able to drive off others, but then he says that the nature’s way of solving this issue is to
bring about some positive checks.

You will have some famine or maybe you will have some floods or you will have some
diseases that are going to wipe out a major portion of the population. And once that
happens the population which reduces to a level that is beings that can be sustained by the
level of agricultural productivity. But then Malthus said that these positive checks are not
a good way of checking the population because here we are talking about human beings
and we do not want to have a situation of floods or families or diseases or pestilence.

Then he said that as human beings, we have this other option that we can correct this
imbalance, the imbalance between the number of people and the food supply using
preventive checks. Now, preventive checks are foresight, late marriage, celibacy, moral
restraint and so on. Essentially, he said that even though in nature’s plan is that we are
going to increase our population in a geometric progression, but then we as human beings
we can use our foresight or there could be some individuals who can let go of producing
offspring. So, they are not producing any offsprings, they are living a celibate life or there
could be people would opt for a late marriage.

995
So, if you have a late marriage, in that case the rate of population growth will come down
because in place of having population that is doubling every 25 years maybe you will have
a population that is doubling every say 30 years. So, he said that late marriage is also a
way in which we can use a preventive check and things like moral restraint and so on.

So, this is in short, the Malthusian growth mode. The population increases in a geometric
progression, food increases in an arithmetic progression. That leads to an imbalance and
there are positive checks and there are preventive checks. So, this is in short the Malthusian
model.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:49)

If we look at the world population growth rate, so, we can say that, yes, it does increase
exponentially, so there is some amount of this geometric progression thing that is working.
So, the population is increasing at a very fast rate.

996
(Refer Slide Time: 09:06)

Now, if we put the Malthusian theory in terms of mathematics, we can say that if P(t)
denotes the population at a time t,

Then, the rate of increase of the population is denoted as

𝑑𝑃
= 𝑘𝑃
𝑑𝑡

where k is a constant and P is the population.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:50)

997
Essentially what this thing is saying is that, you have a population that is increasing now;
the rate of increase of the population will be proportional to the population that is present
at that particular point of time.

So, essentially if you have a situation in which you have 1 million people, so, in that case
you will have many more births as compared to a situation in which you only have say
100,000 people; so in this case you have less number of births. Because in the case of a
smaller population, you have a lesser number of females that are pregnant at an important
of time or are producing the offsprings, because the females of any population that are
very young or that a very old will not be producing the offsprings, only those females that
are in the reproductive age are going to produce the population or are going to produce the
offsprings. In that case, we can say that the change in population with respect to time is
proportional to the population P.

𝑑𝑃
∝P
𝑑𝑡

𝑑𝑃
= k P, where k is a constant.
𝑑𝑡

Integrating the above equation,

P(t) = Po e k t, where Po denotes population at time t0.

So, here we are saying that the population at any time t is equal to some constant value
which is the population at time point 0 multiplied by e to the power k into t where k is this
constant that we had derived here and t is the time period. So, this would say that we have
a population that is increasing exponentially.

998
(Refer Slide Time: 11:34)

And from here we can define this term called as the doubling time. Now, doubling time or
td is defined as the time that is required to double the population size. So, suppose we
started with 1 million people, so, how much time does it take for the population to increase
from 1 million to 2 million or from 2 million to 4 million or from 4 million to 8 million,
that time t d is called the doubling time. So, here we can say that in time td we have the
population at time td is twice the original population or the population at time point 0.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:18)

999
So, we know that the population at any time t is given by the equation P(t) = Po e k and we
are saying that the population at time td is equal to twice the original population, which is
represented as P(td) = 2P0

The population at any time t is given by the equation P(t) = Po e k…………………………………. (1)

The population at time td is represented as P(td) = 2P0…………………………………………………… (2)

Replacing t as td in equation (1),

2P0 = Po e k td

2 = e k td

Taking natural logarithm on both sides,

ln 2 = ln e k td

ln 2 = k td

Rearranging the equation,

1
td = 𝑘 ln 2, where td is a constant,

Now, in this particular case because ln 2 is a constant and k is also a constant so, we can
say that td is constant or essentially when you are having an exponential increase, there
will be a fixed time period td which is known as the doubling time in which you will see
that the population is increasing in a geometric progression so, this is what Malthus said.
1
So, essentially this is a formula that we can remember td = 𝑘 ln 2, but then, is this theory

correct? Is this what we actually see out there in nature?

It turns out that, if you have a population that is increasing exponentially and you have the
food supply that is increasing in an arithmetic manner, then we should have had a number
of famines, a number of floods, a number of pestilences, but then we are not seeing all of
these today which brings us to the criticisms of this model. So, there are some things in
this model that are not quite correct.

1000
So, the first criticism is that the population growth is not as suggested. The population
growth is not completely exponential. In our results we had seen that this term td is a
constant which Malthus said that it would be 25 years.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:47)

But then, if we look at the actual doubling time, so, on this x axis we have the years, on
the y axis we have the number of years it takes to double the population. So, if we look at
this point 1543 so, it took 697 years for the world population to double from 0.25 billion
in 637 to 0.5 billion in 1543.

So, it took as many as 697 years or close to 700 years to move from 0.25 billion to 0.5
billion. And if we look at a time point later on so, if we look at this year 1928; in 1928, the
world population had reached 2 billion and it had taken only 125 years to move from 1
billion to 2 billion. So, the t d is not constant, it can vary from as much as say around 700
years to as little as 37 years. So, if you look at this point so, in 1987 the world population
was 5 billion and it had taken only 37 years to move from 2.5 billion to 5 billion. What we
are saying here is that even though the Malthusian model says that your t d is a constant,
but then in actuality we are saying that t d is not a constant.

1001
(Refer Slide Time: 16:35)

We cannot say that the population is actually growing exponentially, even though it looks
like an exponential growth. Because when we are plotting the population versus time; it
does look like we are increasing the population like this, but then if we look into the
intricacies we find that t d is not a constant here.

(Refer Slide Time: 16:51)

And it turns out that actually the population grows by this demographic transition.

What do we mean by a demographic transition?

1002
(Refer Slide Time: 17:05)

Consider a society; in the first case, you have a society, that is a primitive society and in
this primitive society you have a high birthrate and a high death rate. Now, you have a
high birthrate, because there are no methods of contraception that are available and
because people are reproducing as much as possible. So, that because in this society you
have a higher death rate. So, every parent wants that at least some of it is offsprings are
able to survive to it is own maturity.

Remember, we are again talking about fitness. Now fitness is the situation in which you
are able to produce your offspring and your offsprings are such that they are also able to
produce their own offsprings. Now this primitive society has a high death rate. Now, why
does it have a high death rate? Because you do not have modern medicine that is available.

If there is any communicable disease, if you have any infection, there is a very huge
possibility that you might die. Also, sanitation is not there so, people are suffering from
diseases like cholera, you do not have good houses, so you might have huge amounts of
say plague or diseases that come up when you are not living in a sanitary environment and
so on.

So, there is a huge death rate. You do not have sufficient access to food, there is widespread
malnutrition, even your theories of nutrition have not been developed. So, you do not know
if somebody is getting, say, scurvy or somebody is getting beri-beri. So, you do not know
why are they getting these diseases or that you can prevent scurvy by giving some amount

1003
of lime or some amount of citrus fruits. So, you do not have all of these information and
in the absence of all these information you have a very high death rate.

If you have a high death rate the society compensates by having a high birth rate. So, for
instance, if you know that out of every 6 children 5 children are going to die in their infancy
so, you have say an infant mortality rate of 5 out of 6. So, if you… as parents, if you want
to have at least one progeny that lives to its maturity; so, you would want to have at least
say 6 children because you know that 5 out of 6 are going to die anyway. So, a high death
rate leads to a high birth rate.

In these societies with a very high birth rate and a very high death rate, both the high birth
rate and the high death rate cancel out each other. So, the rate of population growth is very
less, because the number of individuals that are born into this society a number of them
die off. So, this is the first stage in the transition in which you have a high birth rate and a
high death rate.

The second stage in demographic transition is where you are reducing the death rates. So,
you have shifted from a high death rate to a low death rate. Now, how are you able to
reduce the death rate? By providing more amount of nutrition, by providing modern
medical facilities, by having more amount of information about what somebody should
eat, how to prevent diseases, how to treat diseases, if they are there.

In this level of society, you have now a low death rate. But then a low death rate does not
automatically transition into a low birth rate. Why? Because parents who were in the
previous generation producing say 6 offsprings, they will not shift from say 6 offsprings
to one offspring in an instant. So, you have the society in which you have a low death rate
because of the medical facilities and because of the advances in science and technology,
but you still have a high birthrate.

If that is the situation, you have a low death rate and a high birthrate so, in that case you
have a number of individuals that have been born in this population, but because the death
rate is low so, a number of them are also able to survive and reproduce further.

When that happens, you see the classical case of an exponential rate of population increase.
So, this is population versus time and you have individuals that are being added into this
population again and again and the more number of individuals that you have in this

1004
population the more number of offsprings that are produced. So, this cycle supports itself
and the population booms, that is the second stage.

The third stage in this demographic transition is when you have a very huge amount of
population. So, now the society tries to reduce the birthrate as well.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:17)

In this case you have a low death rate and you shift from a high birth rate to a low birth
rate. Now, how can you have a low birth rate? By say having more access to contraceptions
or say by having an increased age at which people want to have offsprings or maybe in
this society, now people just do not want to have any offsprings or they just want to have
only one off springs. So, in place of having a norm of say 6 or 7 babies, now the norm is
shifted to just 1 baby.

In this case you have a low death rate and a low birth rate. So, again the birth rate and the
death rate are able to counter each other. So, the net increase in the population will be very
small. So, the population is now stabilized. So, in place of having your population that was
increasing like this, now you have a population that is now moving towards stability. So,
in this case the population will become stable in a very short period of time; because now,
again you have a low birthrate that is being compensated by a low death rate.

The fourth stage in the transition could be of a stage in which you continue to have a low
death rate, but you have an even lower birth rate, so, we had talked about the replacement

1005
level fertility. A replacement level fertility is a situation in which you have 2 people in the
parental generation and they are able to replace themselves in the next generation. So, for
instance you have a mother and a father so, 2 people in one generation and then in the next
generation you also have 2 kids. So, that is the replacement level fertility. What if you
have 2 individuals and the parental generation and less than 2 individuals in the next
generation.

Suppose, on an average you have say 1.7 babies or say even just 1 baby. So, in that case
the population will now go on decreasing itself. So, in place of having this population that
was just stabilizing itself, now you can have a situation in which the population has started
to decrease. So, that can be another mode in which the demographic transition occurs.

What we are observing here is that you have the birth rates and the death rates. In the very
first instance, you have a high birth rate and a high death rate. So, the birth rate is this
green colored curve and the death rate is this blue colored curve. Now, in this stage, when
you have a high birth rate and a high death rate, the population does not increase, the
population remains more or less constant.

Then, in the second stage, when you have a falling death rate and the birth rate has
remained stable so, in this case the population has started rising. In the third stage, you
have a falling death rate that continues and the birth rate has started to decrease, but here
again we see that, we are increasing in the population, but then it is now becoming more
and more stable and this is the stage where they actually are today. Now, in a short while
when we reach this stage in which your birth rate and the death rates both are low, so, in
this case we will observe flatness in the total population.

This yellow curve is the total population and then, when you have reached this flatness,
the fifth stage can be a stage in which your birth rate starts rising again or maybe the birth
rate becomes even lower than the death rate and in both the cases you will have different
results. So, if birth rates increase then you will see a further increase in the population or
else you will start seeing a decrease in the population.

These stages can also be represented in terms of the population pyramids. In the case of a
population pyramid, what we are seeing here. A population pyramid looks like this.

1006
(Refer Slide Time: 26:43)

Here you have the number of men in the population, here you have the number of women
in the population and then this is the age of different cohorts. Let us say that in the case of
an age group between 0 to 5 years, you have a number of babies, some of which are male
babies, some of which are female babies.

In the case of 5 to 10 years, you have a lesser number of individuals that are here. Then
progressively it reduces, 15, 20, 25, 30 and maybe 35. Now, this is a population where we
are saying that you have a life expectancy of around 35 years plus if we consider the
population that is there in the reproductive age, let us say bit more than say 18 to 35 years.
So, here we have less number of individuals that are there, but then the number of children
that are being born are very large.

In this case, this is representing a population with a high birth rate and a high death rate.
Now, this has a high death rate because if you look at any particular rung; so, in this
particular rung here we have so many children, but then out of these children only these
many are able to reach to the next rung and then only these many are able to reach the next
step of the ladder.

In this pyramid, we are seeing a high birth rate and a high death rate and this is represented
here. So, this is a population in which you have a high birth rate so, the bottom is very
large, a high death rate so, it is tapering very fast and this is representative of the first stage;
a high birth rate and a high death rate.

1007
(Refer Slide Time: 29:03)

In the case of the second stage, you have a reduction in the death rates. When you have
more death rates, so, suppose you have a population in which you have a very steep death
rate. Now, if you reduce the death rates so, these many individuals that were dying off, so,
now they will survive and maybe your death rate will reduce. In this case, the curve will
become something like this.

So, it is now becoming more and more triangular; it still has a very large sized base because
you have a number of children that are being born, so, these are the number of children
being born, but if you look at the number of children that are there at the age of 5 years.
So, earlier we had only these many children, but now, because you are able to reduce infant
mortality and you are able to reduce under 5 child mortality, so, the number of children
that are able to survive that has increased. Now, this curve in place of looking like this, it
now looks more like a triangle. So, this is the second population pyramid that we observe.

Here you have a high birth rate, but death rate that is now lowering. Now, when you have
a stage in which your birth rate also starts to slow down. In this case, earlier we had this
large taper; now the taper will start to reduce; so that is the third stage.

1008
(Refer Slide Time: 30:39)

In the third stage, what is happening is that in place of having the curve that was looking
like this. Now, the society is trying to reduce the number of children that it is having.
Probably, in place of having a steep slope like this, probably it will look like this, because
the individuals that have already have been born, but then the society can only reduce then
the children that are being born now or in the future.

In this case, in place of having these many children that were being born, now the society
is trying to reduce this number to this much; which is why we are observing that this curve
is now starting to lose out these two corners that were there in this triangle.

In the fourth stage, when you have a low birthrate and a low death rate, what is happening
is that, after having this particular shape of the curve. Now, what the society is trying to
do is to convert it into a shape that looks like this.

1009
(Refer Slide Time: 31:52)

Now you are trying to reduce your birth rates, but because the death rate is also low. Any
individual that is born is going to survive for a very long period and then slowly you will
start seeing the death at a very old age. Here again you have the age and here you have the
number of women and the number of men, or the male and the female population that is
there.

In this case what we are seeing is that, for till say a particular age; till the age of, say 45 or
50, there is hardly any death that we are observing in this particular population. So, there
is hardly any deaths that we are observing till this particular age, let us say that this age is
say 45 years or say 50 years. And even after this year, this age, because the society is
having access to modern medical facilities. So, even the deaths after this age are very low
in numbers and so it very slowly it becomes to the top and then this is the life expectancy
of this particular population or this particular society. So, this is how we represent that
society in the case of a population pyramid.

Later on, it is possible that the society might try to reduce the birth rates even further and
when that happens, you will see a society that will start looking like this. So, the number
of children that have been born or that are being born, that the society would try to reduce
that even further. So, from having these many number of children, probably the society
will start to think about having these many number of children or it is also possible that
the society might find that now the population has a number of old individuals and

1010
probably we need number of children to support ourselves. So, it is also possible that you
might have a curve that will start to bulge out in the bottom.

This is what is represented here in the case of the fifth stage. So, this is the fifth stage of
the society that has a low birthrate, a low death rate, but then the birth rate is slightly more
than the death rate. So, that was the first criticism of Malthus that what he had projected is
not exactly correct because it also depends on the level of affluence of the society, it also
depends on what stage of demographics stage you are there in the society.

The second criticism of Malthus is that agricultural growth is not as he had suggested.
Malthus had suggested that agricultural growth goes as an arithmetic progression 1 to 2, 2
to 3 and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:04)

And that is possible when we are looking at a short period of time. For instance, here we
are seeing that the growth rate is increasing in an arithmetic progression.

1011
(Refer Slide Time: 35:17)

But then, if we look at longer time scales, we find that here also we are observing an
exponential increase in the yields of a number of crops. So, here we are saying the long
term cereal yields in the case of United Kingdom, on the x axis we have the time so, it
starts from 1270 and goes till 2014 and on the y axis we are seeing the yields; how many
tonnes per hectare of cereals are being produced.

Here we are looking at the red color is barley, the blue one is oats and the green one is
wheat. Now, if you look at the very early stage productivity, we see that the productivity
was close to say 0.5 tonnes per hectare, but now the productivity is as high as 8 tonnes per
hectare in the case of wheat. So, from 0.5 tonnes per hectare to 8 tonnes per hectare, in this
period we saw more or less in arithmetic progression, but then in this period what we are
observing is a geometric progression or an exponential increase.

What Malthus had predicted in the case of agricultural productivity or agriculture supply,
that is also not correct. It might move as a geometric progression or it might even move as
an exponential growth or a geometric progression. Malthus also did not consider that with
time we can even incorporate more land into our agricultural sector.

1012
(Refer Slide Time: 36:49)

If we look at the amount of land that has been used for different sectors; let us consider
this diagrammatic representation of the amount of land that is there in different sectors.
Here we can see that this pink area is the amount of land that we have diverted to the crops.
This is the cropland area. Then the red portion is the amount of area that has been diverted
to livestock.

We can see that roughly around say between one forth and one third of the total area of the
earth has been diverted to agriculture. It is either a cropland or it is a land that is used for
livestock or a land that is being used for grazing. What about the other lands? The green
one is showing us the area that is under the forest, the blue one is showing roughly the
amount of area that we have under built up area, the brown one is showing us the amount
of area that is barren land and this dark brown area is showing us the amount of area that
is a shrub land and this blue area is the total amount of fresh water.

If you add up all the fresh water that is there in the world, if you add up all the lakes, all
the ponds, all the rivers, it would be roughly the size of Mongolia. And if you add up all
the cropland, it would be roughly the size of China plus Japan plus some other countries
of Southeast Asia. And this proportion has not remained constant with time. We have tried
to increase the amount of land that is there available for croplands and for livestock and
how do we do that? Through time, we have chopped up some of the areas of forest and we
have diverted that land into our agriculture or maybe we have diverted some amount of

1013
shrub land into agriculture or we have diverted some amount of barren lands into
agricultural sector. In this manner, the amount of land that is being used for agriculture is
increasing with time.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:11)

And for a number of countries such as India, we can say that as much as around 80% of
the land is currently being used for agriculture. And again, this chart is showing us, the
share of land that is being used for agriculture in different countries. In some of the very
cold countries like, when we talk about Canada or when we talk about say Greenland, the
total area that is under cultivation or under agriculture is say less than 10%, but then in
some countries such as India, it is as much as 80% and in some of the countries it is now
even more.

1014
(Refer Slide Time: 39:55)

If you look at the rise of or the increase in the agricultural areas, here we can see that on
the x axis we have the area that was there under agriculture and agriculture started around
10000 BC and we can see that the amount of area under agriculture that has also been
increasing exponentially. So, we have been diverting a number of habitats, we have been
diverting a number of other land uses and we are putting more and more land under
agriculture.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:25)

1015
And this agriculture includes both the cropland. So, the crop lands have also been
increasing exponentially and especially in the last 200 - 300 years we can see that the
increase has been very rapid.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:43)

There has been more land in the case of cropland in more land in the case of grazing as
well.

The fourth thing that Malthus did not consider was the rule of technology.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:55)

1016
When we are talking about the exponential increase in yields. We saw this curve before;
wheat, barley and oats. Here we are saying that the total amount of agricultural production
that is there.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:11)

The total amount of crops or the amount of food, it can be represented as the yield per acre
multiplied by the number of acres. We see that the yield per acre has been increasing with
time, we see that the yield per unit piece of land has been increasing with time. And also
we have seen that the number of acres that are put under cultivation, the amount of area
that is put under agriculture, that has also been increasing with time.

Why do we see an increase in the yield and increase in the area? Increase in the area can
be addressed or can be explained by the diversion of lands under different land uses into
agriculture. From forest to agriculture, barren lands to agriculture, shrub lands to
agriculture and so on; but then what about the yield per acre? Why is that increasing?

1017
(Refer Slide Time: 42:21)

In this chart, we can see the pesticide use per hectare in the year 2011. Remember that, in
the days of Malthus, we did not have any chemical pesticides that were available. But now,
if we look, in the case of say countries like China we have as high as say, 20 kilograms of
pesticides that are being put per hectare of cropland, so, it is a very high amount. So, these
days we are using more and more amounts of pesticides.

(Refer Slide Time: 42:58)

If you look at the pesticides that are being produced and are being imported in different
countries, here also we can see that there has been a very drastic increase from 1960

1018
onwards. This is the period in which, using chemistry, using different chemical
engineering processes, we have not really discovered new and new pesticides, but we have
also discovered ways in which these pesticides can be made in large scale plants.

We are producing newer and newer pesticides and we are producing these pesticides in a
very large amount. And that is being shown here that the total amount of pesticides that
are being produced, it has been increasing and the pesticides that are being imported in
different countries, that is also increasing. So, there is a huge demand for pesticides.

(Refer Slide Time: 43:51)

Similarly, if we look at things like fertilizers; now, this graph is showing us the nitrogen
fertilizer that is being consumed in different areas. This red area is Asia and if we see that
in the case of 1960s, in early 1960s; we had a very small amount of nitrogenous fertilizer
that was being used in Asia or maybe even in the total world. In the entire world, we had
say around 15 million tons of nitrogen fertilizers that was being used every year and from
that 15 million tonnes now, we have even crossed 100 million tonnes.

This increase can be seen in most of the areas. In the case of Asia this increase is very
dramatic, in the case of North America it is very dramatic, in the case of Europe it increased
and then people moved into organic agriculture and so it decrease, but then overall we can
see that the increase throughout the world has been very rapid.

1019
(Refer Slide Time: 44:50)

That is true not just for nitrogenous fertilizers, but also for the other nutrients. Here we are
seeing the nitrogenous fertilizers and here we are seeing the phosphate fertilizers. Even the
amount of water that we are using in agriculture, it has been increasing. In essence, we are
developing newer and newer technology and we are deploying those technologies into the
fields.

(Refer Slide Time: 45:13)

If you look at this curve, here we are seeing on the x axis we have the fertilizer application
that is kg per hectare of available land and this is a logarithmic curve, so, it moves from 1

1020
kg to 10 kg to 100kg to 1000kg to 10000kg; and here on the y axis, here again we have a
logarithmic curve that is telling us the cereal yield in kg per hectare. So, here we can see
that roughly there is a correspondence.

The more amount of fertilizers that you use in any piece of land, the more will be the yield.
Here we can say that there is roughly this line would denote the curve. So, with more
amounts of fertilizer application, the yields have been increasing.

(Refer Slide Time: 46:03)

And the yields have been increasing so much that our requirement of land has now
practically saturated, we do not need much more amount of land for producing more and
more crops. Now, this curve is telling us that suppose on the x axis we have the years, it
moves from 1961 up to 2012.

And if we say that in the case of 1961, we required say 1 hectare of land for producing the
amounts of crops that were required then. Because of increase in productivity, these days
we require not 1 hectare of land, but as low as say around 0.3 hectare of land. So, after 50
years, the world uses 68% less land to produce the same amount of food.

Of course, through all these years our population has increased, so our demand for food
has also increased. So, this curve will not represent completely that we are now using only
30% of the area for food production. The area for food production has also increased. But
what this curve is telling us is that by having a very high increase in yields, we have been

1021
able to counter the amount of land that is required for cultivation of different crops. So,
these are some criticisms of Malthus.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:26)

Some other criticisms are that the population is not related to food supply but to total
wealth. Essentially what this is saying is that in the case of Malthus he said that the
population is limited by the food supply. So, if you are not able to supply enough amount
of food to the population, the population will suffer an imbalance and that imbalance will
be corrected by the positive and preventive checks.

Now, we know that the population is not limited by the food supply, but it is more or less
related to the total wealth or the total affluence of the society at that particular point of
time. Why? Because if a society is more affluent. So, in that case, it would be able to afford
modern medicine, it would be able to afford more amount of nutrition, it will be able to
afford newer advances in science and technology, and in that case we will see a lowering
of the death rate and with a lowering of the death rate, after a while, the society will also
progress towards the lowering of the birthrate.

These days we are talking about the demographic transitions of all these 5 different stages;
from a high birthrate and high death rate, to a low death rate and high birthrate, to a low
death rate and a low birth rate, to a low death rate and an even lower birth rate and so on.

1022
But then, in the case of Malthus time, we did not have this understanding and so, Malthus
only related population growth to the food supply. He was not able to relate it to wealth
which we now know is the actual cause of population increase or decline.

Malthus also does not consider population increase due to lowering of death rates. That is
with new technologies with modern medicine we were able to reduce the death rates even
further and the Malthusian theory does not take this into account. Then preventive checks
do not pertain only to model restraint. So in the times of Malthus we did not have good
technologies for contraception, but in these days because we have a number of
contraceptives that are available in our society, be it intrauterine devices, be it pills, be it
condoms. So, we have so many contraceptive devices that are available for us that these
preventive checks are no longer just related to the moral checks. So, moral checks like
abstinence or having a higher age at marriage and so on or celibacy. So, these are not the
only moral restraints that are currently applicable in the society, but contraceptives are
playing a much bigger role.

Another criticism of Malthus is that the positive checks, he said that that there will be
positive checks that are thrown out by the nature, if you have a high population in an area.
If you have a population that has surpassed the amount of food that is available, only then
nature puts in the positive checks like pestilence or diseases or floods and so on, but then
we have seen that positive checks may occur even in the case of low populated countries
such as Japan.

In the case of Japan, the country has been suffering from a number of earthquakes, the
country has been suffering from tsunamis, from floods, and so on. And Japan is not a
particularly very highly populated area. So, the understanding of Malthus that is there in
his theory is probably a bit oversimplified and that is not how the societies or nature is
actually functioning.

That being said, the theory of Malthus does provide us a good food for thought because it
does tell us some of the tenets that we have been seeing in the case of population ecology
that the population increases exponentially, but then the amount of resources that are
available to that population do not increase in that faster manner. And so, there has to be
some checks and balances, but we should stop ourselves only at that particular point. What
should those checks and balances be or how does the population rate grow or how does

1023
the food supply grow, that has been changing because of the advent of modern science and
technology. So, that is something that needs to be remembered here.

That is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

1024
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 27
Sustainable development

“Namaste”,

We move forward with our discussion on Human Ecology and today we will have a look
at Sustainable Development.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:20)

1025
(Refer Slide Time: 00:28)

In this module we had begin with our definition of the amount of impact that is caused on
the environment, and we said that the impact I = P x A x T, where P is the population of
human beings, A is the affluence or the amount of resources that they have or the
purchasing power that they have, typically represented as GDP per capita and T is the
technology or the level of technological advance that humanity has at that particular place
or time.

In our previous lecture we saw that the population is increasing and the population has
been increasing for quite a while. So, this thing is increasing with time. The level of
affluence also is increasing with time because now we have access to much more amount
of resources. Now, we have access to much more purchasing power than our ancestors
had. Today we use much more modern technologies, we use much more amount of
electricity, much more amount of fuels as compared to our ancestors, but then what about
T?

T is the technology or the level of technological advance and we cannot reduce the
population in a jiffy because it will take quite some time to reduce the population. We saw
in the previous lecture that the growth rate of human population has been decreasing, it is
reaching to a level of decline, but then still the growth rate is positive. So, the population
is going to increase for a couple of decades, or maybe one more century.

1026
The level of affluence is not something that we would want to reduce because we want to
have people to have access to as much amount of resources, we want people to be rich,
people to be prosperous. So, we do not want A to come down, but then T is something that
we can play with the technological advance. Now, herein we have a choice that if we are
manufacturing something how much of attention should be give to the environment and
how much of attention should we give to the affluence of people?

(Refer Slide Time: 02:45)

Because, we have this choice everywhere, suppose you have a fixed amount of resources
and suppose the resources that we are considering is say iron and steel. Now, this iron and
steel and to take things in a very simple manner let us say that we can use this iron and
steel either to manufacture cars or to manufacture school benches. So, we have two
choices, we can either make cars or we can make school benches.

In this example, what we are referring to is that if we make more number of cars, so the
affluence of general community will increase and if we make more number of school
benches, so, we are trying to make the community more and more educated; we are giving
much more attention to the children. Do we give more attention to adults or do we give
more attention to the children?

Now, the amount of resources that we have is fixed, it is limited. Suppose we have let us
say that in this fictional country we have say 100 tonnes of iron and steel. Now, with that

1027
100 tonnes of iron and steel we can make cars, and if we put all of this 100 tonnes of iron
and steel into cars let us say that we are able to make 100 cars.

On the other hand, if we use all of it to make school benches then probably we will be able
to make say 10,000 school benches. Now, we have this choice that we can devote all of it
to making cars, so we make 100 cars and 0 school benches or we devote everything into
school benches and we make 10,000 school benches and 0 cars. So, what are the options
that we have?

(Refer Slide Time: 04:52)

Here are the options. You have cars and you have the school benches. So, you can make
100 cars and 0 school benches or you can make 0 cars and 10,000 school benches or maybe
something in between; maybe you can make 50 cars and may make 5000 school benches.
So, typically your 50 cars would come somewhere here and your 5000 school benches
would come somewhere here.

In this case, you have this curve that is giving you the option of how many cars and how
many school benches you can make. You can say make this much amount of cars and this
much amount of school benches, and this case you are making 80 cars and maybe you are
making 2000 school benches or you make just 20 cars and you make 8,000 school benches.
So, this is a choice that you have as a society or as a nation. Now, this thing is referred to
as a production possibility curve.

1028
(Refer Slide Time: 05:59)

And in general, the shape of the curve is something like this. Suppose you are making cars
and school benches. Now, typically we have seen that the rate at which you can make
something is very large in the beginning because if you are moving from say 0 school
benches to say 10 school benches it is much more easy to develop technologies such that
you are able to make 10 school benches. But then, if we are trying to move from say 9,990
school benches to 10,000 school benches, making an increment when you already have a
very high level of productivity, that becomes much more difficult.

In that case this is your curve and this is known as the production possibility curve or the
production possibility frontier. And in this case, you can take any point that is inside this.
So, as a society you might even decide that you will make only say 1 car and you will
make 1 school bench and you will keep all of your remaining iron and steel as such. Now,
that is not the most efficient utilization of your resources because as economists we would
want to make the fullest utilization of resources.

So, anything that is within this curve, anything that falls in this green area is something
that you can choose. Anything that falls on this particular curve or that falls on this yellow
line is the most efficient way of utilizing your resources, but then you will have to make a
choice between what you want. And anything that is outside or that is in this red region is
something that you cannot make because your resources are limited.

1029
Suppose, you said that I am going to make 100 cars and I am going to make 12,000 school
benches. So, at this point you have 100 cars and you have 12,000 school benches, but then
your amount of iron and steel is such that you cannot go with both of these. So, you will
have to restrict yourself somewhere. Now, similarly when we are talking about the
environment and if we are making any technology we again have to make a choice.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:32)

In this equation when we talked about I = P x A x T. When we are altering the

technologies, we have this option of how much of technology to put into affluence of
people and how much amount of technology to put into the environment.

Say, suppose you are making this particular pen. Now, you could choose a technology that
makes this pen in the cheapest possible cost. So, maybe you are able to make this pen for
say 10 rupees and these 10 rupees is the cheapest you can make this pen. Now, if you are
making this pen at a lower cost, so in that case the affluence of the people will be more
because say a person has say 100 rupees, so, he will be able to purchase 10 of these pens.

On the other hand, if you produce this pen at a larger cost say you are able to produce this
pen at 20 rupees. So, any person will be able to afford only 5 of these pens, but then when
you are making this pen and you are only considering about the cost of this pen, only when
you are only thinking about the affluence of the society it is possible that you are releasing
quite a lot of pollutants into the atmosphere because you are not treating those pollutants.

1030
So, when you are making this pen, it will give rise to certain pollutants and you are not
treating those pollutants, so that you can reduce the cost of this pen.

Suppose, if you treat all of those pollutants. If you say that no, I am not going to release
all any of these pollutants into the air or our water because I am very concerned about the
environment. So, in this case let us say that it takes 10 more rupees per pen to take care of
all the pollutants. So, you are able to convert all of your pollutants into non harmful
substances, but then that takes 10 more rupees.

In that case, your cost of pen will become the cost of manufacturing plus the cost of treating
waste. Now, the cost of manufacturing was 10 rupees and the cost of treating waste was
again 10 rupees. So, it becomes in total 20 rupees. Whereas, earlier when you were only
making the pen, you were not treating the waste your cost of pen was equal to the cost of
manufacturing which was 10 rupees.

In this case, let us say that an average person in your society has 100 rupees. Now, in the
first case, the number of pens that get afforded by the person becomes 10 and in this case
the number of pens that are afforded by the person it becomes only 5 because 100 divided
by 20 is only 5. So, here what we are discussing is how much amount of resources do we
put into affluence and how much amount of resources do we put into the environment.

Until the 60s we had this notion that we have a small population on this earth and we have
plentiful of resources, there is so much amount of oceans, so many lakes where if we can
dump our pollutants and we did not know about the ecological impacts of a number of
pollutants that we were thrown into our water bodies.

And so, in those days it was very easy to say that let us reduce the cost of this pen as much
as possible, so we make this pen for 10 rupees and we want to have as much amount of
affluence as we can give to the people. But these days, now that we know that our resources
are limited, our waste pools are limited, we cannot dump all of these waste materials into
the ocean bodies because ultimately it will come back to us. So, now, we are talking about
treating all these wastes and now we are talking about using a technology in a way such
that you are able to put least amount of impact on the environment. But then when you are
using your technology in a way that you are saving the environment, so, you are not saving
it just for yourself, you are saving it for the future generations. You are saving it for your
children or your next generations. So, if you are doing that, in the current generation you

1031
will have to make do with certain sacrifices. You will only have 5 pens. So, you will have
less resources for yourself, if you are saving these resources for the posterity or for the
future generations. And herein comes the topic of sustainability.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:40)

Sustainable development is defined as development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs. So,
essentially what you want is you want to have a development such that you are able to
meet the needs of the present.

Suppose, in your current generation you require say 6 pens and if you devote 10 rupees
into treating of the waste, so in place of your requirement or your need is say 6 pens. If
you devote everything into the future generations, you are only able to get 5 pens. So, that
is not a good scenario because you are not able to meet your needs.

But then, there is a difference between needs and wants, so probably I might need 6 pens,
but probably it is also possible that I might want 1,000 pens. So, there is a difference
between need and want. When we are talking about needs, we are talking about the genuine
requirements of every person, we are not talking about what every person wants.

In this definition we are saying that it is development that meets the needs of the present.
We cannot go away by not meeting the needs of the present because the present generation
also requires medicines, the present generation needs to be educated, the present

1032
generation requires jobs, the present generation requires some level of comfort. In this
case, we are not overlooking those needs or those requirements.

But at the same time, we should not be compromising with the ability of the future
generations to meet their own needs. So for instance, if just because my needs are 6, but I
want 10 pens; so if I make 10 pens in this method that I am not treating any of the waste
materials, so it is possible that I live in an environment for the future generations in which
they will not be able to meet their needs. Because the environment will be so polluted or
the environment will be having so few number of resources that I am jeopardising with
their needs.

If we are releasing so much amount of waste materials into the landfills, then we will be
having less number of landfills that are available for the future generations. Or probably I
am dumping so much amount of pollutants into the atmosphere and into the water bodies
that the future generation will not be able to meet their needs for proper amount of food.
So, that is a choice that we need to make.

In the case of sustainable development we want a development that meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs.
So, we are taking not just the current need into picture, but also the future needs. And this
concept contains in itself two key concepts. The concept of needs in particular the essential
needs of the world’s poor to which overriding priority should be given. So, in this case I
cannot say that we need to make some cuts. So, let us cut the amount of resources that the
poor have because I do not want to compromise with my level of comfort.

So, that is not something that can be done, because you have to give ample resources to
the poor as well because they also have the right to develop themselves. So, here when we
are talking about needs it does not mean to wants. So, the concept of needs is essential
needs and especially all the essential needs of the world’s poor need to be met.

The second idea is that of limitations that are imposed by the state of technology and social
organization on the environments ability to meet the present and future needs. So,
essentially what it is saying is that the environment has a limited ability to serve the needs
of the present and the future generations.

1033
If the environment had an unlimited ability, so any amount of pollutants that we dump into
the environment, it would be fine. But just because the environment is also limited in its
ability, so which is why we need to make these choices. And when we are making these
choices we need to ensure that all the essential requirements especially of the world’s poor
also have to be met. This is the definition that was given by the Brundtland Commission
and the report is called our common future and this is a very worth reading document.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:18)

When we are talking about sustainability or when we are talking about sustainable
development there are three pillars that we need to take care of. One is environmental
sustainability; that is the current usage of environment should be such that we are able to
meet our needs, but at the same time we are also able to meet the needs of the future
generations.

Similarly, we have the concepts of economic sustainability. Our economic structures have
to be such that they are able to persist, they are able to prevail and even our future
generations are able to meet their own needs. And similarly, we have social sustainability;
our social structure has to be such that everybody has opportunities to meet their own
needs.

If we make a social structure in which we have some people who are extremely deprived
and we have some people who are extremely affluent. So, in that case this structure will
not be able to persist or prevail for a very long period of time and we will say that, this

1034
structure or this kind of society will not be a sustainable society. So, we will now look at
all three of these.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:19)

When we talk about environmental sustainability, we are talking about say, things like
ecosystem services. What are the services that are being provided by the proper
functioning or the well functioning of an ecosystem? So, things like oxygen. So, oxygen
is given by the plants when they are doing photosynthesis. So, when we are talking about
environmental sustainability, we need to have ample number of plants that we are able to
get ample amount of oxygen or services that are provided by biodiversity such as
pollination.

Pollination is done by insects. So, we need to have ample number of insects that we are
able to meet this particular need of pollinating our crops or things like the impacts of the
predators. There are certain predators that eat up the insects that cause diseases. So, we
need to have ample number of frogs into our system; that is also an ecosystem service that
is being provided.

In the case of environmental services we talk about ecosystem services, we talk about
things like green engineering and chemistry, which is using engineering and chemistry in
a way that we are manufacturing such products that are not harmful to the environment.
We talk about things like air quality and water quality. They also need to be maintained
not just for the present generation, but also for the future generation.

1035
The amount of pollutants that we are releasing into the environment needs to be regulated.
Or we talk about reducing the effects of stressors like pollution greenhouse gas emissions
etc. In this case what we are saying is even those amount of pollutants that need to be
released into the environment to meet the needs of the present generation, we should try
to reduce their impacts. For instance, we are generating electricity by burning coal. So, we
will have to release certain amount of greenhouse gas emissions, but then, are there ways
in which we can reduce these greenhouse emissions.

Is there a way in which we can sequester this carbon; especially on site? So, if there is a
power plant that is using a coal. It is giving out a lot of carbon dioxide into its flue gases.
Is there a way in which we can capture this carbon dioxide? We also talk about things like
resource integrity by minimizing waste generation to prevent accidental release in the
future. In this case what we are talking about is that when we are manufacturing something
or when we are doing any process, is there a way in which we can minimize the level of
waste that is generated?. Because if there is a waste that is generated that will have to be
stored somewhere and if this waste is stored somewhere, then probably in future it might
there might be an accidental release of this waste.

For instance, if you are putting all your waste in a large size landfill and this landfill is
now all full and it has now converted into a mountain, it is possible that this landfill might
topple someday and some people might be killed because this landfill falls on them. Or
probably, if you are manufacturing electricity using nuclear reactors and we are generating
a huge amount of waste and we are storing this waste somewhere, it is possible that in
future there might be some leakage from this facility and all these radioactive nuclides will
come out. So, these are the things that we talked about in environmental sustainability.

1036
(Refer Slide Time: 22:46)

In the case of social sustainability, we talk about things like environmental justice and
empowerment of communities that are burned by pollution.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:05)

Let us say that we are doing a mining operation that is near to a village. In this case, we
have this big area and in this big area you have certain villages. So, you have a village
here, maybe a village here and maybe a village that is here and let us say that we are doing
some mining operation in this area.

1037
Now, when we are doing this mining operation there will be some amount of waste that
are released from these mines. Let us say that we are mining out copper minerals. So, when
that happens a lot of copper sulphate will come out. Now, that copper sulphate might then
get into the fields of these people. So, this copper sulphate is flowing out and it is getting
into the fields of these people, and once that happens, when you have all this copper
sulphate the plants are unable to grow properly.

Do we need to take out these minerals? Yes, but then when we are taking out these
minerals, we are providing benefits not just to these people, but also to these people and
also to these people because the copper that is being generated will be consumed by
everybody. But the negative impacts that will be suffered, will be suffered only by this
particular community.

When we are talking about environmental justice, we are saying that the communities that
are burdened by pollution, they also need to be empowered. So, there has to be a
mechanism in which they are properly compensated so that they are able to lead their lives
in a proper manner. Or we talk about things like protection, sustenance and improvement
of human health or things like increasing the participation of stakeholders. So, probably in
this mining company, you have these villages that are there as stakeholders and they are
not having any empowerment.

So, it is possible that when this copper sulphate is coming out, it is possible that the
company might set up a small plant where this copper sulphate can be treated maybe it can
be crystallized and sold somewhere else. And that would be an operation that will not be
cost intensive, in fact, it will be giving you some amount of revenue or it will be giving
the company some amount of revenue.

But then probably the people in the company they just do not want to set up this copper
sulphate plant because they are not feeling a huge need because in the case of their mining
operations they are earning in crores and probably this small facility will be able to give
them say only a few lakhs of rupees. So, they are thinking that we are getting so many
crores of rupees, what is the benefit of putting so much amount of energy and money into
getting something that should be only a few lakh worth. But then, in this case, they are
only thinking about their own profits. they are not talking about the negative impacts that
they are given to this community.

1038
Now, if the people of this community where empowered, if the people of these community
were given such powers that they were able to direct the company or maybe influence the
decision making of that particular company. If that is the situation, these people might
prevail on the company and they might say no, if you want to carry on mining any further,
you will have to set up this facility because you are polluting our fields you are polluting
our water bodies. So, empowerment can bring about a lot of changes and might lead to a
lot of good to the environment as well.

We talked about increasing the participation of stakeholders. When the company needs to
make a decision, does it ask the people who are there in the surroundings? Does it ask all
the stakeholders what do they want? And if we are able to create a situation or a condition
in which the participation of the stakeholders increases, so that will lead to a lot of social
sustainability. Or we talk about things like education about sustainability. Maybe a lot of
people just do not know about what environmental pollution is or do not know what do we
mean by ecology and what are the impacts that are being brought about to the ecology to
the functioning of the ecosystems because of our different activities.

This is where education about sustainability also comes into picture or education about the
harms we are going to the environment or education about what can be done to reduce
these harms. For instance when you are doing this course you are getting an idea about
how does an ecosystem function, what are the human influences on that ecosystem, how
can we reduce those influences, what are the different processes that are going on in
ecosystems and so on.

This education empowers you and it puts you in a position where you can ask questions.
So, you can write to your local representatives, you can write to the government authorities
if there is something wrong that is going on. You can write to the newspaper, so that you
can you are able to bring about a change in the public opinion. If everybody thinks, for
instance that there is one particular area where you should not have a particular port that
is coming up. So, things can be changed, but that is only possible when more and more
number of people have this education.

When we talk about social sustainability, we have to talk about education about
sustainability, if that is being provided to the members of the society or we talk about
things like protection, maintenance and access to resources. So, protection of resources;

1039
things like your forests are a resource, are they being protected enough, are they being
maintained properly, do you have an idea about how different populations of different
organisms are going up and down.

If there is a death in a carnivore population, do you know what were the reasons? What is
being done to maintain them properly? So, these are the things that we ask. Do you have
enough access to resources? So, probably you have a resource in the form of a river or
maybe in the form of a pond and there are only a few people in the village that have the
access to the resource.

If you are talking about social sustainability, you will have to make a situation in which
everybody has proper access to the resources. So, that they can also meet their own needs
and we talk about promotion of sustainable living which we will come to in a short while.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:45)

The third thing that we need to talk about is the economic sustainability. Do people have
job security? If people do not have job security, if they do not have stable jobs then
whatever amount of talking we are doing about sustainability nobody will pay a heed. So,
you will have to make a situation where people are able to get jobs, where people are able
to maintain their jobs, and this can only be done through economic means. Other things
are things like incentivization of sustainable practices.

1040
For instance, we talked about the situation of making a pen and if there is a company that
is treating the waste. So, is there a mechanism in which we can incentivize this company
or is there a mechanism in which we can penalize this company that was releasing all its
wastes out into the environment? Are there some kinds of taxations that we can put on
people or are there some kinds of penalties that we can put on people who are harming the
environment? or Is there some kind of subsidy that we can give to those people who are
protecting the environment or diverting all the steps such that their impact on the
environment is lessened? These are things that we discuss in the case of economic
sustainability.

(Refer Slide Time: 31:02)

In this case one important concept is that of Pigovian taxes; Pigovian taxes and subsidies.
A good example is the taxation that is put by the government on things like cigarettes.
Cigarettes are something that we as a society want to reduce or we want people to be
dissuaded from using cigarettes because they not only harm themselves, but they also harm
the surroundings, they also harm the environment. Pigovian taxes are those taxes that are
put into some material such that it becomes more and more expensive for people to use
that particular resource. This is a tax that the government puts not because it wants a
revenue, but because it wants people not to have access to this resource; so this is a
Pigovian tax.

1041
We can also talk about things like Pigovian subsidies. Pigovian subsidy is say, a subsidy
that we are giving to the manufacturing of pen or a subsidy that we are giving to the
manufacturing of textbooks or manufacturing of notebooks. So, these are things that we as
a society want to promote. So, in that case the government will give some subsidies to
these particular sectors, so that their manufacturing becomes easier and people have more
and more access to these things.

When we talk about topics like these, we are talking about economic sustainability by
incentivization of sustainable practices or maybe penalization of non-sustainable practices.
Or we can talk about things like market practices for sustainability or things like natural
resource accounting. When we are doing an accounting of resources every company does
an accounting, but then that accounting is it only limited to the profit and loss or the amount
of money that the company is getting, is it only confined to the cash flows of the company?
Or does it also take into account the amount of natural resources that are being used by the
company?

If there is a mechanism by which we can make this compulsory, then we are talking about
economic sustainability or things like lifecycle cost assessment. For instance, if you are
using polythene bags. Polythene bags are very cheap to manufacture, but then if you
consider the whole life of the polythene bag once you have used it, you have thrown it into
a dustbin, then it will go, it will kill off some organisms, it will say choke your drains, it
will choke certain animals to death and so on. So, the lifecycle cost is very high, it is
extremely light in weight so it gets dispersed to a very large area. So, collecting it becomes
very cost intensive. Now, are you able to put all of these costs into the cost of the polythene
bag? That is the question.

1042
(Refer Slide Time: 34:02)

What we are talking about here is externalities. Externalities are situations where your
action is leading to some positive or negative impact on a bystander who has got nothing
to do with what you are doing. For instance, if you are smoking a cigarette and you are
putting that smoke into the lungs of somebody who is standing nearby.

You are giving that person a negative externality, that person is not smoking the that person
is not gaining anything out of your smoking, but that person is actually getting the harm.
Or for instance, if you are using a vehicle that is extremely polluting and you are polluting
all the surroundings. So, the people who are living in that surroundings, they are not getting
the benefit of using a car. Only you are getting the benefit, but then you are putting a cost
that is external to you that is being paid by the society. So, that is an externality. And
externalities can be positive or they can be negative externalities.

Negative externalities are things like pollution that we just talked about. Positive
externalities are things such as, if you get educated yourself, if you know more about
environment then the society gets a benefit. Why? Because when you are educated you
can write to your government authorities, you can write to the editors of newspapers, you
can bring about policy changes and once that happens then the society is also getting a
benefit. So, that is a positive externality.

In the case of economic sustainability, what we are asking is, when we are talking about
the cost assessment of anything, are we taking the whole lifecycle cost into account? Are

1043
we putting all the negative externalities that this thing is giving out into the cost of that
material?

So, when we are talking about a polythene bag, do we include the cost of cleaning that
polythene bag or picking it up from the surroundings into the cost of this particular
polythene bag. Because, once we do that, the polythene bag will become so expensive and
say things like bio plastics will become so cheap that the society will automatically shift
from a polythene bag to a bioplastic bag. But till that is done and that is only possible when
you are able to put in the lifecycle cost assessment into the cost of different products.

We also talk about cost structures to reduce the risk and promote the new technologies.
For instance, if I want to put up a solar panel on to my house and getting a solar panel is
expensive and probably if I put up the solar panel, so I am putting up a lot of cost and I do
not know what is the return that I will get in future. So, can we, as a society have a cost
structure, such that this becomes easier for people to buy, maybe through subsidies or
maybe by an agreement through which government says that if you are putting up this
solar panel, the electricity that you are producing will buy up this electricity at this
particular rate.

If such kinds of cost structures are put in that are able to incentivize these new
technologies. So, in that case these new technologies will be used in a much larger way.
Or are there ways to reduce the risk that are associated with the new technology? So, all
these things are talked about when we are talking about economic sustainability.

1044
(Refer Slide Time: 37:31)

When we include all these three kinds of sustainabilities into our accounting framework,
we talk about the triple bottom line. The bottom line is a concept that is used in finance
and economics which tells us what is the profit or the loss of any particular company.

When we talk about the triple bottom line, we are talking about any an accounting
framework with three parts. Social bottom line, so in the case of social bottom line will
ask this question that whether this activity is leading to a profit to the society or a loss to
the society. And this profit and loss in is not in the terms of economics, but in terms of
whether people are getting more and more empowered, whether people are able to get
justice, where the people are able to get jobs and so on.

We will have the environmental or ecological bottom line, which means that, are we
harming the environment? or Are we protecting the environment? Is the environment
getting a profit or a loss? Is the environment getting better? or ls the environment getting
worse? So, if we include that and if we include the financial bottom line which is already
there which talks about the profit and loss in the financial terms. So, along with our normal
profit and loss, if we talk about the social and the environmental profits and losses or
whether our structures are improving or deteriorating in the social aspect and in the
environmental aspect as will, then we are talking about triple accounting.

1045
(Refer Slide Time: 39:33)

When you talk about sustainability, it is important to differentiate between weak

sustainability and strong sustainability. Weak sustainability assumes that natural is capital
and manufactured capital are essentially substitutable and considers that there are no
essential differences between the kinds of well being they generate. The only thing that
matters is the total volume of the aggregate stock of capital which should be at least
maintained or ideally increased for the sake of future generations.

In such a perspective, it does not matter whether the current generation uses up non-
renewable resources or dumps carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so long as machineries
roads and ports are built in compensation. When we are talking about weak sustainability,
it says that even if you are dumping the environment, even if you are releasing wastes into
the environment, but if you are able to get some products out of it.

So, you are reducing your natural capital, but you are able to increase your manufactured
capital. So, that compensates one another which means that when we were talking about
the example of the pen. In the case of this company that was manufacturing a pen that was
worth 10 rupees and it was releasing the effluent into the environment or whether we talked
about this company that is making a pen that is worth 20 rupees because it is putting 10
rupees into the cleanup operations, they are one and the same.

People who are working in the conservation sector might argue this kind of a logic because
they will say that NO, if you are harming the environment then this is not something that

1046
we can make up for by making more number of pens or say if we are trashing the whole
of the environment and if we are making a big beautiful house then both of these things
cannot be equated together because we need a good house, but at the same time we also
need a good environment, we also need pure air, we also need pure water and by trashing
the environment we are not getting that. So, these two things are different.

So, you cannot just say that we will trash the environment and will make a good house.
And when we bring out arguments such as these, we are talking about the strong
sustainability argument, which assumes that natural capital and manufactured capital, a
national capitalist things like forests manufactured capitalist things like houses. They are
essentially non-substitutable.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:49)

If you have a forest and if you do not have a house to live in, that is not a good situation.
If you have a house to live in, but you do not have a forest to give you pure air, that is also
not a good situation. You need both of these. So these cannot substitute each other. And,
because the natural capital and manufactured capital are essentially non-substitutable
because they have essential differences in the kinds of well being that they generate. So,
both of these have to be maintained separately and both of these have to be ideally
increased for the sake of the future generations. So, for the sake of the future generations
we need more number of houses, but at the same time we also require more amount of
forests to take care of them.

1047
(Refer Slide Time: 42:48)

Now, if you look at the differences. So, the first one is that the substitutability that we have
already discussed. Now, if you talk about the consequences, the strong sustainability which
says that things are not substitutable you have to maintain both of these. It says that certain
human actions can entail irreversible consequences, irreversible consequences on the
environment and because you have destroyed your environment, so you cannot make up
for the loss by say building more number of houses or by building a better road.

On the other hand, the weak sustainability would put up an argument, the technological
innovation and monetary compensation for environmental degradation are good enough.
This means that it would say that if you are destroying the forest and if you are paying
people money or if you are destroying the forest and you are making a good road, so that
covers up everything whereas, in the case of strong sustainability it would say that NO, if
you are destroying the forest then you will have to make up for a forest somewhere else.
A forest can only be replaced by a forest and nothing else.

1048
(Refer Slide Time: 44:00)

Other things are sustainability issues. Strong sustainability says that conserving the
irreplaceable stocks of critical national capital for the sake of future generation. You have
to conserve the irreplaceable stocks of critical natural capital. For instance, you have to
conserve the petroleum that you have, you have to conserve the coal that you have, you
have to conserve the forest that you have, you have to conserve the oceans that you have.
Whereas, weak sustainability would say that conservation is not important, the total value
of the aggregate stock of capital should be at least maintained or increased for the future
generation.

It is not important to conserve anything so long as you are manufacturing something. So,
that is the weak sustainability argument. The key concept in the case of strong
sustainability is the critical natural capital. It is extremely critical it is not replaceable it
has to be conserved. In the case of weak sustainability it only talks about an optimum
allocation of these scarce resources. So, as long as you are doing an optimal allocation, it
is good enough.

1049
(Refer Slide Time: 45:04)

Then, the definitions of thresholds and environmental norms, the strong sustainability says
that scientific knowledge is important as an input for public deliberation and for procedural
rationality which means the stronger sustainability argument says that we need to study
climate change, we need to study different eco systems so that we get more and more
knowledge about these things and, so that we are able to better conserve our environment.

On the other hand, the weak sustainability only talks about technical or scientific approach
for determining thresholds and norms, that is the weak sustainability would only say how
much is the amount of damage that we can tolerate; so we will have this much amount of
damage.

Now, strong and weak sustainability have been a part of the public discourse. The
policymakers all have always been discussing whether we should go for a weak
sustainability, whether we can degrade our resources to make more capital for the current
generation or whether there is a need to go for a strong sustainability in which we need to
conserve our resources no matter what.

1050
(Refer Slide Time: 46:14)

And after these deliberations we came up with agenda 21. Now, agenda 21 is an agenda
that came up in the RIO summit or the earth summit in 1992 and in this document the
world community agreed that that there are certain sectors in which we need to work, we
need to create situations that we are able to conserve the resources. So, this talks about a
strong sustainability in a number of situations and because of this we are now talking about
climate change and we are saying that we need to cap our global greenhouse gas emissions
so that the climate change does not cross this threshold of 1.5oC or in the worst case
scenario, it does not cross the threshold of 2oC. Because if we say that ok, we are making
more and more roads, we are making more and more factories and we are emitting more
and more amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and we will be happy that
argument does not stand good anymore.

1051
(Refer Slide Time: 47:18)

So, after these, we have been having a number of COP summits and we have come up with
sustainable development goals. So, these are the goals such as we should have no poverty,
there has to be zero hunger, there has to be good health and well-being, quality education,
gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and
economic growth, industry innovation and infrastructure, reduce inequalities, sustainable
cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, life
below water needs to be conserved, life on the land needs to be conserved, we need peace
justice and social institutions, we need partnerships for all these goals. So, these are the 17
sustainable development goals that we have come up with as a global community.

Once we have set up our goals what do we do, so that we are able to meet these goals. So,
there are a number of things that we can do. The first thing is to assess the impact of
anything that we are doing. If the environmental impact of something is much greater, so,
we will have to reduce our impacts or maybe we will have to go with… maybe we will
just throw that particular proposal that this proposal is going to put so much negative
impacts on the environment that we cannot afford this.

Probably, we will put up some kinds of mitigation measures that if you have to have mining
in this area you need also to clean up your operations. You also need to clean up the
effluents that are coming up in this area, no matter that is going to increase the cost that is
going to reduce the profits, but then we have to go with it.

1052
(Refer Slide Time: 49:06)

The first thing that we need to do is an environmental impact assessment. Environmental

impact assessment or EIA is a process of evaluating the likely environmental impacts of a
proposed project or development. So, whenever there is any project that has been proposed
such as making of a dam, how much area of forest wood will we lose? How much of
habitats of different organisms will we lose? How much will be the amount of water
logging in that area? All these things have to be assessed before we give a go ahead to that
particular project or development and it takes into account the interrelated socio-economic,
cultural and human health impacts both beneficial and adverse.

You need to make a cost benefit analysis. We saw this thing in the case of behavioural
ecology, every animal makes this cost benefit analysis. Should I go and run after this
chital? So, a tiger has to make this decision. Do I go and run after this chital, expend energy
and get this chital or should I just stay here? Similarly, for each and every of our actions,
the human actions we also may need to make this kind of an assessment.

1053
(Refer Slide Time: 50:13)

This assessment is done in various stages. The first stage is screening. Screening
determines which projects or developments require a full or partial impact assessment
study. So, if there is something that is a very small project then probably, we can let go of
the environmental impact assessment, but if there is something that is a bit larger such as
a dam or a mining industry that has to go through the EIA process.

The second thing is scoping. After screening, we go with the scoping stage. Scoping
identifies which potential impacts are relevant to assess. To identify alternative solutions
that avoid mitigate or compensate adverse impacts on biodiversity and finally, to derive
terms of reference for the impact assessment. For instance, if there is a dam that needs to
be built up, this dam is above a certain size limit or above a certain cost limit.

So, we put it into the next stage which is the scoping stage and the scoping stage will
identify what are the impacts that we need to assess. Do we need to assess water logging
in this area or not? Probably if there is some area that suffers from n number of earthquakes
and because we know that if you have a big dam that will also increase the propensity of
getting an earthquake in that area, then probably we need to assess that as well.

So, scoping will come up with what are the impacts needed to be assessed. And it will also
identify the alternative solutions, if there is something that we can put up to mitigate the
impacts and it also derives terms of a difference for the impact assessment.

1054
(Refer Slide Time: 51:50)

After scoping, we move on to the assessment. In this stage we do an assessment and

evaluation of the impacts and development of the alternatives. So, we have listed all the
different topics that we need to study. Next, we study those topics. Once the assessment is
done, then we make up a report that is known as an EIA report or an environmental impact
statement.

In that case whatever were our findings in the this stage of assessment, we put it up in the
form of a formal report. Once this report is formed, it is put through the review process. In
the review process it is given to the decision makers, probably there would be some amount
of public hearings.

Once this report has been made, it will be made open to the people who are living there,
probably they will come up with some other things that have been missed out, some other
things that need to be incorporated while taking a decision. And on the basis of this review,
and on the basis of your public hearings and participation, then the decision makers make
a decision; Do we need to have this project or do we not need to have this project? And if
we need to have this project here what are the other conditions that will apply to this
project? What are the mitigation mechanisms that will incorporate along with this project?

1055
(Refer Slide Time: 53:09)

After making this decision and once this project is on, the last stage is monitoring,
compliance, enforcement and environmental auditing. For instance, in the case of a mining
project we said that we will give a go ahead to this mining project, but then they need to
treat their effluents. So, this last stage of monitoring, compliance, enforcement, it will ask
this question is the company doing this effluent treatment in a proper manner or is it just a
sham or probably are they leaving out quite a number of effluent, they are only treating
say 10% of the effluent.

So, the environmental impact assessment does not end at making the report. After you
have taken the decision, you also need to see whether the recommendations are being
followed or not.

1056
(Refer Slide Time: 53:58)

The second thing is promotion and development of the clean technologies. Clean
technology refers to any process, product or service that reduces negative environmental
impacts through significant energy efficiency improvements, sustainable use of resources
or environmental protection activities.

(Refer Slide Time: 54:29)

For instance, a clean technology will be something like, you have an industry in an area
and this industry is giving out quite a lot of flue gases and probably you as a clean
technology you set up a structure in which these flue gases are taken out and then they are

1057
put through some treatment chamber and then they are released back so that the amount of
discharge into the environment reduces. So, that would be our clean technology.

Any process (it can be a process, it can be a product, it can be a service) that reduces the
negative environmental impacts through significant energy efficiency improvements. So,
for instance when one mid came up with this program, that you will replace the
incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs. So, that is providing us with a significant energy
efficiency improvement. So, that will be counted as a clean technology or which goes with
a sustainable use of resources. So, sustainable use of resources such as if you are having
say petroleum and you are using it for making something and you are able to increase the
efficiency.

From say, 1 litre of petroleum you were earlier able to make 300 grams of plastic. Now,
in place of 300 grams of plastic you are able to make say 400 grams of plastic. So, that
will be a more sustainable use of resources because of an increase in the efficiency. Or
environmental protection services - Environmental protection services such as wastewater
treatment or say effluent treatment and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 56:06)

There are some common themes that are running in the clean technology sector. We talk
about renewable energy that needs to be promoted, we talk about water purification and
air purification, we talk about sewage treatment, environmental remediation. So, in the
case of environmental remediation, there is an environment that has already been polluted

1058
and we are trying to remove those pollutants from that environment. Maybe through
putting up some particular species of plants that are absorbing those pollutants or maybe
by using some chemical processes or some physical processes; so, that is environmental
remediation.

Things like, if you have a water body in which say oil has been released and this oil needs
to be cleaned up. So, that is an environmental remediation operation. Or if there is an area
where the mining has released copious amounts of mineral salts and those mineral salts
are proving toxic to the plants, so they need to be removed. So, that will be called as
environmental remediation.

Then, we talk about solid waste management, we talked about energy conservation or
increasing the efficiency of different gadgets and devices and we also talk about
appropriate sustainable technologies. Now, appropriate technology is a technology that
might not be having a very large scale, that might be a very small scale technology, but
that is appropriate for that particular society and that is able to provide some amount of
social sustainability or environmental sustainability or economic sustainability to the
people who are working in that particular area.

(Refer Slide Time: 57:45)

We will have a look at some clean technologies. Clean technologies such as

environmentally friendly energy and energy storage in the case of power generation which
is renewable energy, we talk about solar cells, we talk about solar thermal energy

1059
production, geothermal energy, wind energy, bioenergy, sewage gas energy or we talk
about environmental friendly use of fossil fuels in which case we talk about combined
cycle power plants.

(Refer Slide Time: 58:21)

In the case of a combined cycle power plant what you have is that suppose you have a
diesel engine. So, this diesel engine is taking in diesel and then it is producing electricity.
We are talking about a diesel generator. In this case the gases that are coming out, now
these gases are also quite hot gases. In the case of a combined cycle power plant, you will
put these gases into a tank of say water and so that you are able to convert this water into
steam.

This is steam which is coming out at a very high pressure, you put it into another turbine
which is a steam turbine. So, the energy that was being lost in the form of hot gases,
through your diesel generator that energy has been taken back, it has been used to heat up
water and then that heated water is converted to steam and that is used to run another
turbine so that you are able to make a much better utilization of the fossil fuel or diesel
that we are using in this case. That is known as a combined cycle power plant. We can also
talk about cogeneration plants, where we are talking about simultaneous generation of
electricity and useful heat, especially in areas that are very cold.

1060
(Refer Slide Time: 59:40)

So, even that hot water can be supplied to people or high performance power stations or
things like reduced carbon dioxide power generation or we talk about storage technologies,
mechanical storage, electrochemical storage, electrical storage, thermal storage. Or we talk
about efficient grids. So, these are the grids that are able to supply your electricity with
reduced losses, smart grids, local and district heat grids or we talk about things like circular
economy. What about waste collection and transport? Do we have infrastructure? How do
we separate the waste? Is there a sorting technology that is available? Is there any amount
of waste utilization that we can do, either through recycling or we can burn these wastes
to generate heat and generate electricity out of it?

1061
(Refer Slide Time: 60:13)

We talk about waste disposal technologies; that is also a clean technology. Safeguarding
and removal of contaminants and hazardous waste. If we can remove the hazardous waste
then the rest of the waste can be disposed of much easier; or reduction or utilization of
landfill gas, or we talk about environmental remediation, or sustainable water
management, water procurement and treatment, water utilization or efficiency increases in
water utilization.

(Refer Slide Time: 60:44)

1062
How can you ensure that that the same amount of water is used for much more amount of
purposes? Or we talk about sustainable mobility, alternative fuels; Can we run our vehicles
through say biofuels or through electricity or through fuel cells? Or we talk about
alternative drive technologies, more efficient engines.

(Refer Slide Time: 61:06)

Environmentally friendly vehicle design where there is a reduced amount of drag or we

talk about infrastructure and traffic control, sustainable mobility management, carpooling,
car sharing, vehicle fleet management, or things like resource and material efficiency,
cross sectional technology that is being used for different environmental applications.

1063
(Refer Slide Time: 61:26)

Or new materials like compound materials or bio plastics; Can they replace something that
is already degrading to the environment? Or we talk about material efficient processing,
sustainable designs, eco designs or lifecycle assessment has an integral part of designing
process.

(Refer Slide Time: 61:46)

Or we talk about energy efficiency, industry specific, automation and control technologies,
efficient engines, heat recovery or efficient appliances on energy efficient buildings that
are now becoming a norm in our country as well. So, all these things, all these different

1064
technologies, all these things like environmental impact assessment or education are
extremely crucial to reduce the impacts that we have on the environment.

(Refer Slide Time: 62:11)

So, when we talk about I = P x A x T, this T can be tinkered in a way that we are able to
reduce the impact. And the way in which we can tinker with this technology is what we
term as the sustainable technology, clean technology which is essential for sustainable
development.

That is all for today. Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

1065
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 28
Oil spills

“Namaste”,

Today we begin a new module, which is the ecology of changes. We have seen how an
ecosystem functions, how different populations and communities interact and so on, but
then what happens if you bring in a major change to the ecosystem?

These changes are becoming important day by day because of the disasters that we are
observing in the world. For instance, if we talk about an oil spill. If there is a tanker that is
carrying oil and if it spills a large amount of oil on the surface of the oceans, then that is
going to have a negative consequence on different components of the ecosystem.

If such a thing happens, how does the ecosystem revert back? Is there some amount of
resilience in the system, so that it is able to bring itself back to normal or is it a situation
that will become doomed towards the extinction of a number of species? Now, that is an
important question these days, because we are observing more and more number of such
disturbances.

The disturbances can be of different kinds. There can be disturbances that are abrupt and
that are very large in their magnitude such as an oil spill or a forest fire. On the other hand,
there can be some other disturbances that take a very long period of time to manifest
themselves such as climate change. So, a climate change goes on for a very long period of
time, and that would also result in some amount of changes to different ecosystems.

1066
(Refer Slide Time: 01:53)

In this module, we will be looking at three different case studies about oil spills. Plastics,
and the impacts of climate change. How they bring out a change in the ecology, and what
do we do to bring the system back to normal?

Let us begin with the first lecture which is Oil spills.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:09)

Whenever we are talking about any such disturbance, the impact would depend on what
was the status of the community before this impact came in and the nature and the
frequency and the magnitude of the impact. We can classify the situations into three

1067
different categories. The first category is that you have a normal community that is
everything is normal, there is no heavy stress on that community, no high pressure of
diseases or say no high pressure of habitat degradation and so on. And you bring out a
single LID, now LID stands for a Large and Infrequent Disturbance.

Here we are saying that on the y-axis we have the community state, on the x-axis we have
the time. The community state is shown in two forms; one is this altered state, which is at
the bottom and the top portion is showing you the normal state. In the normal state there
would be some amount of fluctuations that we are observing in the community.

Where do we see these fluctuations? Because these are the normal variations that we
observe, because say, 1 year was slightly dry year or maybe it was a slightly more wet year
or probably there were some diseases that cropped up in this community, but then overall
it is more or less a normal community. These are the variations that we observe in a normal
community.

At this time point there was a large and infrequent disturbance, now such a disturbance
could be things like forest fire. You have this community and there is a forest fire that
consume a major portion of this forest. What would happen then?

(Refer Slide Time: 04:02)

When we are seeing a large and infrequent disturbance, probably if this is your forest, you
had a forest fire that consumed all of these portions and only a small portion was left. If

1068
that is the situation and if this community that was left out, if this is a normal community,
we would start observing the same scenarios we had observed in the case of population
dynamics.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:41)

In this case, this would be equivalent of a situation in which there is an island and in this
island, this much portion is having the organisms and the rest all portion is now clear, it
does not have any organisms. What would happen then? Then these organisms that are
already existing, because they are a part of the normal community, they would start
dispersing out, because these areas that are now vacant; so this is a vacant area. This vacant
area has the resources in the form of minerals. So, because it has minerals when it rains,
then would start observing some vegetative growth. There would be some trees that are
there in the community and these trees would be giving out seeds. Now, if there are some
birds in this area, those birds would be carrying those seeds from this area probably to this
area as well or maybe some amount of seeds would come out because of a wind flow or
because of a water flow.

There are a number of situations. At the same time it is also possible that when this area
was burned out, there were some seeds or maybe some rootstocks or some tubers that
remain below the ground.

If you have these root stocks that are below the ground. So, even if you have a fire on top
of this forest, these portions are still alive and so in the next rains, they would start giving

1069
out a sprout, so we would start observing sprouts everywhere. And in a very short period
of time we would see that there are herbs, there are grasses, there are shrubs and maybe
even saplings of the big trees that are now coming up into this area.

Once that happens we will also have a situation where, you have ample amount of food
that is available to the animals. So the animals that are with a part of the community that
were left out or that was not consumed by the fire; now those animals would also now
come out and they would also start browsing or grazing on to these herbs and shrubs.

Once that happens, in a short period of time this whole area would start showing up the
characteristics of a healthy ecosystem once again, because you would have the plants, you
would have the trees, you would have the animals, you would have the birds, the micro
organisms the small little degrading organism the saprophyte and so on, they will start
coming up into this area.

In a very short period of time, we will have that this community is able to bounce itself
back to the normal situation. Here we have the normal community, you have a big forest
fire, but then with time it starts recovering and once it has recovered, it becomes a normal
community once again.

The most important points in this state would be that you have started with a normal
community and you only have one disturbance, but then what would happen if you have
say a number of disturbances;

In this particular example, let use talk about forest fire.

1070
(Refer Slide Time: 07:49)

Let us consider another example where we have this big forest. In this big forest, there was
a forest fire and all these portions were consumed out and only this portion remained. As
before, all of these areas now behave as freely available areas and then you have the
organisms that are now starting to come out.

But then once that is happening once, you are observing some regeneration in these areas,
let us suppose there is another calamity. Probably, there was a river flowing in this area
and this river now floods the area. When it floods this area, probably all of these regions
are now inundated and once that happens, all these small seedlings and saplings that were
coming out, all of those small root portions that were giving out the sprouts. All of them
are inundated with water and when they are inundated with water they die out.

Now, we are observing a situation in which there is a community, a healthy community

that support one large infrequent disturbance and after that it was trying to come up again,
it was trying to show its resilient character, it was trying to come back to the normalcy,
but then we observe another disturbance in the form of another large infrequent
disturbance.

What would happen in that situation? In that situation, the saplings that were coming out
are now all dead. In this case, those seeds or seedlings that were saved from the forest fire
are now again dead, what will happen then?

1071
(Refer Slide Time: 09:38)

So, this is how we can represent such a scenario, we have a normal community, you have
a large infrequent disturbance, now this community is trying to come back to the normalcy.
Then you have another large infrequent disturbance and now there are no more living
seedlings and saplings in this area, because anything that was saved from the forest fire is
now consumed by the floods.

Once that happens, if you have a series of disturbances that come up in a normal
community, we will have a situation in which the community after a while will not be able
to come back to the normalcy. It will behave as an altered community for a very long
period of time, because you now no more have any seeds or any rootstocks to bring this
community back to normal.

When such a situation happens, we could even say that it would reach a new normal. When
we say a new normal, we could say that, in place of having tall trees in this area, now you
only have those plants that grow near the rivers. So, that would be a new normalcy or a
new stage of succession. But then, when we talk about a community that was already in a
pre existing normal state, it will not be able to come back to that state for a very long period
of time.

Now, there can also be a third situation.

1072
(Refer Slide Time: 11:06)

Now, this third situation is, when you have a community that is not normal from the
beginning. So, it is already suffering from some level of disturbances. Now, it is not a
completely altered community, it is not a normal community, it is somewhere in between.

A good example would be a forest that has a lot of insect infestation. In that case, most of
the trees are diseased trees and they are not normal trees, so to speak or an area that, let us
say there is a water body. And this water body is getting a number of contaminants in the
form of pollutants, because there is a municipal drainage that is draining into this water
body.

In that case, all the organisms or most of the organisms in this water body are now already
in a state of stress. They are not a normal community anymore. If that is the situation and
if we see a large infrequent disturbance, so in that case the resilient power of the
community has already been lost because of the long period in which it was suffering this
stress. If that is the situation, if you have a single large infrequent disturbance, it is possible
that your community, will not be able to come back to the normalcy for a very long period
of time.

A good example in that case would be say, an animal community. So, you have a
community of animals and those animals are not the normal animals, because they have a
very high load of say parasites. If you have a very high load of parasites or maybe some
viral diseases in that community, if there is a large infrequent disturbance, then because

1073
already they are very very stressed. So, their rates of reproduction or the rates of bringing
the system back to normalcy is already hampered.

In that case, if there is a large and frequent disturbance in the form of say a heavy amount
of poaching, so these animals that are left out, they are already so disease and so weak that
they will not be able to reproduce in a fast enough rate to bring the system to normal. So,
this is what we are seeing in this particular instance. Now, let us look at some examples of
these large infrequent disturbances.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:29)

There can be things such as fire. There is a forest fire; a forest fire does not happen very
frequently except in some specialised forest. We can say that it is an infrequent disturbance
and it is large because of its large magnitude and the large area that it covers. Another
example is a storm, so if you have a storm a very large area would be inundated, a number
of trees would get uprooted.

Another example would be tsunami. In a tsunami there is a large amount of inundation and
at the same time there is a heavy mechanical force that is applied by the large volume of
water that is coming in and for a very long period of time most of the areas are… will
suffer from a heavy amount of salinity. Or things like oil spills; oil spills again our large
infrequent disturbances because of their large impacts, they cover a very large area and
most of their situations and their impacts are very wide and very diverse.

1074
Climatic extremes are yet another example. If you have a situation where your community
suffers from a very severe drought. So, a very severe drought or a high amount of flooding
would also count as a large infrequent disturbance, because in these situations are when
the productivity of the whole community would go down and the impacts would be very
severe. Or things like heavy pollution, so if there is an industry that is spewing out, say
mercury rich compounds into an ecosystem, so that would again be a large infrequent
disturbance.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:13)

And when we talk about a community that is a disturbed community, that is not a novel
community, it could be a community that is either diseased, it has a heavy load of
pathogens or parasites or it is weed infested. So, a good example would be a forest that has
a lot of cover of lantana, so because you have so many lantana around. In a normal forest,
you would have these trees and these trees would be giving out seeds.

1075
(Refer Slide Time: 15:37)

Once these seeds come to the soil, they start giving out the new regeneration. If you have
a scenario in which the whole of the ground cover is now covered with these shrubs of
lantana, in that case, the seeds will not be able to reach to the ground, they will remain on
top of these lantana bushes, because they are not able to reach to the ground. So, they will
not germinate or even if they germinate, so if you have these lantana, your seedling will
not be able to get sufficient light from above.

In that case also the your seedling will not be able to germinate or grow properly or there
would be some amount of allelopathy chemicals that this plant would be putting into the
soil. Allelopathy as we have seen in a previous lecture is a situation in which one organism
is trying to hamper the growth or to kill another organism by giving out some chemicals.

Now, lantana also being a member of the verbenaceae family is known to give out certain
chemicals into the soil, which then hampered the growth or even try to kill other seedlings
and saplings so that the amount of competition that it faces reduces. If you have such a
forest that already has a heavy growth of lantana and if you now have a forest fire and in
that forest fire a number of trees get burnt out.

In that case, the remaining trees, even if you are able to remove all of these lantana and in
that situation even if the seeds of this tree are able to reach to the ground, because you
already have a very heavy dose of the allelopathy chemicals; so, these seeds will not be
able to germinate or probably in this case as well, you will have the lantana that also has

1076
its root stock below the ground and when there is a chance of coming back, so, lantana
will be able to out compete your seedlings. In that case this forest will not be able to reach
back to the normalcy state. So, a heavy amount of weed infestation also counts as a
disturbance in the community.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:12)

Or facing competition from livestock. Let us say, you have a situation where you have a
forest and in this forest you say have a few trees and you have a very high amount of
competition because of the livestock. Now in this case, even if these trees give out seeds
that are able to reach the ground and they are able to give out these seedlings. The livestock
comes and it eats away the seedlings. So, there is already a very heavy amount of pressure
or disturbance in this community.

Now, if you have a forest fire and a few trees are now dead, but then you already have this
heavy pressure of livestock. In that case, whenever a new seedling comes up, the livestock
will eat it away. When that happens, then the impact of the large infrequent disturbance
such as the forest fire will never be completely removed from the system. So, the system
will not be able to come back to normalcy.

1077
(Refer Slide Time: 19:19)

Or a situation in which you have a forest and in this forest you have a number of wild
animals. Let us say we are talking about black bucks. Now if you have these black bucks
and this area is also suffering from a heavy amount of competition from the livestock, so
the red ones are the livestock. Now, because of a heavy pressure of livestock we might
observe a situation of habitat displacement. Now, in the case of habitat displacement as
we had seen, the animals are forced to move into the sub-prime habitats. So, in this
situation, we will say that the black bucks are forced to move to the subprime habitat say
in the hills. Now, in the subprime habitat you do not have sufficient amount of food
available to these animals, you do not have sufficient amount of cover available to these
animals. Now, these animals are already facing a lot of stress, so in that condition of stress
the rate of reproduction would go down.

Now, if that is the situation and there you put in a large infrequent disturbance, say you
have a spell of a disease or say a heavy amount of poaching or any other such large
infrequent disturbance and you say that a few animals die out. Now, these animals that are
remaining, because they are already in a stress environment, because they already have a
heavy amount of competition because of which they had to suffer from habitat
displacement. And they are now in a place, where they are not having sufficient access to
food or water or shelter and so on. So, they will not be able to reproduce at a fast enough
rate that they would be able to come back to the normalcy.

1078
In this situation as well, a heavy amount of competition from the livestock also counts as
a significant disturbance to the community which will prevent it from coming back to
normalcy.

Another disturbance is a rich amount of pollutants that are already there in the system that
will also have a very similar impact. So, with a heavy polluted dose a number of members
of the community will be facing a huge amount of stress and in that stress they will not be
having a high rate of reproduction. So, in that case if you give a single large infrequent
disturbance, the community will be doomed.

Or a community that is already facing climatic changes. So, there is a community that say
lives in a cold area. Now, because of the climate change there was say a 1 degree rise in
the main temperatures and in that case this community is already in a heavy amount of
stress. Now, you give it a single large infrequent disturbance a single LID and because this
community is already are stressed community, because it is already not in a situation where
it has an optimum rate of reproduction or an optimum rate of population growth. So, a
single LID will then wipe out this community for a very long period of time.

So, these are the large infrequent disturbances and the disturbances that communities face.
Now, we will look at oil spills as a case study of a single large infrequent disturbance, the
kinds of impacts that it brings about to the ecosystem and how ecosystems are able to go
back or at the same time, how are we as human beings, how do we act on these ecosystems
in an effort to help them to recuperate back to the normalcy.

1079
(Refer Slide Time: 23:04)

We will begin with oil spills now. Now, oil spill is the release of liquid petroleum
hydrocarbon into the environment. That is the definition. You have liquid petroleum
hydrocarbons that gets released to the environment and that is an oil spill.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:17)

These oil spills can be anywhere. So, you can have a terrestrial oil spill, where the oil spill
is coming out on a portion of land. A good example is the Kuwaiti oil leaks that were
formed during the Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 – 91.

1080
(Refer Slide Time: 23:37)

When we say a terrestrial oil spill, this is how the oil spill looks like. So, you have this
area that is predominantly a desert area and then you have an oil spill here. All these areas
are now filled with oil. So, it becomes a lake of oil. So that is a terrestrial oil spill.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:55)

The second is a marine oil spill. In the case of a marine oil spill, the liquid petroleum
hydrocarbons get released into the marine environment. So, they are released into the seas
and the oceans.

1081
(Refer Slide Time: 24:06)

This is an example of the deepwater horizon oil spill of 2010. In this case we observe that
here you have the ocean and here you have a heavy amount of oil that is there on the
surface of the ocean.

(Refer Slide Time: 24:20)

Based on their origins they can be classified into natural oil spills, accidental oil spills or
intentional oil spills. Now, natural oil spills are - example is the oil seeps in the Gulf of
Mexico.

1082
(Refer Slide Time: 24:42)

In this case what happens is that you have the ocean and in the seabed, there is some
amount of natural leakage of these hydrocarbons. When that happens some hydrocarbons
are coming to the surface. So, this is how it looks like.

(Refer Slide Time: 24:59)

This is the gulf of Mexico oil seep and these streaks that we are observing, these are the
oil spills that are coming and these are coming out naturally, these are not manmade, these
are not intentional, these are not accidental.

1083
(Refer Slide Time: 25:14)

The second kind is an accidental oil spill example the deepwater horizon incident. So,
nobody wanted to release this amount of oil, but just because of an accident it got released
into the environment. Another example could be a situation in which there is a tanker that
is full of oil and it collides with some other tanker or maybe with a rock. In that case the
tanker capsizes and when it capsizes, it releases all the oil that it had into the environment,
so that is an accidental oil spill.

And third one is an intentional oil spill, in which case human beings intentionally release
oil into the environment in order to cause harm to somebody. So, a good example is the
case of the Kuwaiti oil spills, in which there were people who spilled out oil into the
environment.

1084
(Refer Slide Time: 26:09)

When oil gets released into the environment, we have all these hydrocarbons that come up
in the environment. Now, a hydrocarbon is an organic compound that consists entirely of
hydrogen and carbon, which is why we have this term ‘hydrocarbon’ - hydrogen plus
carbon. So, these are compounds that are made of hydrogen and carbon. And they form a
major chunk of the petroleum that is released into the environment.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:37)

1085
Now, these can be straight chain molecules, these can be cyclical molecules or these can
be aromatic hydrocarbons. So, these are some common hydrocarbons that we see in oil
and all of these will have different impacts on the ecosystem.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:51)

We classify these hydrocarbons on the basis of their specific gravity. Now, group 1
hydrocarbons are those that have a very low specific gravity such as kerosene. Now, it
becomes important to classify them on the basis of a specific gravity, because the group 1
hydrocarbons, when they are released in a marine environment, they will remain on the
top surface of the water. So, they will come to the top surface and they will be exposed to
air, they will be exposed to the sun; whereas, group 5 hydrocarbons are those that have a
very high specific gravity that is greater than 1.

In these situations, because they have a high specific gravity, they will sink down to the
bottom. Now, why is that important? It is important, because this helps us understand the
impact of these hydrocarbons on different ecosystems. So, if there is an oil that comes to
the surface, now if it comes to the surface, so birds will get exposed to it or maybe in the
mammals that are coming to the surface to breathe. Examples include whales or dolphins
or even reptiles that come to the surface to breathe like turtles, they will all get exposed
with this hydrocarbon, because this is on the top surface of the water.

Any organism that is either reaching the waters from the top, for example, birds that are
looking out for fishes, they will get exposed. Or any organism that is moving from the

1086
bottom to the top to have access to the air, it will get exposed. And in the case of group 5
hydrocarbons with high specific gravity, they are coming down to the bottom of the
oceans. Now, in the bottom of the oceans you will have a number of benthic communities
or bottom dwellers.

Those bottom dwellers will then get exposed to the oil. Now, good examples include things
like starfishes or a number of crab species that are living inside the oceans, so they will get
exposed. So, this classification is used when discussing the fate and persistence of the oil
spills. Fate and persistence, because if you have an oil that is coming to the top, so, on the
top, it will be oxidized because it is exposed to the air, it will also be acted upon by the
UV rays of the sun.

And so the fate will be very different and also the persistence will be very different,
because in the case of the hydrocarbons that are coming to the top, after a while they will
be removed from the system because of various processes whereas those hydrocarbons
that are coming to the bottom will probably persist for a very long period of time.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:30)

These hydrocarbons are also classified as petrogenic. Petrogenic is ‘petro’ is rock, ‘genic’
is formation; so petrogenic is something that is formed from the rocks or the petroleum.
So, these are derived directly from the mineral oils. Now, the second one is pyrogenic;
these are derived from incomplete burning of mineral oils. So, if you have an oil spill that
is coming to the top and it is a petrogenic oil spill, you try to burn it off, and when you are

1087
burning it, any amount that remains, which is incompletely burnt will be called a pyrogenic
hydrocarbon.

The third classification is that of a biogenic hydrocarbon. Now, biogenic hydrocarbons are
those that are derived from biological processes acting on the mineral oils. So, if you have
some amount of microbial degradation that happens, so anything that that is left out or that
is half acted upon will be termed as a biogenic hydrocarbon.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:32)

Now, talking about the fate; the fate will be very different depending on the categories of
these hydrocarbons. Now, suppose there is an oil spill; now if it is there on the top surface,
now here we are talking about the group 1 hydrocarbons. Now, the group 1 hydrocarbons
are there on the top and because they have a low specific gravity, they have come to the
top and because they also have a low density, so they will also be preferentially evaporated.

So, you have the heat from the sun and these are exposed to the air. So, there would be
some amount that would get evaporated and that would be removed from this particular
ecosystem. So, it will be carried away with air to some other location. The second thing
that happens is photo-oxidation. Now, in the case of photo-oxidation you have, photo is
light and oxidation is the chemical reaction that occurs because of the oxygen.

Now, these hydrocarbons are exposed to the air and they are also exposed to the sun. So,
in that case there would be some degenerative reactions that will happen and they will also

1088
remove some part of this oil away from the ecosystem. Now, but because these are on the
top and you have this water surface, so some amount will also be spread out; so because
oil is lighter than water, so it will spread on the surface of the water and a large area will
be impacted. So, in the case of group 1hydrocarbons there is spreading and it impacts a
very large area.

On the other hand, if we talk about the group 5 hydrocarbons, they would settle to the
bottom, there would be some amount of sedimentation. And in this case, the impact will
be more and more localized to that particular area. But then because the group 1
hydrocarbon that had come to the top they are spread to a very large area, so the impact
that they will have on the ecosystem will probably be comparatively much lesser than the
impact of these sedimented hydrocarbons, because they are getting concentrated in the
locality.

Now, the other things that would happen are things like emulsification. Now,
emulsification is the process in which the oil droplets are able to come inside the water.
So, in this case the oil is broken down into drops and these drops are then further broken
down into very small droplets and these droplets are able to remain suspended in the water,
so that is known as emulsification.

On the other hand, we will also have some amount of dissolution. So, if there are some
other components of these hydrocarbons and that suppose have an OH group or maybe an
acidic group, so they will be able to dissolve into the waters. So, there will be this process
of dissolution. And also another process will be that of this coating and ingestion. So,
because you have these hydrocarbons on the surface, if there is a bird that comes to the
surface, if there is a dolphin that reaches the surface to get air, so these animals will be
coated with the oil and if this oil is able to reach their mouthparts, so, they will also be
eating up some part of oil. So, there will be these processes of coating and ingestion.

Then there will be the process of dispersion in which the oil droplets get dispersed out,
and if these oils are able to reach to the beaches, so, we will observe the process of beach
stranding in which case this oil will coat up portions of the beach and will also have an
impact on the terrestrial ecosystem. So, for instance, if it covers up the roots of the
mangrove, so the mangroves might start dying off or if it reaches to the surface, then it
will also expose a number of terrestrial organisms to the impact of the oil.

1089
Now, once it has been acted upon or once it has reached the living organisms, now we will
observe two kinds of impacts. The first impact would be that of a bio-degradation. Now in
this case the oil is acted upon by the enzymes that are present in the bodies of the organisms
and they are rendered harmless. So, that is the process of bio-degradation. So, the oil is
degraded into some other chemicals and these chemicals do not now have an impact on
the ecosystem. So, that is a positive process.

On the other hand, we can also observe the processes of bio-accumulation. Now, because
these oils are hydrophobic chemicals, the chemicals might get absorbed and they might
get accumulated in the fatty tissues of these organisms. Once that happens we might also
observe the process of bio-magnification. For instance, these chemicals that are present in
the oil, they got absorbed in say microbes or say planktons and in that case their bodies
now have the chemicals that represent in the oil.

Now, these planktons are then eaten up by the small fishes. So, all of those chemicals now
reach the small fishes, but then one fish is going to eat say thousands or even millions of
planktons. So, the amount of chemicals that was present in one single plankton, that was a
very small amount, but then the amount of the chemical that reaches the small fish is much
more than was present in the plankton, because it is now getting the chemical from a
number of planktons.

Now, when these small fishes are eaten up by the bigger fishes; so the bigger fishes would
be eating a number of smaller fishes. So, they would then again magnify the amount of
chemicals that are present in their bodies. So, as we move up the food chain, we will also
observe bio-magnification. And the last process is that of sedimentation in which the
heavier portions of the released hydrocarbons, they are able to sink to the bottom of the
sea floor. All of these processes are going to have some impact on the communities or on
the ecosystems.

1090
(Refer Slide Time: 36:51)

These are the impacts that we might observe, upon coating there might be a physical
smothering. Now, physically smothering is a process in which you are physically reducing
the ability of the organism to move, to feed, etc. Also there would be some amount of loss
of thermoregulation, because in the case of birds, they have these feathers and the feathers
are able to provide thermoregulation.

If the oil coats up the surface of the feathers, so they will not be able to stand up upright,
they will not be able to hold air on the surface of their bodies and in that case they will
lose out thermoregulation. So, they will now be exposed to the extremes of temperatures;
so they might have die out of hypothermia or hyperthermia. So, if they are exposed to cold
environments, they will die off of hypothermia; if they are exposed to warm environments,
they will die of hyperthermia.

The second one is inhalation of the volatile hydrocarbons. So, those hydrocarbons that are
volatiles, they will be inhaled, they will reach into the respiratory system, they might result
in some amount of toxicity. Or absorption through the skin and mucosa; so some of the
chemicals will get absorbed into the body and show their toxic impacts. So, this is upon
coating.

If these chemicals get dissolved, so, if they are dissolved, so they will also get absorbed
through the skin or through food and be able to show their toxic behaviours.

1091
(Refer Slide Time: 38:18)

The factors that influence the impact on these hydrocarbons include things like seasonality.
So, if you have a community that is in its breeding season. Now, if you impact this
community in the breeding season, so you are not allowing the young ones to come up or
if there is presence of eggs or juveniles.

When an organism is having the young ones, it is having the off springs. So, typically in
those organisms that show parental behaviour, the parents are already very much stressed,
because they not only have to bring food for themselves, but they also have to procure
food for the off springs.

In that case, if you have this large infrequent disturbance of oil spill, so, the impact on the
community will be very large. Or, if you have eggs or juveniles nearby. So, if you have a
juvenile, so a juvenile or a young organism is not able to fend itself off in an optimum
manner as compared to the adults. So, in this case the impact of the oil will be much
greater. The impact on the organisms will also depend on which organism is impacted.

So, if there is an impact on the keystone species like mangroves, so the impact on the
ecosystem will be much greater. So, in the case of mangroves they provide shelter to fishes
and they serve as a nursery for fishes and so on. So, if mangroves are impacted, if
mangroves die out, the impact on the whole ecosystem will be much greater than
otherwise.

1092
(Refer Slide Time: 40:01)

It would also depend on the lifestyle of the organisms. So, those organisms that have a
long lifespan and k-selected reproductive strategy will be more impacted. So, we have seen
in the population dynamics classes that organisms can have two strategies; one is the k-
selected strategy, this is the second one is the r-selected strategy. In the case of a k-selected
strategy the organism produces less number of off springs, they take more time to sexual
maturity and they involves some amount of parental care.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:26)

1093
In this case, the strategy of the organism is to produce less number of off springs and to
devote more time and more attention to those off springs, so that they are able to survive
and produce their own off springs. So, it is a method of enhancing fitness of the species by
producing less number of off springs and giving them more time and attention. But then
because we have less number of off springs, so if those off springs die out, the species does
not have another way to produce more number of off springs, because this species has
already selected the k-selected strategy.

Good examples include things like dolphins or in the case of terrestrial ecosystems, things
like tigers. Now, the impact on dolphins and whales will be much greater, because they
are k-selected organisms.

The second kind of organisms are the r-selected organisms, which show a very different
strategy to increase their fitness. So, they produce more number of off springs, they take
less time to sexual maturity and less or no parental care.

Examples include fishes. So, in the case of fish, two individuals will lay say hundreds or
even thousands of eggs, they will take less time to sexually majority, say a few months
and there will be little or no parental care. So, once these offsprings have come out of their
eggs, so they are now on their own. Or other good examples include the planktons. So, the
impact on a k-selected organism will be much greater, because it will not be able to come
back to the normalcy, because it does not have the capability to produce more number of
off springs.

Along with the lifestyle factors, other factors that play an important role is the health and
condition of the organisms. So, if there are organisms that are already stressed, they are
already diseased or migrating, so the impact on them will be much greater.

1094
(Refer Slide Time: 43:14)

When we talk about the impact, there are these two terms that we should know the first
one is vulnerability. Vulnerability describes the likelihood that a resource will be exposed
to oil. And sensitivity, it says that if our resource is already exposed to the oil, what are
the impacts or the effects of that exposure. An example is when we talk about a deep water
coral. So, a deep water coral may be sensitive, because if you expose it to the oil, so it
might die out very easily, but then it is not vulnerable to a surface oil spill why, because it
is not there on the surface, it is there in the deep waters.

Since it is not exposed, so it is not vulnerable; but if you expose it artificially or in certain
situations when it gets exposed, it is very much sensitive, so it dies out. On the other hand,
a rocky shore seaweed may be vulnerable, but it is not sensitive; why? Because you have
the seaweed that is there on the surface, it is there on the shores. So, when you have this
oil spill it might be able to reach the shores, when it reaches the shores, this organism the
seaweed it becomes exposed to the oil, so it is vulnerable.

But then, it has a very good mucus covering on its surface, which is able to thwart the
impacts of the oil. So, even though it is vulnerable if it gets exposed to the oil, but then
this oil is not able to produce much effect on this organism, so it is not sensitive. So, the
organisms that are both vulnerable and sensitive, will have much more amount of impact
than those organisms that are either not vulnerable or not sensitive or neither vulnerable

1095
nor sensitive. So, vulnerability and sensitivity play a huge role in determining the impacts
on different portions of the ecosystem.

(Refer Slide Time: 45:12)

The other terms are toxicity. So, toxicity is the potential or capacity of a material to have
adverse effects on living organisms. So, when we say that there could be some toxic
components in the oil, it means that there are some components in the oil that will be able
to produce adverse impacts or negative impacts on the living organisms.

Toxicity is divided into acute toxicity and chronic toxicity. Acute toxicity involves harmful
effects in an organism through a single or a short-term exposure. So, acute toxicity is short-
term toxicity, so for instance, if you say give cyanide to an organism, the organism will
die out, so that is an acute toxicity, because cyanide is able to act very fast.

1096
(Refer Slide Time: 46:02)

On the other hand, there are things like chronic toxicity. So, chronic toxicity is the ability
of a substance or a mixture of substances to have harmful effects over an extended period
of time, usually upon repeated or continuous exposure, sometimes lasting for the entire
life of the exposed organism.

A good example could be some types of pollutants. If you have a heavy amount of air
pollution in your area that might be able to produce a negative impact into your bodies,
but then it will take a very long period of time to show its effect. It is known as a chronic
toxicity.

Or this would include things such as the pesticides. There are pesticides that have a very
acute toxicity. So, if somebody is exposed to a pesticide in a huge amount, he or she might
die out, but at the same time if we are getting small doses of pesticides because of the food
that we are eating every day. So, if those pesticides get accumulated in the body, so over
a very long period of time, they will also show their own impacts.

For instance, you are using pesticides in say rice or wheat and these rice and wheat are not
cleaned up properly and the pesticides residues remain in these rice and wheat. So, if you
eat these rice and wheat, the pesticide slowly go on accumulating in your body and over a
very long period of time, they will show toxicity which will be classified as chronic
toxicity.

1097
There is another term, which is exposure. Exposure is the combination of duration of
exposure to the chemical and the concentration of the chemical; so the time to which the
chemical was exposed to and the concentration of the chemical. Again coming back to the
example of the pesticides, if you are having a heavy concentration of pesticide and you
expose an organism to that, it is a heavy exposure or if you have a slight moderate
concentration of the pesticide and you expose the organism for a very long period of time,
that again would count as a significant exposure to the chemical.

(Refer Slide Time: 48:11)

Then we also talked about the exposure routes. So, exposure route is the way the organism
is getting exposed to the substance. So, this includes ingestion, so in which the organism
is eating the chemical or it is getting absorbed from the surface such as the gills or through
contact with the skin; so that is the exposure route. Now, different chemicals get absorbed
through different exposure routes and they might be having different impacts on these
different organisms that are forming a part of the ecosystem.

The next term is magnitude. The magnitude of a toxic effect depends on the sensitivity of
the organism to the chemicals, but it is also a function of both the concentration and
duration of the exposure to the chemical. So, the magnitude of the impact would depend
on how much sensitive the organism is to the chemicals. So, if you expose corals to the
chemical, so they would die out very fast; if you expose the seaweeds to the chemical, they
will die out very slowly, because corals are much more sensitive.

1098
So, if an organism is sensitive, the impact will be much greater; also if the organism is not
that sensitive, but you are exposing it to a very heavy concentration for a very long period
of time, then also the impact will be large or the magnitude will be large.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:28)

And when these magnitudes are large, they might even result in the lethality to the
organism. So, lethality is a term that we use when there is a death of the organism. So, you
expose these organisms to the oil and there are some organisms such as dolphins that die
out. So, we will say that the oil had a lethal effect on the dolphins.

On the other hand, it might also have a sub-lethal effect in which there is a reduction of
biological function or health. So, you expose planktons to these oils and these planktons
did not die out, but then, their growth rate say reduced. So, in that case we will say that
there was a sub-lethal effect on these organisms.

1099
(Refer Slide Time: 50:11)

The other terms are bioavailability. Bioavailability is the extent to which a chemical is
available for uptake into an organism. Now, with respect to oil spills, it is usually closely
related to both the display of toxicity and the rate of biodegradation. Now, bioavailability
would say how much toxic is this chemical and for how long a period is it available to be
absorbed by these different organisms. So, if it is a persistent chemical, so it will be bio
available for a very long period of time.

The second term is bioaccumulation. Bioaccumulation occurs, when an organism absorbs

a toxic substance into its tissues at a rate that is greater than at which the substance is lost.

1100
(Refer Slide Time: 51:0)

What we are seeing here is that if you have an organism; so here you have the organism
and this organism is getting exposed to the chemicals that are there in the oil. There is this
process of absorption of chemicals. So, the chemicals are getting absorbed and then these
chemicals are also getting released out. So, there is a release or degradation through which
these chemicals are getting out of the system, that is, they are getting out of the organism.

Now, they are getting released, because they are getting processed by the livers of the
organism or by the kidneys of the organism and these are actively being thrown out of the
body, because these are not good chemicals for the body, so the body is trying to throw
them out. Now, if the amount or the rate of absorption is greater than the rate at which
these chemicals are getting out of the body, then we will say that there is some amount of
accumulation in the body.

For instance you took in say 100 grams of a chemical and you were able to release only
90 grams of the chemical. So, 10 grams of this chemical now become accumulated into
your body; so that is known as bioaccumulation. When the rate of absorption is greater
than the rate of degradation or the rate of release. Now, typically this happens in the case
of those chemicals that reside in the fatty tissues. In the case of hydrophobic chemicals,
they will reside in the fatty tissues and then it becomes very difficult to throw them out of
the body systems.

1101
(Refer Slide Time: 52:36)

Another term is that of bio magnification or bio amplification. In the case of bio
magnification, there is an increased concentration of the substance, such as the toxic
chemical in the tissues of the organisms at successively higher levels in the food chain.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:54)

A good example is provided by the concentration of DDD in the clear lake ecosystem.
DDD is a chemical that was used before DDT was invented or was used in a large measure.
So, in the case of this clear lake ecosystem, there was a spray of DDD to control certain
organisms. And when this spray was done, the concentration of the chemical in the water

1102
was 0.01 parts per million. There was a very low concentration of this chemical in the
waters, but then if we look at the planktons that were there in the system, they were able
to accumulate this chemical to a larger concentration of 5 parts per million.

Now, why was that? Because the planktons were able to absorb this chemical, but they
were not able to release this chemical out of their bodies. So, there was bioaccumulation
in this case. So, even though you have a very low concentration in water, the amount that
is there in the planktons is much larger. Now, if we looked at the fishes, they had a
concentration between 40 and 300 parts per million. So, from 5 parts per million you have
40 to 300 parts per million.

Now, why is that so? Again because one fish will be eating a number of planktons and all
of those chemicals, all the DDD that was present in these planktons that is now reaching
into the bodies of the fishes. And there is bioaccumulation at the level of the fishes as well,
so the amount of DDD that these fishes are getting into their body, they are not able to
release all of that out from their own bodies. So, the chemical gets concentrated in their
bodies. So, from 5 ppm it reaches, 300 ppm.

If you look at the birds, the birds had an even higher concentration; 1600 to 2500 parts per
million. Now, we could say that such a low concentration 0.01 parts per million in water
may not have a very high impact on a number of organisms, because it is a very low
concentration, but then because this chemical gets accumulated in the bodies and because
it gets magnified through the food chain, so, if you have such a heavy concentration of the
chemicals, 2500 ppm of DDD in your body, that will have a negative influence on the
organism.

1103
(Refer Slide Time: 55:21)

If we look at the impacts on different animals. So, we have so far looked at the impacts
theoretically, whether it is a k-selected or an r-selected species, it would have a differential
impact. Whether it has a juvenile or whether it has an adult feel, it will have a differential
impact, but then, what are the actual impacts that we observe in different organism?

In the case of planktons, they are sensitive to exposure. So, if you expose the planktons,
they will die out. There is acute, chronic and sub-lethal effects, but then they are able to
recover quickly because of their short generation times, because they are r-selected.

(Refer Slide Time: 5:59)

1104
In the case of seabed life, you have ecologically-significant concentrations of dissolved or
dispersed oil from surface slicks rarely reaches below the 10 meters. In this case they are
less vulnerable, they are not that much exposed to the oil except in the case of subsea
releases or subsea blowouts that have a larger potential.

(Refer Slide Time: 56:31)

And the sedimented hydrocarbons may also pose a risk to the bottom dwellers, but then
because the vulnerability is less, so, there is a less impact that has been noted in the
ecosystems.

In the case of fishes, there is an acute, chronic and sublethal effect. So, the fishes do not
die out, because they do not have to come to the surface often, but there is a sub lethal
effect. And in the case of the fishery industry, it causes a huge impact because of the
process of tainting. So, in the case of tainting, because you have a very low amount of
hydrocarbons in the system, people are able to smell it in the meat of the fish, so they do
not like that particular fish.

1105
(Refer Slide Time: 57:07)

In the case of marine mammals, the effect is much more, because they need to surface
periodically for air and so they are exposed to high concentrations of oil. And in this case,
if there is soiling of fur, then it impairs the insulation and water repellence, the cleaning of
fur by licking, it may lead to ingestion or there could be a smothering of airways if the oil
reaches into the air ways. So, the impacts are much greater in the case of the marine
mammals.

(Refer Slide Time: 57:34)

1106
In the case of marine reptiles, they also need to surface periodically for air, they are also
exposed to very high concentrations of oil and here also there is a large scale lethality that
is observed because of smothering and especially if there is a seasonality of nesting and
egg laying behaviour. So, if these animals are there in the egg laying stage, so in that case,
the impact will be much greater.

(Refer Slide Time: 58:00)

In the case of birds, for those birds that are coming down to look for fishes, they are also
exposed to very high concentrations of oil and in this case also if there is physical oiling
that causes hypothermia, reduced ability to move, reduce ability to feed, there could be
ingestion; if they are preening or if they are feeding on this contaminated food because of
the process of bio magnification. And there is transfer of oil to eggs and young ones, if
there is such a transfer, then it also reduces the amount of survival, because if there is oil
on the body of the bird and if it goes and sits on the eggs, then it might cover the egg and
in that process the egg will not be able to get oxygen for the development chick.

1107
(Refer Slide Time: 58:43)

In the case of shoreline and coastal habitats, the seaweeds are much better protected from
oils because of the mucus coating that resists oil. So, the sensitivity is less, but mangroves
get killed very easily, because there pneumatophores or the roots that bring in air, they get
clogged. Burrowing crabs may be killed if their burrows get inundated with oil.

(Refer Slide Time: 59:13)

And because of these large impacts on different organisms of the ecosystem, the cleaning
and recovery becomes very important. So, cleaning and recovery is a process through
which we are trying to help the ecosystem to come back to its normal stage. So, there is

1108
this large infrequent disturbance which brought the ecosystem down, so we are trying to
bring it back to the normal state.

Cleaning in this context refers to return to a level of petroleum hydrocarbons that has no
detectable impact on the function of the ecosystem. So, you are trying to reduce the amount
of oil that is present in the ecosystem. And recovery is the reestablishment of the biological
community in which the plants and animals characteristic of that community are present
and are functioning normally. So, you are trying to reduce the amount of oil and you are
also trying to help the ecosystem come back to its normalcy.

(Refer Slide Time: 60:07)

Cleaning operations include contain and scooping operations in which the oil is physically
removed or you can burn the oil or you can disperse the oil using detergents.

1109
(Refer Slide Time: 60:19)

Or you can just let nature act, because you already haves so many natural processes; photo
oxidation, dispersion and so on that will reduce the amount of oil that is present in the
ecosystem or you can make use of biological agents and fertilizers so in which case you
try to increase the microbial community that is there, so that it kills off the oil.

(Refer Slide Time: 60:39)

But then, the most prudent strategies are to avoid setting up oil rigs in vulnerable spots.
Prevent spills with better technologies, develop models to anticipate spread so that you are
able to concentrate your effort to those areas that will be more susceptible. Maintain rapid

1110
response teams and technologies and utilize studies on long-term impacts and mitigation
options in all of your oil operations.

To summarise, today we looked at the impact that large infrequent disturbances that have
on the ecosystems and then we looked at the oil spills in a much greater detail as a case
study.

Thank you for your attention. “Jai hind”.

1111
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Indian Forest Service, M.P
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 29
Plastic and biodiversity

(Refer Slide Time: 00:22)

“Namaste”,

We move forward with our discussion of the ecology of changes. And today we will have
a look at the impacts of plastics. Now, in the last lecture, we had seen that the impacts of
disturbances depends on the kind of disturbance, how large it is, and also the status of the
community. If you have a normal community, you give it a large infrequent disturbance.
So, the status moves from normal to an altered status, but then slowly with time it comes
back to the normal status again. So, it tells us that this is a resilient community

1112
(Refer Slide Time: 00:49)

On the other hand, if you give it more than one large in infrequent disturbances, so you
have this normal community, you gave it a disturbance, it became an altered community.
Then it was trying to come back to the normalcy, but you gave it another disturbance, and
it becomes an altered community for a very long time, it is not able to cope back.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:12)

And the third instance was, if you have a community that is not a normal community, but
it is already suffering some amount of stress or some amount of alterations and you give
it a disturbance, and it is not able to cope up again.

1113
In today’s lecture, we will have a look at such communities. Now, if you have a biological
community, and there is an influx of plastics into this community. So, it is possible that
the organisms become stressed and they are not able to reach their full potential, and that
excess abates the impact of any other disturbance that the community might face.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:51)

We begin with the definition of plastics. Plastic is a synthetic material made from a wide
range of organic polymers such as polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, nylon etc, that can be
moulded into shape when soft, and then set into a rigid or slightly elastic form. So, we
know plastics because plastic surround us.

1114
(Refer Slide Time: 02:15)

We find plastics everywhere. Even in this room even in the room, you are sitting in, you
will observe a number of plastic items, starting from your pens or components in your
computers, took maybe chairs, to maybe buttons in your dresses and so on. So, plastics
surround us, and so it becomes important to understand, the impact that plastics may have
on different communities and ecosystems.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:41)

We will look at a short history of plastics. So, the earliest use of plastics began in 1600
B.C, where Mesoamericans were processing natural rubber into a plastic. So, they were

1115
converting natural rubber into balls, and they used to play with these balls, so that is the
earliest known usage of a plastic material.

In the 19th century, we started seeing plastics in a bigger way. In the 19th century
polystyrene and polyvinyl chloride were invented. Then in the 20th century, in 1909
Bakelite was used in commercial products. By 1926 PVC was commercialized, and then
saran was invented, then polyurethane foam was invented then Teflon was invented, nylon
and neoprene got invented. We are saying that all these plastics, most of the plastics that
are surrounding us were actually invented in the 20th century.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:36)

Then we had the emergence of polyethylene terephthalate and polyesters. Now, PET is
something that is there in all the plastic bottles that we are using especially the disposable
water bottles, they are all made of polyethylene terephthalate, PET. Then during World
War 2, metals became more and more scarce. So, plastics were widely manufactured to
replace them. So, this got a major boost during the World War 2 and then this boost
continued.

In 1951, high density polyethylene and polypropylene got invented. 1954 you had the
invention of Styrofoam. So, once Styrofoam was made out of polystyrene, so now it
became available for a number of packaging applications. And by 1979 the plastic
production in the US started to exceed the steel production and this is continued since then.

1116
(Refer Slide Time: 04:34)

In fact every year, we see that the amount of plastics that are produced is more than what
was produced in the last year. So, the plastic production is increasing at the rate of 5 percent
per annum.

What happens to all of these plastics? Everything has a shelf life, everything has a usable
life. If you are using a plastic pin, after its life is done, you throw it down in the dustbin.
But, then what happens to this plastic pin, after it has been thrown into the dustbin? Does
it get recycled, does it get reused? Because a big property of plastics is that a number of
biological entities are not able to act on it.

For instance, if you have an item that is made out of wood, and after its usage, when you
throw it down, so there would be a number of decomposers that would act on this wood,
and then break it down. Once that is broken down, so the elements get released back into
the ecosystem But in the case of plastics, because these are manmade materials and
because a number of organisms do not have proper enzymes to cut these plastics, so, they
have a tendency to remain in the system. So, organisms will not be able to digest these
plastics.

The only way in that is left out is that we should be able to recover these plastics, and
maybe remould them into some other item. But, then if we look at how much of these
plastics has ever been recovered, we see that it is a very miniscule fraction of what was

1117
produced. So, it is like hardly 4 or 5 percent or less than 10 percent of plastics that has ever
been produced has been recovered.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:20)

If you are not able to recover these plastics, if we are not able to recycle them, where do
these plastics go? So, as we have seen the reused and recycled portion forms a very small
fraction of the total amount of plastics that is being produced. So, for the rest of the plastics,
there are instances where people try to burn them off, because you have a heavy amount
or a large of plastics, by burning them you can at least convert some of its hydrocarbons
into gases, so that they get released and your amount of the waste gets reduced.

In place of having a very huge volume of plastics that you will have as part of a waste
material, when you burn it down, so most of the gases would be released and then it will
shrink down, so very small fraction which will then be put into a landfill. But then it has
been observed that when you burn plastics, you release dioxins which are extremely toxic
compounds, and you also release carbon dioxide or in most of our cities, these plastics go
into the landfills.

If you put plastics into a landfill, they are going to remain there for hundreds or even
thousands of years, and we are running short of space for landfills or if you are not able to
burn these plastics, if you are not able to reuse and recycle them, if you are not putting it
into a landfill or even if you are putting it into a landfill and there is some rain and some
amount of these plastics get washed down, ultimately they reach the environment.

1118
When there is the environment, they reach the terrestrial environment, and also the marine
environment. Now, when we talk about release into the terrestrial environment, so you can
have plastics that are reaching into your forests, you have plastics that are reaching into
the croplands, and there are a number of animals that are getting exposed to these plastics.

On the other hand, when the plastics get washed down, they can move from small streams
into larger streams, into rivers, and ultimately they reach into the oceans. And then the
plastics are then exposed to the marine organisms. So, both terrestrial ecosystems and the
marine ecosystems are these days getting exposed to these plastics. So, it becomes
important to know, what is the impact of these plastics on these ecosystems and even more
so in the case of the marine ecosystems, because ultimately these plastics are going to
reach into the marine ecosystems.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:53)

What happens when plastics reach the seas or the oceans? The fate of the marine plastics
is this. 15 percent keep floating on the surface, 15 percent get washed ashore, to the reach
the beaches and the shores, and 70 percent sink to the ocean bottom. So, what happens to
the 70 percent? This 70 percent is now exposing itself to the benthic organisms to the
benthic ecosystems or the bottom dwellers, to the crabs for instance, to the starfishes for
instance.

The 15 percent that remains floating on the surface, they are being exposed to the sun, they
are being exposed to air, so they might break down into smaller portions or otherwise, they

1119
might get picked up by fishes, they might get picked up by birds that are looking out for
fishes, because these look like a fish that is that has come to the surface. So, a bird might
not be able to distinguish, whether it is a piece of plastic that is floating on the surface or
whether it is a fish that has come to the surface. So, a bird might pick it up.

And if it gets washed ashore, in that case a number of organisms that live on the beaches
will get exposed to these plastics. So, we have 15 percent floating on the surface, 15
percent washed ashore, and 70 percent that is sinking to the ocean bottoms. So, how does
that look like?

(Refer Slide Time: 10:13)

This is what plastic looks like, when it is floating on the surface. So, these are all waste
materials that have been released into the environment. And they have return into a water
body, and because like this bottle it has lots of air inside or this doll, it has a lot of air
inside, so it is less dense than water, and so it is floating on the surface of water or else
when it gets washed ashore.

1120
(Refer Slide Time: 10:38)

Here we are observing the example of a hermit crab. So, we had seen this example, when
we were talking about the ecological interactions, the positive interactions, where we had
seen that a hermit crab is an organism that is very easily predated upon by a number of
predators. So, to protect itself, it uses the shells of other organisms.

It uses the shells of molluscs. And so if there is a shell that is available, so this hermit crab
would try to squeeze itself inside that shell, and it would carry that shell along with its
body, so that it forms a protective cover. In this example, we are observing that in this
deplorable state of affair, this hermit crab is using the cap of a bottle as its outer shell.

1121
(Refer Slide Time: 11:38)

We are observing changes in the behaviours of organisms or when it reaches into the sea
beds. So, here we are observing a number of plastics that are there on the sea beds, you
have these bottles, you have some bags and so on. And the organisms that are living on
the sea bed are now getting exposed to these plastics.

When we are talking about plastics, so all these plastics are of different shapes and sizes,
you have some large pieces of plastic, you have some smaller pieces of plastics. And in
the case of this bottle cap, we can observe that it is already in a degraded state so some
parts of it have come out, they have become chipped out.

1122
(Refer Slide Time: 12:25)

When looking at the impacts of these plastics, we classify these debris into three
categories. The first category is known as the macro debris, macro is large size. Macro
debris is a debris that is greater than 20 millimetres or 2 centimetres in size. When we are
talking about this bottle, so this bottle is greater than 2 centimetres in size. This is a part
of a macro debris. And in this case, ghost nets are the main concern. We will look at ghost
nets in more detail in a short while.

The second category is a Meso debris, meso is in between. So, 5 to 20 millimetres in size,
they are meso debris. And these are dominated by nurdles, which are resin granules that
are intermediates in plastic production. How are plastics made? So, you take out
petroleum, you make chemicals out of it, then you polymerize those chemicals, so that you
have the basic building blocks of plastic. Now, those basic building blocks are then made
in the form of small granules, so that it becomes easy to transport and so that you can take
this plastic from the place it was manufactured to the place where it should be casted into
some other useful shapes.

You will have small particles, small granules that will be taken from one place to the other
place and these particles are known as nurdles. Now, in the factory where the items have
been being manufactured; so in the factory where this pen was manufactured, these nurdles
will be taken, they will be heated, so when they are heated they become soft, they become
liquefied, and then it is casted into this shape; so those are nurdles.

1123
The nurdles, because of their small size, they are classified as Meso debris. Now, why
should nurdles become debris? Suppose there is a ship that is carrying nurdles from one
country to another country, so there is one country that is making the polymers, then it
converts it into nurdles. And then it is shipping it to another country that will then use these
nurdles to make items of use.

Suppose this ship capsizes or maybe a few boxes of nurdles become capsized out into the
oceans. So, these nurdles have now come out into the environment. Otherwise also, if there
is a factory that is using these nurdles to make, say, pens, so some amount of nurdles may
get released during the normal process of production. So, all these nurdles, when they
reach into the environment, they are classified as Meso debris.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:06)

The third thing is known as micro debris, micro is small. Micro debris is something that is
less than 5 millimetres in size and they are often formed through fragmentation of macro
or meso debris. So, if you have a large sized particle or a large debris, and it is getting
broken down, so it will form a micro debris. And they also consist of plastic scrubber
particles as are found in face wash and other cosmetic products.

When we are talking about the formation of the micro debris, because in a number of
situations micro debris play a very big role in the ecosystems; Why? Because, say, there
is a pen that is floating on the surface of water; now, there could be a few birds that would

1124
identify this as food and try to pick it up and try to feed on it, but then that number will
only remain limited to a few organisms or a few species of organisms.

Whereas, when we are talking about micro debris, they are so small that a number of
organisms that are there in the ocean will get exposed to these small particles. So, even
when they are looking out for food, these particles might get ingested along with the food
or in the case of fishes that are using gills for their respiration, these small particles might
get inside and get lost into the gills of these organisms.

Even in the case of planktons, these micro particles, these micro debris can get eaten up
by these plankton, and reach into the food chain. So, micro debris become extremely
important, when we are analyzing the impacts of plastics on the ecosystem. So, how do
these micro debris form?

(Refer Slide Time: 16:49)

The production of smaller fragments or the production of micro debris or even meso debris
from macro debris and meso debris, it occurs like this. So, you have synthetic polymers
that have stabilizers, fillers, extenders and other additives and when they are out in the
environment, so they are acted upon by the UV light, so here you have, hν, that is photons.
So, it is being acted upon by light, then it is acted upon by oxygen. So, there are some
amount of oxidation reactions that are going on, then they are also acted upon by microbes
and worms.

1125
Now, when they are acted upon by these agents, so we have processes of light absorption,
photolytic reaction, now photo is light, lysis is breakdown. This is a breakdown reaction
that occurs because of light. You have photolytic reactions, you have formation of radicals,
and you have enzymatic degradation that then an oxidation and scission. Now oxidation
we know is that is the action of oxygen or addition of oxygen, and scission is a breakdown
reaction or a cutting reaction.

There is a scission reaction that causes discoloration, loss of mechanical integrity, strength
and impact properties. So, essentially what we are saying here is that if you consider a
plastic, so suppose you are considering this plastic bottle, and if I press this plastic bottle,
it will be able to come back to its original size, because there is some amount of elasticity
in this material.

But, then if I leave this plastic out there in the sun for some time, so you will observe that
this transparent plastic starts getting whitish in colour. Now, when we are seeing that it is
changing colour, it means that there are some chemical reactions that are going on. Once
it becomes whitish in colour, it also becomes brittle. So, if we press that again, so in that
case it converts itself into a powdery substance. And this is what we are talking about
here. So, we have all these reactions that are causing discoloration, loss of mechanical
integrity, strength and impact properties.

So, if two plastic particles collide against each other, two debris particles collide with each
other or suppose you have this plastic that is going and colliding with a rock, so in that
case, this will start breaking off, small pieces will start chipping out. And if those small
pieces are less than 5 millimetres in size, then we will say that these are micro debris.

1126
(Refer Slide Time: 19:25)

And we see examples of these everywhere. So, now if we talk about a decomposing debris,
here you have a polythene sheet. And in this case, you have this film and small fibers that
are now coming out because of the process of the decomposition. When we are talking
about decomposition, this is different from the decomposition that we observe in the
ecosystems. Because, in that case any material gets decomposed completely, so that it
becomes the nutrients which are then taken up again by the food webs.

In this case, when you are converting your plastic into a smaller fragment, this is smaller
fragment is not a part of the nutrition cycle anywhere. So, it is not taken up by any of the
organisms for food or at least, it is not voluntarily taken up by any organism for food, and
it cannot be used as a food. Even if it gets into the bodies of some organisms, it is only
going to create a blockage, it will not provide nutrition to the organism.

If you look at any pond or most of the water bodies, we will observe things like this, a
small piece of film. Now, here we have this size, so this is 1 millimetre. So, this piece of
film that is floating around, this is a micro debris. You can even have some pellets or beads,
so you can have nurdles or you can even have some pellets that are coming out of the
cosmetic products, say, face washes. So, they are used as scrubbers in face washes, and
they might also come out.

You can even have fragments that are made out of foam. So, when we are talking about
Styrofoam, and we are talking about thermocol, small pieces might come out, so they will

1127
have the property of a foam, but then they are also very small in size or you can have these
fibers. So, this is a line that is made out of plastic.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:26)

Now, not only there is the process of decomposition that will happen, but at the same time
we might also have the process of aggregation. Now, in the process of decomposition, we
were moving from macro debris to meso debris to micro debris.

In the process of aggregation, you can have situation in which the micro debris becomes
associated with each other. So, it joins together with other particles of micro debris, and
becomes a meso debris. Examples include the faeces of a number of organisms. So,
probably there was an animal that was having these micro debris in its environment and it
was able to eat these micro debris and so these micro debris were able to reach the
intestines.

In the intestines, the food gets absorbed that the plastics, do not get absorbed, they are not
decomposed there and then after a while, when it is giving out the faeces. So, in the faeces,
these small particles are all now together. So, this might convert from a micro debris to a
meso debris or in might even convert itself into a marine snow.

Marine snow refers to a number of particles or fragments or dead bodies of organisms that
move in a top down manner in the ocean systems.

1128
(Refer Slide Time: 22:44)

Let us consider a column of the ocean. Here we have the seabed and here we have the
ocean surface. Near the ocean surface, we have a number of planktons. We have
phytoplankton and zooplankton, now these planktons they are using sunlight, and they are
doing photosynthesis. They also get eaten up by the zooplankton, and maybe even by the
larger size fishes. Now, when they die out or maybe there was a fish in the water and it
was predated upon, and probably this small fragment of the fish remained.

Such fragment, the dead bodies of the organisms or the fragments of these organisms or
maybe pieces of faeces that are there in the organisms, because they have a greater density
than that of water, they start coming down. Now, they will come down in a process that
will take number of years, because they are very small sized particles, and they take a very
long time to come down because of the effects of viscosity, and also because of buoyancy.

In this case these particles, when they are coming down, they are known as marine snow.
In this case what we are saying is that these faecal particles which have so many plastic
particles inside, they might get connected with each other, and they might start going down
or else if, there is already existing particle of the marine snow, you can have some plastics
that come and aggregate with these, and then also they start coming down.

In this process, what we are observing is that in the case of a small piece of micro debris,
it might remain on the top surface of the oceans, but then because it is able to associate
with already existing particles, and with the faeces of organisms. So, it is also able to reach

1129
down. So, even the micro plastics or the micro debris are able to reach to the bottom of the
oceans; Now, if we talk about all of these debris, if we talk about macro, meso, and micro
debris, how does that impact the ecosystem? That is what we are interested in knowing?
So, there is a plastic, if it does not play any role in the ecosystem, we are fine with it. But,
then if it impacts the ecosystem in a negative manner, then we have to be extremely wary
of it. So, how does it impact the ecosystem?

(Refer Slide Time: 25:30)

So, there are a number of things that happen. First is ingestion, which means eating.

(Refer Slide Time: 25:36)

1130
Now, if you look at these plastic bags, these are all polythene bags, and they are put into
water. And now we can see that these are polythene bags, because we can see these
handles. But, then to an animal that is living in the water, they might look like jelly fishes.
And so these animals would try to eat these plastic bags.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:09)

In that way, the plastics are getting eaten up by the animals or let us say in the oceans, so
you have say a small piece of plastic, say the cap of a pen that is floating here. There might
be a bird that may mistake it for a fish that has come to the surface, and might try to pick
it up.

1131
(Refer Slide Time: 26:28)

Here we have the situation of an albatross. Albatrosses are very last size birds, and they
are very long lived birds. They live for as long as 50 or 60 years. Now, in this case what
happened was, this is an albatross chick, dead albatross chick. And in this case the parents,
because the chick is growing, so it has a huge amount of nutritional requirements. Now, a
chick cannot go out catch fishes for itself, so the parents need to go out.

And the parents when they saw these plastic pieces that were floating on the surface of
water, they mistook it for fishes. And then they dutifully brought all of these pieces to the
chick, and then they fed their chick with all these plastic pieces. What happens later, these
plastic pieces then block the alimentary canal of the chick.

So, it is not able to gain anymore nutrition, and then it dies out of malnutrition. And here
also we can observe that the whole body of the chick is getting decomposed. But, then
these plastics remain, and then these plastics after the next rains, will again go back into
the oceans, and then might be picked up by another albatross. Now, this is how the plastics
result in a havoc, when they get eaten up by organisms.

1132
(Refer Slide Time: 27:56)

We observe that these plastics getting eaten up at all stages. Here is an example of a sea
pen polyp. These are small marine animals that normally live on the sea beds. And here
we can observe that, if we see the mouth area of this polyp, there is this small fiber that is
made out of plastic.

You can see that this is the scale bar, so this is 200 microns. So, the complete length of
this fiber is say around 1 millimetre, the complete length of this fiber is 1 millimetre. And
this is a plastic fiber that has gone and that can be seen in the mouth of a sea pen polyp.
So, we are seeing that not only are large pieces getting eaten up by birds, but also the very
small pieces the fibers that are being eaten up by the polyps.

1133
(Refer Slide Time: 28:53)

And nobody is left out. Even in the case of the planktons, now planktons are microscopic
organisms. But, then if you look at planktons, you will observe that even their bodies will
have plastics inside. Now, these images were taken using fluorescent microscopes in which
the plastic particles are showing up in green. So, here you can see that this is a zooplankton,
and it has a plastic piece here or plastic piece here.

In this another zooplankton, you have a plastic here, you have a plastic here. And similarly,
this is say a larva of some organism, it is also a very small organism, and you are seeing
plastics everywhere. You even see things like your micro plastic beads that are there in the
alimentary canal, they are also coming out in the faeces. So, this is a faeces of zooplankton,
and we are seeing these micro particles of plastics inside. So, nobody is left out.

Even the planktons are having plastics in their bodies, and when planktons get eaten up by
other organisms, when they get eaten up by small fishes, then large fishes and then by
birds and so on. So, we see that these micro plastics are now able to move throughout the
food chain from the very bottom to the very top. Even the apex predators might be having
some plastics in their bodies now.

1134
(Refer Slide Time: 30:16)

It has a very large role in bottom dwellers and filter feeders. Now, when we were talking
about the organisms that live on the floors of the oceans. When we are talking about the
benthic organisms. So, there are a number of organisms that are filter feeders. Now, what
is the filter feeder? So, like, if this organism is a filter feeder, it would try to get a large
amount of water into its body. And then there would be a filter like system in its body, so
that all the planktons get filtered, and those planktons are then eaten and digested.

If you have micro plastics that are of the size of these planktons, then all of these plastics
are also getting into the body, then they are getting filtered out, and then they are blocking
the alimentary canal of these filter feeders. And these plastics, may get captured into
various body parts of these organisms or maybe when there are some organisms that are
buried in a hole into the seabed. So, they can get or they also get incorporated into the
burrowed walls of the system.

These plastics are not just floating on the top surface of the ocean, they are able to move
down along with the faeces, along with the marine snow. And even when they are down,
they are influencing the organisms that are a part of the ocean ecosystem. And they are
even able to get down into the seabed with these organisms. So, here we can see that there
is a huge impact on the wild organisms or on the ecosystems.

1135
(Refer Slide Time: 31:54)

The first one is ingestion, the second one is entanglement or even smothering of the
animals.

(Refer Slide Time: 32:00)

We were talking about the ghost nets, now this is a ghost net. Now, in the case of a ghost
net, it was earlier a fishing net that was being used, maybe in some ship. And probably at
the end of its useful life, it got torn up or maybe the ship capsized or maybe this was just
left out by accident. And now, if you have this net that is floating in the water, it is still

1136
capturing animals. So, animals get caught up in these nets, there is no person who is using
these nets, but animals are still getting caught.

Once you have an animal that gets caught here, so now this animal is unable to move. In
the case of these tortoises, they are reptiles and they require air for respiration. So, even
the sea turtles, they have to surface once in a while to gather their breath. Now, if they get
entangled in one such net, they will not be able to reach to the surface, and they will die
out of a lack of oxygen, they will die out of asphyxiation or probably if there is an organism
that gets caught here and this organism is not able to now move out, to catch its prey, to
get its food. So, it will die out of malnutrition. So, entanglement is also a big way in which
these plastics, now, most of this rope, most of these nets are made out of nylon. So, this is
one big way in which nylon is impacting the wildlife.

(Refer Slide Time: 33:30)

Or there could be situations in which there is an animal, and this animal is now getting
trapped in one of these plastic pieces. So, there is this plastic band which is now cutting
through the skin of the seal. In this case probably the animal caught this piece of plastic,
when it was small. And now this animal is growing in size with time, but then the plastic
is not allowing it to grow. So, it is actually cutting through its skin. Now, this organism
will be exposed to a number of infections. And in this particular case, this animal actually
died out, it could not be saved because of this plastic.

1137
(Refer Slide Time: 34:12)

Besides ingestion and entanglement, there are also a number of persistent, bio-
accumulative, toxic substances that are there in the plastics. Now, persistent means that
these chemicals will remain in the system for a very long time. They are very difficult to
degrade. So, microorganisms or other organisms would not be able to break them down
into non-toxic substances. There are a number of chemicals that are bio-accumulative.

Bio-cumulative as we have seen, is the case in which there is a chemical that is getting
absorbed into the body, and then the body is also trying to degrade it and to flush it out of
the system. But, then if the rate of absorption is greater than the rate at which it can be
thrown out of the body, then it starts getting accumulated in the body.

Persistent toxic substances, and bio-accumulative toxic substances are also there in the
plastics. Now, you might ask this question, why would somebody want to put a toxin in a
plastic? Well, people do not want to put a toxin in plastic, but then a number of substances
that are used to make this plastic more and more supple might actually be toxic substances.

We have things that are known as plasticizers. A number of plasticizers are toxic
substances or you could even have a situation in which, you want to put some flame
retardants into a plastic why? Because a plastic is made out of hydrocarbons, and so it very
easily catches fire; so you might want to put some flame retardants into a plastic, especially
in applications such as automotive seat covers.

1138
So, the seat cover that is there in your vehicle might be having a number of flame
retardants. Now, that flame retardant is playing an important role, when we are talking
about the automobile safety. So, it should not very easily catch fire. But, then once its life
is over, and once this seat cover gets into the ecosystem, what is the role of that flame
retardant after that while, so that frame retardant might act as a very toxic substance for
the ecosystem.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:20)

So, we have substances such as Bisphenol-A. Now, Bisphenol-A is used as a plasticizer.

In the case of these plastic bottles, if you have this Bisphenol-A, so it will give you this
amount of suppleness. So, if you are pressing, it will come back to its original shape, now
that is because of a plasticizer, which is Bisphenol-A. But, then Bisphenol-A is also an
endocrine disruptor, what it means is that it the structure of this molecule is very similar
to that of some hormones that are found in the body.

If you take the case of tadpoles; tadpoles are the young ones of frogs. And if you take these
tadpoles, and you expose them to Bisphenol-A, they will all change their sex, why?
Because this substance Bisphenol-A, it is very similar in it is structure, and its action to
the sex hormones. This might have an impact on the ecosystem. What happens if you have
a pond, and that pond has a huge concentration of Bisphenol-A? All the tadpoles that are
born in that particular pond all of them are females, there are just no male that system. So,

1139
the whole ecosystem would collapse, because you will not have any more frogs in that
ecosystem after a while, because there is no male to fertilize the females.

(Refer Slide Time: 37:45)

Or, if we talk about Brominated Flame Retardant, BFRs. These are also bio-accumulative
toxins. They get accumulated in the bodies, and they are also magnified, when we move
up the food chain. Here we are observing that, not only are these substances getting
accumulated in the body, but then because all these organisms are part of some ecosystem.
So, they also play a big role in the working of the ecosystems. This is how the plastics are
able to disrupt the ecosystems or let us talk about accumulation and concentration of
hydrophobic toxins.

1140
(Refer Slide Time: 38:16)

There are a number of these chemicals, now if you have these chemicals, it is possible that
some of them might be hydrophobic in their nature. When we say a hydrophobic substance,
hydro is water and phobic is fear of. So, you have hydrophobic, it means there is a toxic
substance that hates water.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:50)

In that case the hydrophobic substance might come together, now where do you get a
hydrophobic surface in nature? You have it in the form of waxes or if there is another piece
of plastic nearby, a plastic is a very hydrophobic surface. So, now what happens is, if you

1141
have these hydrophobic toxins that are there in the water and if you put a piece of plastic
here, these hydrophobic substances will come and adhere to the surface of the plastic.

In that case the concentration of the hydrophobic toxins increases a lot, and because of this
when they get ingested or when they get absorbed into the bodies of any organism, if they
get ingestion by say, a plankton. So, all of these hydrophobic toxins will now be able to
exert a very big role in the bodies of these planktons.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:37)

Another way in which plastics are harming the ecosystems is by their potential to alter the
habitat and behaviours of organisms.

1142
(Refer Slide Time: 39:45)

We looked at this example of hermit crab. If you have a hermit crab which is using a bottle
cap as its shell, this is not a normal behaviour of the hermit crab. So, you are changing the
behaviours of organisms. And then, when there is one organism that is changing its
behaviour, it might also have a cascading effect up and down in the food chain or let us
look at the seahorse.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:07)

1143
Here is a seahorse that, in place of using a twig, is now using an ear bud for its support.
What will happen next? If there is an animal that feeds on seahorses, it might even feed on
this ear bud or let us talk about these hyenas.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:23)

Now, these hyenas are there in a trash yard, and all they have around is plastics. This is
not a normal behaviour, this is not something that a hyena is exposed to or should be
exposed to in its normal course of life.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:42)

1144
These days, we are observing plastics, even in the most pristine of environments. So, we
went to the Manas Tiger Reserve which is there in Assam, and in this tiger reserve which
also holds a very big rhinoceros population. So, we were moving around, and there we saw
a pile of rhinoceros dung. Now, we prodded this dung, because we were seeing some bits
of plastics here and lo and behold, we were able to find out this piece of polythene bag,
which was there in the rhinoceros dung.

If there is a polythene bag that is there in rhinoceros dung, it means that the rhinoceros had
actually fed on the polythene, and where did it get this polythene from? because Manas
Tiger Reserve is not an area that has a very big habitation nearby. And even then it was
able to get hold of this polythene. So, these plastics because they are light in weight,
because they are able to get carried away by wind, by water and so on. They are even
reaching our tiger reserves, which are some of the most pristine areas, some of the most
protected areas that we have for the conservation of bio-diversity.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:56)

Another way in which plastics impact wildlife is by acting as dispersal agents including
transport of invasive species.

1145
(Refer Slide Time: 42:12)

What is happening in this case is that, suppose we have a situation in which this is your
mainland, and then, there is an island here, and then all this area is water. Now, there will
be some birds that will be able to move from the mainland to the island; there will be some
small seeds or maybe some small insects that can flown along with wind into the island,
but what about the larger animals. So, there might be some animals that can swim to the
island, but then there are a number of other organisms that require some mode of
transportation.

For instance, suppose there was coconut trees somewhere here, and then a piece of coconut
fell into the water, and then maybe a frog jumped into this coconut, and then along with
this coconut, it was able to reach to this island. So, such instances of use of transportation
materials is common in nature. But, when we are talking about naturally available
substances that can act as transport materials, they are limited, not only because we have
a limited number of things that are naturally available and are able to float from point a to
point b, but at the same time also because all of these natural materials are also bio-
degradable. So, for larger distances, you require those materials that should not biodegrade
while enduring the process of transportation. Now, if there is this coconut, and if this island
is very far from the mainland, then it is possible that by the natural process of degradation,
this coconut will end its structure here. And so the organism will not be able to reach the
island. So, nature has its own ways to limit, to facilitate the movement of organisms from

1146
one place to another, and also to limit the movement of organisms from one place to
another.

How are plastics influencing this? If in place of this coconut, there was a piece of plastic
that was floating, and if an animal gets on top of this plastic. So, this plastic is not going
to biodegrade, when it is being transported from one place to another. So, in most instances
this organism that jumped onto the plastic will be able to reach the island.

(Refer Slide Time: 44:47)

And if we look at the organisms that are being transported because of these plastics; here
these coloured entities are the natural materials. So, these are the natural materials like
wood or metal or tar balls or some other materials. And all of these darkened bars represent
the plastics. And here we are observing how many number of species of all these different
taxonomic groups are able to move from one place to another, and what proportion of it is
using the national materials, and what proportion of it is using the plastics.

In the case of some organisms such as the brown zones, here we can observe that the
natural moment is very small. But, just because you have so many plastic materials around,
so these animals are able to move from one place to another place. Now, why is that
important for us? That is important, because there could be a number of species that are
invasive species. If you have an organism that shifted from this mainland, use this plastic,
and was able to reach the island, probably it would cause havoc to this island, because this

1147
organism is a invisible species, it establishes itself on this island, and it is able to out
compete all the other organisms that are there on this island.

So, these are the kinds of ecosystem impacts that we can foresee. Probably, there is an
organism that is a pathogenic organism or an organism that is say a predator organism.
And there is this island that does not have any naturally occurring predators or maybe
limited number of predators. And when this organism comes to the island, it is able to eat
away all the birds of this island, so that might result in the collapse of the whole ecosystem
of the island which is also another way in which plastics are impacting the ecosystems.

(Refer Slide Time: 46:43)

If you look at the hierarchy of things, we can see that there is an impact of plastics, even
the impacts of micro plastics can be observed throughout the hierarchy. These are sub
cellular level, cellular level, organ, individual, population, and ecosystem. And we are
talking about the impacts of micro plastics. Now, micro plastics can be ingested, they can
be eaten up or there can be an uptake across the membranes of some organisms or they
can be a release of co contaminants that are there along with these micro plastics, and we
are seeing the impacts of all of these.

At the sub cellular level, because of these chemicals that are being released, you can have
changes in the enzymatic activity or changes in gene expression or oxidative damage to
the cells. At the level of cellular structures, we can observe apoptosis. Now, apoptosis is a

1148
process in which a cell performs a suicide, so it is a programmed cell death that we observe
in a number of cells.

What is happening in this case is that you have this micro plastic that was able to get into
these cells, it was able to influence the sub cellular structures, it was able to cause some
damage to the cell, and because of this damage the cell committed cell death which is
apoptosis or you can see a change in the membrane stability of the cell or changes in the
phagocytic responses of the cell. Now, phagocytic response; phagocytic means that the
cell is eating up some other organism for food.

In this case, a change in the phagocytic response would mean that by eating of this plastic,
now this cell is not no more able to eat or to show its phagocytic response. At the level of
organs, we can observe histopathology, ‘histo’ is tissue, and ‘pathology’ is a diseased state.
So, here we are observing histopathology or a change in the metabolic demand of the
organs or a change in the energetic reserves of the organism.

At the level of individual, we can see mortality. So, we have seen so many organisms that
die because of these plastics. So, we can have changes in mortality, changes in ingestion
rates, ingestion rates why? Because the alimentary canal of the organism is full of micro
plastics. So, there is not enough space. So, the organism is always on getting a feeling of
fullness, but then it is not getting any nutrients or they can be changes in the individual
growth, because the organism is not getting enough nutrients.

At the level of population, if there is changes in the level of individuals will also observe
changes in the level of population, so they can be changes in fecundity or the birth rates or
we can have changes in offspring viability or changes in viability, development. Now, here
again as we have seen even in the case of larger size plastics, they can be changes and the
in the viability of the offsprings, like in the case of the albatross chick. So, the albatross
chick died, because its alimentary canal was all full of plastics. We can also see the same
impact in the case of smaller organisms as well.

From the population level changes, we can also observe ecosystem level changes. Changes
in the behaviour of organisms, we saw in the case of larger organisms like the hermit crab,
there was a change in the behaviour, because now this hermit crab was using a plastic
bottle, a cap as its shield. And the same a very similar thing can also be seen in a number
of other organisms as well. They can be changes in ecosystem service in ecosystem

1149
functions, and community shifts. So, essentially even a very small thing like a micro plastic
can have impacts all over in the ecosystem.

(Refer Slide Time: 50:39)

Now that we know that plastics cause a deleterious impact and even micro plastics cause
a deleterious impact, what are the options available for us? How can we help? So, the first
way we can help is to reduce our requirements of plastics, to reuse the plastics, and to
recycle plastics. So, when we say to reduce our demand of plastics, if we have an option
available, whether you should go for a plastic straw or whether you should go for a glass,
when you want to drink a soft drink.

So, you can go for a lifestyle change, you can say that in place of using the straw, you
would prefer having the soft drink either directly from the bottle or say in a glass. So, in
that way you will reduce your demand for straws. Reuse, when we say reuse, if you have
to use a plastic bottle, why not fill it up again. So, in that case you will reuse the plastic
bottle, and again reduce the demand. And at the end of its lifecycle, the plastic should be
put through a recycling process.

1150
(Refer Slide Time: 51:44)

In the case of recycling, you have all these plastics that are then clumped together in the
form of these big bundles. And then they are reheated, they are re-melted, and then they
are converted into some other products. So, reduce, reuse, recycle, lifestyle changes,
glasses in place of straws, and use of alternative materials like bio-plastics.

Bio-plastics are biodegradable plastics. So, unlike the petroleum based plastics that we see
all around us, these are those plastics that have the properties of the plastics, but they are
at the same time, they are biodegradable. In most cases, these are made out of biological
macromolecules.

For instance, when we talk about a normal plastic and you say, talk about polyethylene,
now polyethylene is made out of long polymer chains that are made by polymerizing the
ethylene molecules. In place of those long chains, because these long chains are giving the
properties to the plastic, we can make use of some other biologically available polymers.
So, those polymers could be things such as carbohydrates. So, you can make use of chains
of carbohydrates or you can make use of chains of proteins. These plastics, when they are
made out of these biological polymers would give you the properties of the plastics, but at
the same time they will also be bio-degradable.

1151
(Refer Slide Time: 53:16)

So, we created some bio-degradable plastics at IIT-Kanpur. And here we can observe that
this is an agarose based bio-plastic material, it is completely transparent, it is completely
flexible. So, you can roll it up, just like any other piece of polyethylene sheet.

(Refer Slide Time: 53:34)

Also, the strength of this plastic is much greater than that of many of the existing plastic
materials, existing petroleum based plastic materials. So, when you talk about low density
polyethylene, this is the strength of low density polyethylene. This is that of poly tetra

1152
fluoroethylene, here we have the strength of the normal bio-plastic. So, the normal bio-
plastic is already somewhere, like twice the strength of the low density polyethylene.

The strength of high density polyethylene is a bit greater than that of the bio plastic. But,
then we can tinker the bio plastic by using some composite materials to increases its the
strength, so that it becomes even greater than that of the high density polyethylene. Here
we have PVC, the polyvinyl chloride. And then we can use some other composites, so that
the strength of the bio-plastic is even greater than that of the PVC which is actually
approaching the levels of nylon, which is one of the most high strength plastics that we
have around.

So, in this lecture, we began by looking at the impacts of large infrequent disturbances on
different ecosystems or different communities, so that was a revision in which we saw that
if there is any community or any ecosystem that is not in the most normal state, but is
already a bit altered, already a bit stressed, so any large infrequent disturbance might lead
to a collapse of that ecosystem.

One of those stressors that are available today is plastics. We looked at plastics, we began
with the definition of plastics went through a short history of when plastics were
manufactured, how are they manufactured, how much amount of plastics is being
manufactured, how its production is increasing 5 percent every year and then we looked
at the impacts of plastics on the ecosystem.

We saw the impacts of different sizes of plastics, the macro debris, the meso debris, and
the micro debris. The impacts that they cause are things such as ingestion impacts in which
animals eat them, and then they get lost into the intestines, and then the the organism dies
out of malnutrition or things like smothering. So, if there is a sheet of plastic that has come
and attach itself to the mouth parts of an organism, so this organism is now no more able
to feed or it is no more able to respire, because it has clogged the airways, so that is the
impact of smothering.

We looked at the impact of ghost nets. So, there is an animal that gets entrapped here, and
this animal is no more able to move or things that are acting at a smaller scale. So, there
are a number of chemicals that these plastics are releasing which were earlier used as
plasticizers or as flame retardant and after the usage of plastics, they are now becoming a
nuisance toxic molecule, when they are there in the ecosystem.

1153
We also looked at micro plastics. So, in the case of these micro debris or micro plastics or
micro fibers, we saw that how these particles are now able to reach to all the organisms by
getting into the food chain. So, they enter into the bodies of the plankton, and from the
plankton they get eaten up by other organisms, and then slowly and steadily all the
organisms get exposed to these plastics.

We also saw that even in the case of the bottom dwelling organisms, these plastics are able
to reach even to the bottom of the seas and oceans in the form of marine snow, in the form
of other aggregates, in the form of faecal pellets and so on.

And they are even seen in those organisms that are found at the bottom of the ocean such
as the sea pen. And then we also looked at how these organisms are, how various
organisms are using plastics to transport themselves from one place to another, how it is
causing a change in the behaviours of organisms, how it is even reaching our most pristine
locations such as tiger reserves. And then we looked at various ways in which we can
reduce these impacts, by reducing our usage, by reducing the demand, by reusing these
plastics, by recycling these plastics or by shifting to other materials such as bio-degradable
plastics.

So, these materials have the good properties of plastics, but at the same time they are also
bio-degradable, so that they do not cause this have up to the ecosystem. If there is an
organism that eats up a piece of bio plastic, because it is made out of carbohydrates, this
bio-plastic will get digested in its alimentary canal, it will only provide nutrition to this
organism, it will not occlude the intestines of the organism.

If you burn a bio-plastic, it will only release carbon dioxide in water; there is no toxin that
is going to be released. And if these plastics are just left out into the environment, a number
of decomposers will start acting on these, so we will have the action of bacteria, we will
have the action of a number of fungi which will then biodegrade these plastics into their…
into their elements, and which will then become a part of the food chain without causing
any of the negative consequences.

That is all for today. Thank you for your attention.“Jai hind”.

1154
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture - 30
Impacts of climate change

“Namaste”,

We move forward with our discussion of the ecology of changes and today we will have a
look at the Impacts of climate change.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:21)

Now, climate change has become a hot currency these days. We see people talking
everywhere about climate changes the question is how does climate change impact the
ecosystems or what is its relation with ecology?

1155
(Refer Slide Time: 00:41)

We have seen earlier that for any disturbance climate changes also another disturbance.
So, for any disturbance we can say that the impacts would depend on the size of that
disturbance the frequency of that disturbance or how commonly that disturbance occurs
and the initial state of the ecosystem.

For instance, we saw that if there is a community that is normal you give it a signal large
disturbance and you have the state that this community has moved from a normal state to
an altered state, but in slowly and steady it is trying to move back and then is able to reach
the normal state once again.

1156
(Refer Slide Time: 01:23)

On the other hand, if you give multiple disturbances to this community, so in the first case
it became an altered community it was trying to recuperate it back, but then you give it
another disturbance and now it is not able to cope up any further.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:40)

Or the third case that we saw was the case of a community that is already stressed and if
you have this stressed community you give it a disturbance and it is not able to you to
recuperate back. Now, when we are talking about climate change climate change is also a
disturbance and in certain instances, we can call that it is a large disturbance. But in most

1157
cases a number of communities feel that the climate change is more of a stressor because
it is acting not abruptly as in the case of a forest fire or it as in the case of an oil spill, but
is it is acting gradually.

So, this is one of the stressors that a community might feel. So, climate change might be
responsible to bring a community at this stage and at this stage when the community is
already stressed. So, any disturbance would bring it to an altered state and it will not be
able to recuperate back. So, we look at climate change in more detail in the current lecture
and we will see what other impacts that it is causing on ecology.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:43)

We begin as always with the definitions. So, climate is defined as a broad composite of
average conditions of a region measured in terms of things such as temperature amount of
rainfall or snowfall, snow and ice cover and winds. So, climate is a composite of average
conditions of a region. So, climate is not something that changes every day, it is a broad
average. This broad average the classical period of taking the averages is 30 years.

Over the 30 year period if we ask that in the month of August what is the climate of Kanpur
for instance; so we will come up with a figure that over the past 30 years in every month
of august what was the amount of a heat or what was the temperature, what was the rainfall,
did we have any snowfall, what was the wind direction, what was the wind speed and so
on. And when we come up with this average, we say that that is the climate of that
particular region.

1158
(Refer Slide Time: 03:46)

Climate is governed by five components. So, these are the five components that govern
the climate on the planet. So, the first component is ocean, if you have an area that is close
to a big water body that is close to an ocean. So, it will have an equitable climate. The
climate will not show a very large amount of variations. The summers will not be very hot
the winters will not be very cool. So, oceans play a major role in the climatic system.

The second one is land if you have an area that is in the interiors, so you will have a very
great amount of climatic variations the summers will be very hot, the winters will be very
cold and so on. And then both of these components act together. So, if you have a lot of
heating on the land so that, will create an area of low pressure over the line and if because
the oceans do not show that great level of heating. So, there would be a high pressure on
the oceans and then you will have a wind that starts flowing from the ocean to the land.
So, atmosphere is also another big component because these two are acting together along
with that most feared to result in vents in the system.

Now, along with the atmosphere you have vegetation. Vegetation also plays a bigger role
in the climate of a region. So, if you have an area that is full of plants, so the summers will
not be that hot. And the fifth component is the ice cover that is present in an area. Now, if
you have an area that has a nice cover say the polar caps. So, in that area with the sun
shines most of the energy of the sun gets reflected back or in technical terms we say that
the albedo of the area is very high. Most of the energy gets reflected back. So, the amount

1159
of heating that we will have in that area will be less. Now, when you have all 5 of these
components they form components of the climate system, and then they form the climate
system through their interactions.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:45)

So, we will have the hydrosphere that is interacting with the lithosphere with the
atmosphere with the biosphere and with the cryosphere and similarly all of these
components will be interacting with each other. And when you have a combination of all
five of these that are acting together we see that this is forming a climate system.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:12)

1160
And we talk when we talk about climate change then there is a change in the climate of a
particular region. So, climate change refers to a statistically significant variation in either
the main state of the climate or its variability.

When we say the main state of a climate, it means that earlier we were observing that in
April Kanpur was not having a very high temperature, but now we are observing for the
past few years that the temperature has shot up. So, the mean state of the climate would
say that the main temperatures of Kanpur in the month of April have gone up. And that if,
that is a statistically significant variation then we would say that this area is showing the
symptoms of a climate change. So, that is the mean state or its variability.

Now, when we say variability the question that we are asking is how many days do we
have rainfall and how many days are the dry days. If we see a difference that more number
of days are becoming rainier or more number of days are becoming drier days, then we
would say that there is a change in the variability or earlier suppose we were having a cycle
in which every 10th year we were seeing a major rot in the area and now we are saying
that every third year we are seeing a major drought in the area. So, the variability of the
climate has increased.

Earlier for roughly around 10 years the climate was stable and we were having a
perturbation once every 10 years. Now, we are having a perturbation once every 3 years.
So, we say that the variability of the climate has increased. So, that is also a climate change.
So, climate change refers to a statistically significant variation in either the mean state of
the climate or in its variability persisting for an exceed for an extended period typically
decades or longer. So, we cannot say that suppose this year in the month of April there the
temperature shot up so that is climate change, no because this is climate in itself means an
averaging out over a long period typically 30 years. So, when we talk about climate change
this also has to persist for an extended period typically decades or longer.

Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings. So, it might
be because of some natural processes such as changes in the intensity or the amount of
energy that is given out by the cell. Now, that is a natural process or it could be because of
some external forcings or to persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the
atmosphere or any land use. So, anthropogenic changes are man made changes. So, you
can have natural internal processes, external forcings or persistent anthropogenic changes

1161
and all of these can together gave rise to or all of these can individually gave rise to a
climate change.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:11)

When we see the working of the climate system, it means that you have this climatic
system with all these five different components and you are forcing this system. So,
essentially you are given some input to the system which is resulting in a response or an
output and that is the working of the climatic system. So, a forcing or an input is suppose
the amount of energy that is given out by the sun if it increases. So, this climatic system
would give out a response. So, that response might be that you will have a more hotter
climate in any particular region or it might result in a situation where the snowfall in
decreases in an area or maybe the biotic components change. So, there is a lot of variety
of plants. So, all of these would be known as responses of the climatic system to the
external forcing.

1162
(Refer Slide Time: 10:06)

What are the forcings? Forcings are the inputs that you are giving to the climate system
because of which it might give out a response. Forcings can be changes in the plate
tectonics. So, that is an internal forcing or changes in the earth's orbit or changes in the
sun’s strength or the anthropogenic forcing.

When we say anthropogenic forcing and throw poses man genic it means that caused
because of or formed out of. So, it is a forcing that is formed out of human beings and a
good example is that of release of the greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and
methane. So, if the concentration of carbon dioxide increases, so that is acting as a forcing
on the climate system it is retaining more and more amount of heat in the climatic system
and that is resulting in some responses.

1163
(Refer Slide Time: 10:56)

When we talk about responses, here are some responses. We have five components of the
climatic system and changes in any of these would be called a response. So, changes in
atmosphere, suppose the wind direction use the wind speed changes that would be called
a change in the atmosphere or changes in the oceans or changes in vegetation or changes
in land structure. So, probably because of a climate change the changes in the ice cover.

When we talk about all these changes probably because of climate change, the ice cover
would melt which would increase the water level in the oceans which would then reduce
the amount of surface that is covered by land. Because the lands will get inundated which
would also result in changes in the vegetation, because a number of plants would get
submerged and a number of plants will die out, and also changes in the atmosphere because
you will have changes in the wind direction, you will have changes in rainfall patterns.

Some areas will get more rainfall, some areas will get less rainfall which would then again
influence the vegetation of those areas. So, some species will die out some more species
will come into this area all of these are different responses that we can observe because of
climate change or because of any particular forcing that is given to the climatic system.

1164
(Refer Slide Time: 12:21)

So, these responses can be more vents draughts, floods, increased temperature, forest fires
changes in the snow cover and so on. Now, these are the physical responses that we can
see, but the climate change will also result in a number of ecological responses and a
number of biological responses.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:37)

Now, what are those biological responses? So, we can observe changes and say the
genetics of an area because the natural selection will change because currently if you have
an area where you have a mean temperature of say 30 degrees. Now, if you increase that

1165
to say 32 degrees. So, in the case of 30 degrees certain individuals of the population are
being selected because they are more fit. Now, if you increase the temperature only those
individuals that are able to tolerate this increase in temperature will be more selected. So,
there will be a change in the natural selection that will observe which is a change in the
genetics or a change in the allele diversity. Because it is possible that during this process
when you have a higher temperature a number of individuals would die out and that will
result in a loss of some alleles that are already present there in the gene pool.

So, that would be a genetic level change or changes in the mutation rates because when
you have cells that are undergoing division, if there is a change in the ambient
surroundings, if there is a higher temperature around. So, it is possible that the enzymes
might not function properly in those situations it is also possible that you will have some
more errors that creep up whenever there is a replication of DNA. So, we might observe
changes in the mutation rates.

Or we might even see changes in physiology. So, the changes in physiology include things
such as the birth rates or the activity rates and rhythms of the organism. The birth rates
might change because the organisms are already feeling a lot of stress. So, when there is
an organism that is highly stressed it might not want to give rise to the young ones because
it does not find the ambient conditions good enough to raise and offspring or it might result
in changes in the activity patterns of organisms. So, if there is an organism that is active
during the daytime and it is too hot during the daytime. So, this organism might stop or
might prefer not to go out during the daytime.

So, there would be a change in the activity patterns of the organism or changes in disease
susceptibility because an increase in temperature will result in a lot of stress to the
organisms. So, if an organism is already stressed it is more susceptible to a disease or
changes in the survival rates of the organism or we might see changes in the phenology of
organisms.

Now, phrenology refers to the timing of organisms for different activities. So, for instance
we might see changes in migration patterns, migration timings. So, if there is a bird that
wants to move to India during the summer season and the summer seasons approach faster,
so it might start coming in place of April it might start coming in February. So, that would

1166
be a change in the phenology of the world and whenever there is a change in the phenology
that might also have some other consequences.

So, for instance if there is a bird that is coming in April and it is having access to food if
it comes in the month of February then probably it does not have access to enough food
and then probably it might die out. So, in phenology we will see changes in migration
departure or arrival; obviously, changes in budding or flowering of different plants or
changes in the growing season length or hatching period or flaking period or dispersal
period or hibernation period. So, all of these are changes in phenology that we will observe
and all of these are biological responses to the climatic changes.

Or we can see changes in the dynamics of different organisms. So, in the case of dynamics
we will we can see changes in the sex ratio of certain organisms. Now, organisms such as
crocodiles have a temperature dependent sex determination TSD; so it is called
temperature dependent sex determination.

(Refer Slide Time: 16:48)

Now, what happens in this case is, if you have a higher temperature, so we have the eggs
and the eggs are laid out and if the eggs get a higher temperature then in that situation you
will have more number of males. So, the males would increase and the females would
decrease in number whereas, in the case of animals such as the tortoises we would see a
very different impact. So, if you have a higher temperature the number of males would

1167
reduce and the number of females would increase. Now, this thing is known as a
temperature dependent sex determination.

Now, if you increase the temperature there is global warming. So, in the case of crocodiles
we will have a situation that there are too few number of females and so the population
might go towards or collapse. Or in the case of tortoises as well we might see that there
are enough number of females, but then there are not enough number of males to fertilize
that more population. So, there as well we will start observing changes in the population
growth rate. So, these are changes in the dynamics. The changes in the sex ratio or changes
in the age structure or changes in the abundance are all what we will observe because of
the changes in climate.

Now, these point also need result in changes in the distribution of organisms because
habitat quantity and quality will change if there is an organism that requires a certain
foreign species that grows in cooler climates. If the temperature rises, so this for this
species would die out and the habitat will not remain suitable for this particular species of
animal. So, then it might have to move out, it might have to migrate out or we will see
changes in the ecological nations or in the range sizes of animals or in the range
localization of animals because here again we had observed in the case of.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:48)

So, we had observed that in one of the earlier lectures, if you have the amount of food that
is given here and if you have the range size we see that if you have less amount of food

1168
the animal tries to maintain a larger range size as compared to a situation where you have
more amount of food. So, if there is more amount of food that is available. So, you will
observe that the animal has a reduced range size. Now, if you have a situation of climate
change and if the food species die out if the plants die out, if the flowers have changed
their seasons so that the flowers are not providing enough amount of nectar or pollens to
their animals. So, then that would also result in a change in the range sizes. So, the ranges
would increase in size. So, that is also another biological impact of climate change that we
are observing, and all of these biological impacts will result in a change in the ecosystem
dynamics of that area or changes in interspecific relationships. So, we have situations such
as this synchronization disequilibrium uncoupling and new interactions.

(Refer Slide Time: 20:08)

So, what is what we are referring to in this type case is that suppose you have a species
and in this species it give it lays eggs in the month of February and then the larvae come
out in the month of say April. Now, these larvae come out in the month of April because
in the month of April you have saved flowers that come up and these flowers are then eaten
up by the larvae. So, these serve as the food source.

Now, in this case we are seeing an inter specific interaction. So, this is an inter specific
interaction, inter specific because you have this one species which is the flowering plant
and you have this other species which is an insect. Now, both of these species are showing
this interaction in terms of predation or maybe it could be some sort of mutualism. Now,

1169
in the situation of climate change, so suppose this was also in April. Now, if you have a
situation of climate change then probably because you have an increased temperature in
place of April this plant starts flowering in say March and the flowers remain for say 15
days. Now, what happens?

When these flowers come up in the month of March you do not have these insects around.
Now, these insects probably are feeding on these flowers and probably are also resulting
in the pollination of these plants. Now, when it is responding to the climate change it has
changed its timing. So, it in place of flowering in the April it is started flowering in March
because the plants do not know when the larvae are coming out they are only responding
to the ambient temperatures.

So, probably there is one species that is responding to temperature there is another species
that is responding to the amount of daylight. So, in that case we will see this
synchronization because when these flowers come up in the month of March there are no
larvae around. So, there is no amount of pollination. So, these plants would start dying off.

On the other hand, when these larvae come out in the month of April there is no flower
available for them. So, there is no food available for them and. So, this large also start
dying out. So, just because now both of these species individually they are not being
decimated because of climate change, but then because the synchronization between both
of these species that was there in the beginning because that has been disrupted one is now
coming up earlier the other one is coming up later. So, because of this might result in a
decimation of both the species and this is what we mean by when we say a dis
synchronization between these two species or in uncoupling of these species or probably
there could be some new interactions that would come up.

So, in place of this particular species that was and that was fertilizing these flowers,
probably now there will be some other species that gives out its larvae in the month of
March and those species would now start interacting with these flowers. And we do not
know what would be the impact of such new interactions. The uncoupling of earlier
interactions and the star and the starting of new interactions what would be the impact of
these on the ecosystem. Because the these interrelationships that have come up they have
evolved through the millions of years of evolution, and if he changed them in a very short

1170
period of time in a period of say a few decades then probably it might result in a negative
influence on the ecosystem.

The other biological impacts could be changes in the community productivity. So, the
amount of biomass that is being produced in the community or the energy flux of the
community might also see a change.

Now, all of these will next result in ecosystem services disruption. So, there would be a
change in the composition function in production functions of the ecosystem. So, that
would result in an ecosystem that is not able to perform its functions properly which would
then further result in changes in the biome integrity. So, now, we can observe that just
because of a single change just because of climate change we can anticipate that there
might be a number of changes in the ecosystems.

Now, this is a theoretical background the question is are these changes actually happening
because of climate change do or are these just a theoretical saying because we are just
saying that because of these changes there would be a disruption in the ecosystem, but then
are we acting a bit too prudent or is it that that we will not observe these large amounts of
changes and we are just frightening ourselves.

(Refer Slide Time: 25:11)

So, let us now look at some examples. The first example is that of phenological anomalies
and the temperature anomalies. Now, in this graph here we have on the x axis we have the

1171
years 1950 to 2000. Now, the blue colour here the dark blue colour is showing you are
either the temperature anomalies in the month of March, April and May. The blue color is
the light blue color is showing you that the temperature anomalies in the month of March
and April. And the pink one the pink lines are showing you the spring arrival of birds. The
red one is showing you the hacking in fly catchers.

And as we can see, all of these curves come one upon the other. So, essentially there is a
very good correlation between temperature anomalies and phenological anomalies. So, in
fact, if there is an increase in temperature or if there is a decrease in temperature that would
result in a phonological change. So, this is something that we are actually observed in
nature. And so, when we see that climate change would result in phonological anomalies
we are not making a statement that is be out of proportion this is something that we are
already observing in nature.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:31)

Or if we look at changes in the habitats; so, let us look at changes in different organisms
when you change the ambient conditions. So, these are experimental results and a few field
observations. So, on the x axis here you have the temperature, on the y axis here you have
the amount of phytoplankton. So, you have milligram of carbon per litre and here you see
that as that the temperature increases the phytoplankton reduce. So, with increase in
temperatures you will have less number of phytoplankton, that are available in the
ecosystem.

1172
Now, phytoplankton are producers. So, producers are required because they produce food
for all the other organisms and if the producers themselves reduce in their numbers then
the ecosystem is bound to get a change. Here we see the total biomass of the system that
would reduce with an increase in the temperature. Here we are observing the zooplankton,
so zooplankton increase in numbers. So, you have reduced food and more number of
zooplankton. So, what would happen to all of this zooplankton? Will they will start dying
out to inline numbers because they are present in large numbers they do not have access
to sufficient amount of food so they will start dying off.

Or if we look at the number of microbes that we have in the system; so, if you increase the
temperature the number of microorganisms would grow would go up. Or if you look at the
phytoplankton; so, this is phytoplankton and this is reducing and this is now a field
observation or if you look at different other species. So, here we are looking at the larval
duration of a particular species how many days does this does this species remain in the
larval state and if we increase the temperature so the number of days it remains as a lava
it reduces the dispersal distance also reduces.

The survival rate for this particular species it increases when you have more temperature
around. So, we are seeing changes in different components of the ecosystem. So, the
changes in the habitat are not just theoretical changes we can actually prove it through
experimental observations and we can actually prove it through the field observations.
Other large scale changes are changes in the coral ecosystems.

1173
(Refer Slide Time: 28:45)

So, here we are observing all of these corals that have died out. So, this is a process that is
known as the bleaching of corals. Then the process of bleaching they lose out all the corals
and they die out. And more and more corals are getting bleached more and more corals are
dying out because of the climate change.

Now, when corals die out it is not just the corals that will suffer the consequences, but a
number of other species as well because corals are keystone species here, they play a role
in the ecosystem that is much greater than their own numerical abundance because, corals
act as nurseries for a number of fishes species. Now, if you do not have well functioning
corals in the system the fishes would also die out.

1174
(Refer Slide Time: 29:36)

And not just the corals are showing an impact, but also we are seeing that other major
ecosystems and major keystone species in the ecosystem such as scallops, scallops are
dying out. Now, when scallops die out they are the habitats for a number of species and
when scallops die out all of those species will also die out or things like mangroves. If
mangroves are dying out that would also result in the death of a number of species. And
not just these by these biological in changes are playing a role, but also the physical
changes. So, in the case of the polar bear the polar bear requires a sheet of ice to stand, to
rest, to look for its preys and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:25)

1175
Now, if you have a situation where you have a piece of ice here and a piece of ice here;
so, you have a polar bear that starts its journey here, it gets into the water it, maybe swims
for a while and maybe it catches a few fishes and then it is able to get to this stick in ice
and then it is able to rest for a while. What happens when you have a situation of climate
change? So, if you have more amount of heat in the system. So, these ice sheets are not
shrinking in size. Now, in place of having these ice sheets that are close by you have a
situation in which you have an ice sheet here and maybe in another ice sheet here.

(Refer Slide Time: 31:03)

So, polar bears, now get into it gets into the water it starts down to the other side, but then
does it is not a very good swimmer. After a while it will start losing its breath, after a while
it will start getting tired and when it is tired it is not getting another sheet of ice to stand to
rest. So, what is happened? The polar bear will drown at this stage.

Now, these are the habitat level destructions that we are already observing, changes in the
corals, changes in the scallops, changes in the mangroves, changes in the physical habitats
high sheets and so on these are something that we are already observing in the system.

1176
(Refer Slide Time: 31:42)

Another thing that we are observing is a rise in the invasion of exotic species. So, in this
picture we are seeing this green portion is the amount of invasion and the invasion is
increasing all through the years. Now, why is that invasion increasing? Because every
species every member of the ecosystem has a certain range of conditions to which it is
most suited.

(Refer Slide Time: 32:16)

So, for instance you had this earlier situation you had this situation and this was the mean
temperature. So, this is the temperature. Now, if you are shifting the temperature, so

1177
probably in place of this particular species. Now, the environment is more suitable for
another species and which is what we are seeing here, the original inhabitants of the forest
are dying down and the invasive species are taking their place.

(Refer Slide Time: 32:47)

There are other kinds of ecological interactions that we can see is that suppose there is a
species that that exists in the larval form and in the adult form. Now, because of climate
change if there is a change in the transport processes. So, basically what we had seen earlier
there is a larval form and the larval form does not remain for a very long period as a larval
form it converts into an adult very quickly. So, it is not able to disperse properly. So, that
the transport processes get altered or if there is another physiological morphological or
behavioural changes these are the direct impacts that we will observe in the ecosystems.

Now, when that happens at the level of this species will start seeing changes in the
community level as well. So, community level changes what we changes in the population
size of the interacting species. So, if this is a species reduces in population then probably
the preys of this particular species would increase in their size in their numbers and those
species that were dependent on this a species for food they would reduce in their numbers.
So, we will start seeing changes in a number of species.

Now, remember the process of trophic cascade. In the in the process of trophic cascade we
made changes at one single level of the ecosystem. So, in the case of yellow stone national
park, we made changes by bringing wolves into the ecosystem. The wolves are top

1178
predators when we brought in was into this system they started hunting deer, and deer
started showing behavioural changes; they started moving from that area and. So, the prey
of the deer which is the plants they started growing up.

Similarly, when these plants started growing up we were seeing more number of berries
in the system. So, bears started increasing their numbers they reinforced the role of the of
the wolves in the case of the bears. But then the number of small species such as the rabbits
they started increasing in number which resulted in an increase in the number of eagles
that we had in the system. Now, just change in one trophic level and bring about so many
changes. So, that is it a trophic cascade.

Now, a similar trophic cascade will be observed here, if this particular species is say a
predator species. So, their prey would start increasing in number and the next trophic level
would then get decimated. So, we will start seeing changes in the populations and also
start seeing changes in the per capita strength of different interactions. Now, these are all
proximate responses and they will result in a number of emergent responses.

Now, these emergent responses are changes in the distribution of animal’s, changes in the
diversity of the ecosystem, changes in the productivity of the ecosystem, and changes in
the micro evolutionary processes that are going on in system. So, when we see that climate
change is having a small and gradual impact on some species that might result in a very
blown out response in the whole of the ecosystem.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:56)

1179
Similarly, in the case of other species such as plants we saw this example before that in
the case of trees. So, here we were modelling, the chir pine trees that are there in the lower
district of Uttarakhand and currently they peak in their carbon sequestration, but insulate
around 110 years and with climate here it will move down to around 80 years. That is
another big change because, that would also mean a change in the availability of food that
is there in the ecosystem for different species.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:29)

Now, apart from these changes will also start seeing changes in the health of different
species or the amount of stresses that we will have in different species. Now, because of
climate change if there are thermal extremes; so, we might start seeing more amount of
heat strokes in different animals.

Or if there are weather disasters if there is more amount of reading if there is more amount
of draught we might start seeing animals that get start dying because of drowning because
of dehydration or because of some other microbial organisms such as gastrointestinal
diseases because the microbes increase in their numbers if they get a warmer climate or
changes such a psychosocial trauma in different organisms.

Now, climate change will also result in ecological changes as we had just seen. Now, if
there is an ecological change and if that results in changes in the food availability of a
know of an organism that might start suffering from malnutrition or growth retardation or
developmental delays which would then further have impacts on some other species

1180
because of ecological changes because of phenological changes we might start seeing
allergens in different times of the year.

So, if there are more number of allergies. We will start seeing more allergies for instance
more amount of infectious diseases or some more emerging infectious diseases some new
diseases that we have not seen so far.

(Refer Slide Time: 37:59)

Another change that will observe is that because every organism has a certain temperature
range in which it feels the most comfortable.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:10)

1181
When we have changes, so we will see that in the current pattern of biogeography we find
that the number of organisms is maximum at this particular temperature range. Now, if we
shift this temperature to some other temperature then we might start seeing a reduction in
the number of animals at that particular place or maybe an increase in the number of
animals in some other place.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:35)

So, for instance, if this is the current species range of this particular species and these are
the local populations and here this is south, this is north. Now, with increasing
temperatures this area has now become too warm for this species. So, both of these will
die out and probably these areas that were very cold for this species earlier they now
become habitable for these individuals. So, now they start up some new populations here.
So, we will start local extinctions and cold edge range expansions. And this is not
something that is theoretical this is something that we are seeing in practice.

1182
(Refer Slide Time: 39:20)

And their extinctions that we will see in the cold edges they have also been quantified and
we know now that with an increase in global warming we will start seeing more number
of extinctions. Now, when we talk about a changes in the species range this is also
something that we are now observing in the field.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:36)

So, for instance in the case of a number of insect species that are living close to the
mountains if; so in the case of a mountain we have a greater temperature here at the bottom
and we have a lower temperature as we move up. This is something that we call is the

1183
lapse rate in the case of geography. So, the bottom areas are warmer though, the upper
areas are colder.

Now, if there is an insect species that prefers to live in the warm climates. So, currently it
is living in these climates. Now, if the temperature goes up; so, in place of having this
orange region in the bottom and the blue region on the top. Now, everywhere it is orange
to yellow region. So, in that case this is species will now start coming up to a greater height
than was earlier possible because of the biogeography of this species.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:31)

Or maybe because we will have more number of puddles, we will now start seeing an
increase in the number of individuals that are getting born out of this species. And this is
something that we are already seeing in nature.

1184
(Refer Slide Time: 40:40)

So, if we look at the vectorial capacity which essentially tells you the efficiency of
transmission of diseases because of the vectors and here we are talking about Anopheles
aegypti which is the mosquito that is responsible for diseases like dengue. Now, because
of an increase in temperature we are already seeing an increase in the vectorial capacity of
these mosquitoes.

Now, if you have an increase in the vectorial capacity of these mosquitoes then more
number of people would start dying of dengue or maybe more number of animals would
start dying off because of their own diseases because their vectors are also increasing in
the vectorial capacity.

1185
(Refer Slide Time: 41:22)

We might also start seeing changes in the allele frequencies and this is also something that
we have seen in nature. So, there is this particular species of owl which is known as tawny
owl and this species is present in two different colours.

Now, when we are talking about these changes it may help you to remember the case of
the peppered moth. So, in the case of peppered moth we saw that there is this moth which
is present in two colours the light colour and the dark colour. The and in the pre
industrialization days when the barks of the trees were covered in lichens; so, the light
colored moth was able to camouflage itself and the dark colored moth was preferentially
eaten.

Now, when we had industrial revolution; so, the lichens started dying out the (barks
became more and more exposed, the barks became more and more darker and so the dark
colored moths were able to camouflage themselves much better and in that case the light
of mosque started dying out. And similarly, when with the passage of the clean air acts
again we saw a reversal. Now, that was a change in the allele frequencies because of
industrialization. And we are seeing a very similar scene in the case of allele frequencies
and changes because of the climate change.

So, now, this tawny owl which is present in these two colours the light colour and the dark
colour, and it lives in those forests where these trees are covered with snow for a very long
period of town time. Now, when you have snow in the background the lighter colored owl

1186
gets camouflage very easily and now when this owl needs to hunt small rodents. So, the
rodents are not able to see this owl and so the lighter colored owls are able to hunt much
more preferentially or much more easily as compared to the darker colored owls.

(Refer Slide Time: 43:22)

So, essentially the fitness of the lighter colored owls is much greater. But then because of
climate change what we are observing is that there is less amount of snow on these trees.
So, when there is less amount of snow on these trees. So, the colour or the background of
the trees has; now, shifted from a lighter colour to a darker colour. The colour of the foliage
or the colour of the bark or the colour of the branches. But when that happens, now these
lighter colored owls are now very easily seen in the darker colored backgrounds whereas,
the darker colored owls are now more camouflaged from their preys.

So, then when this situation arises then the fitness of this particular individual it increases
and this particular individual decreases. Why? Because now the prey of these owls are not
able to see the darker owls.

1187
(Refer Slide Time: 44:13)

And we are actually observing that with time the frequency of the darker colored allele is
now increasing in this population. So, when we are talking about the impacts of climate
change on different ecosystems on different populations, different communities, it is not
just a theoretical construct it is something that we are actually observing in the field and
something that we can actually prove through experiments.

Now, in the case of this tawny owl, this was a lucky species because it was already
available in two colours. Now, probably if you have a situation and this where this owl
was only present in say this lighter colored variant. If we did not have this darker colored
variant, so in that case if climate change happened it would not have anything to fall back
to and when all the individuals are easily spotted. So, all of them would start dying off
because all of them would lose their fitness they would not be able to hunt properly. So,
we will also start seeing a number of extinctions in a number of species.

1188
(Refer Slide Time: 45:19)

Now, what can we do about it? We know that there is climate change that is happening.
So, what can be our response as ecologist or as people who are working in the conservation
sector? How can we help these ecosystems? How can we help these communities? So,
there are two kinds of responses that we can put up, the first one is called mitigation, the
second one is called adaptation.

Now, climate change mitigation, so medication refers to a human intervention to reduce

the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases. Now, because we know that these
climate changes are happening because of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide if we can
reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that would be called as a
mitigation strategy. Now, how can you reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere. There can be two ways.

1189
(Refer Slide Time: 46:12)

Again, as we talked in the case of bioaccumulation; in the case of bioaccumulation, you

have some amount of toxins that are getting into the system and then there are some
amount of toxins that are getting out of the system. If the amount of input is greater than
the amount of output we will see accumulation.

(Refer Slide Time: 46:35)

Now, similarly in the case of greenhouse gases we have the atmosphere. So, let us say that
this is the atmosphere. Now, in the atmosphere we are adding in carbon dioxide through a
number of sources. Those sources could be your vehicles, those could be your industries

1190
or probably those could be situations such as the mines or maybe areas where your ores
are getting processed; so, maybe ore processing.

Now, all of these processes or maybe safe cement manufacturing; now, all of these are
adding carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but at the same time there are also some other
processes that are taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. What are those? We saw
it in ecology in the case of primary production you have the trees that I know that are
taking out carbon dioxide in the process of photosynthesis. We have things such as the
phytoplankton.

When we talk about mitigation, mitigation would say that let us reduce the amount of
carbon dioxide that is coming out from these sources. So, in the case of vehicles you could
go for a more efficient vehicle or probably a vehicle that uses electricity in place of your
gasoline. In the case of industries, you could look for processes that are much more
efficient. So, that they release less amount of carbon.

In the case of mines and ore processing probably you could shift to something else that
releases lesser amount of carbon. In the case of cement manufacturing, you could go for a
process that is more efficient or probably you could try to replace cement with some other
material that does not release. So, much amount of carbon dioxide. So, that is one way,
that is to reduce the emissions.

The other way is to increase the removal from the atmosphere. So, you can go and plant
more number of trees. So, more number of trees there are there is more amount of removal
from the atmosphere or in the case of phytoplankton. So, we saw it in the lecture on
primary productivity, that we have a number of oceans and seas that are deficient in iodine.
So, if you put in iron. So, the number of phytoplankton would increase we will see more
amount of phytoplankton. So, probably iron seeding could be one other way of mitigating
or for instance you could go for things that are called as artificial trees.

Artificial trees are devices that artificially take out carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
and then they are able to fix it or you could go for situations in which you install equipment
that takes out this carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and probably puts it into a
geological sink. So, you can create more sinks. So, all of these together will be known as
the steps of mitigation.

1191
And all of these would require a lot of effort. So, for instance, if you want to replace the
iron and steel with wood because if you have more trees and you are taking this wood out.
So, when you are taking this board out, so you are fixing this carbon for it is that period of
time till which you have this wood out that you are using. So, it has till it is burnt. So, you
are keeping that carbon fixed outside of the atmosphere.

Now, if you want to use what you will have to reduce the cost of wood or probably come
up with technologies that make the use of wood more attractive option as compared to that
of iron and steel. So, more amount of technologies will have to be created more amount of
work will have to be done. Now, this is mitigation and mitigation is difficult.

(Refer Slide Time: 50:33)

The other way out is that of adaptation. Now, mitigation ask the question, how can be what
climate change? How can we make sure that climate change does not happen? How do we
reduce the rate of climate change? Adaptation says, climate change is going to have what
can we do about it how can we adopt ourselves or how can we adapt our ecosystems or
how can we adapt our communities. So, adaptation is adjustment in the national or human
systems in response to actual or expected climate stimuli or their effects which moderates
harms or exploits the beneficial opportunities.

In the case of adaptation you would say that probably because of our modelling we know
that say, Kanpur is going to receive less amount of rainfall. Now, if Kanpur is going to
receive less amount of rainfall what we will do? We will set up more number of dams, so

1192
that more amount of water gets accumulated here we will probably set up more number of
tanks and in that way we will compensate for the for the reduced rainfall that we will
observe in this region or probably we could go for things such as artificial cloud seeding.
So, that there is more rain from the clouds.

These kinds of mechanisms would be called as adaptation strategies. So, to have more
amount of water in an area or for instance Kanpur is heating up, so let us install more
number of a season into this region. So, that people are able to live properly these kinds of
measures are known as adaptation measures.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:04)

And if the question is not whether mitigation or adaptation; the question is can be
incorporate both the strategies together and in a number of situations, we will have to
incorporate both those situations together because adaptation can help, but it cannot help
us completely. Mitigation can help us completely, but it will take a very long period. So,
in the intervening period, so we need to go with mitigation we need to reduce the amount
of greenhouse gases that we have in our atmosphere, but till we are able to reduce that we
have to go for the adaptation possibilities at the same time.

1193
(Refer Slide Time: 52:42)

What are the mitigation options? And what are the adaptation options? So, mitigation
options include reducing of emissions. So, you can set up laws you can go for green energy
alternatives or you can go for red mechanisms which is reducing emissions from
deforestation and forest degradation because again the forests are storehouses of carbon if
you have a forest that is getting degraded or a forest that is getting converted into some
other land use. So, all that carbon that was stored in the forest will get released back. So,
you can try to work on reducing the emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
So, that is about reducing the emissions.

Or you can create more number of things most things are artificial trees or carbon
sequestration in geological sites or afforestation or REDD+ mechanisms. So, REDD+ is
in this case we will go for conservation sustainable management of forests and
enhancement of forest carbon stocks. So, in this way we try to create more number of
things more amount of things for these for the carbon or the carbon dioxide that is present
in the atmosphere. So, these are the mitigation options.

1194
(Refer Slide Time: 53:52)

Now, when we talk about adaptation; we can have different kinds of adaptation we can
have anticipatory or proactive adaptation or a reactive adaptation. Now, proactive
adaptation is an adaptation that we this is a step that we take before we are already in a
soup. So, we know that that this region is going to receive less rainfall in future. So, we
already start our adaptation processes which already start making more number of tanks
in this area that would be called as proactive adaptation.

Reactive adaptation is in a situation that we have already started seeing less number less
amount of an rainfall. So, let us now at least make more tanks. So, that any amount of
water that falls into this area is now saved that would be called as a reactive adaptation.
Now, adaptation can also be spontaneous or planned in the case of policymaking or it can
also be spontaneous well were different people autumn by themselves come up with
different adaptation mechanisms or it can be public or private kind of adaptation. So, it
can be adaptation through a government scheme or it can be an adaptation at the level of
private individuals.

1195
(Refer Slide Time: 55:03)

And when we talk about adaptation we also have to talk about the adaptive capacity.
Adaptive capacity is the ability of a system to adjust to climate change including climate
variability and extremes to moderate potential damages to take advantage of opportunities
or to cope with the consequences.

So, when we talk about adaptive capacity what we are asking is does the system does an
ecosystem have the wherewithal that it would be able to cope with climate change. Does
it have the capacity to adapt? Or if we have a system that does not have a capacity to adapt
then probably it is going to be doomed in near future can we increase this capacity.

1196
(Refer Slide Time: 55:51)

When we talk about adaptation here are the elements of retardation. So, we begin by our
observations. So, observations of climatic variables, non-climatic variables, from these
observations we come up with an assessment of the impacts and the vulnerability. Here
again we are talking about vulnerability. So, when we talk about vulnerability what are the
ecosystems that are more vulnerable to climate change, what are more exposed to climate
change and do not have the adaptive capacity.

Those are the ones for which will have to make a planning. Once we have a planning then
we can move through the naming cycle. So, from the plan you do an implementation of
the plan from there you move to the checking stage in which you check about the
effectiveness of that plan from the chickens stage you move back to the acting or digesting
stage and from there you can come up with more number of points about which
observations need to be made. So, that is about the element of adaptation.

1197
(Refer Slide Time: 56:52)

What are the options available for us for adaptation? So, there are these options are divided
into three categories creating resistance to change, resilience to change and response to
change. Now, resistance to change says that you want to create systems that reduce the
amount of impact that your climate change will bring. So, you want to create a situation
that is able to resist the impacts of climate change and things would be to reduce the effects
of forest fires, to reduce the effects of insects, diseases, through better protection removal
of invasive species, resistance breeding in which case you breed for resistance in the tree
species.

So, you go for planting those particular individuals that have such traits as are better able
to resist climate change. So, probably these are plants that require less amount of water or
probably these are plants that are better able to be wade of diseases that would come
because of the stresses and so on. The second option is to create a resilience to change.
Resilience is the ability to bring back once you have all when you already have the climate
change. So, resilience to change would be say a creation of surplus seed banks or sperm
banks. Now, this is something that we already saw in the case of ex-situ conservation.

In this case you are creating a resilience because you are creating a seed bank. So, even if
your ecosystems die out because of the climate change you can use these seeds and you
can bring the system back to normal again or you can go for intensive management during
the establishment promotion of biodiversity rich ecosystems. So, this will also require a

1198
lot of intensive management. So, resistance to change, resilience to change, the third option
is the response to change. So, you assist natural adaptations and transitions you assist
migration to newer areas.

(Refer Slide Time: 58:55)

Essentially you have a species that was living in this area and because of climate change
it now needs to move more northwards. So, when we say that we are allowing this species
to response to respond to change we are taking these individuals and we are translocating
them to the other area. So, that is enhancing the ability of the species to respond to change.

We are assisting natural adaptations, we are assisting natural transitions, assisted migration
to newer areas, increase in redundancy, manage for asynchrony. So, management for it a
synchrony would be if you have a case in which the fodder species is not able to
synchronize with the life cycle of the organism, then probably you can go for giving an
artificial order from outside to the system to the organisms that are not able to get their
food in time.

So, that would be a management for asynchrony. Or establishment of neo native forests
considering the past spread or promotion of connected landscapes, so that the organisms
are able to move by themselves. And whenever we are talking about the adaptation options
it is also important to talk about the maladaptation.

1199
(Refer Slide Time: 59:59)

Probably we also need to think about the situations in which we are trying to help the
adaptation, but it backfires. Any changes in natural or human systems, that inadvertently
increase the vulnerability to climatic stimuli, an adaptation that does not succeed in
reducing vulnerability, but increases it instead. So, it is an adaptation that does not work

In today’s lecture, we began by looking at the climate tech system, the components of the
climatic system, how they interact with each other, what is climate, what is climate change.
And then we started looking at the impacts of this climate change on different organisms,
on different habitats, on different ecosystems and we looked at the proximate level changes
that is the changes that would come up in the ecosystem and we also looked at the emergent
changes that would also move up in the hierarchy.

And then we also looked at the options that we have available with us to thwart the climatic
change what changes, what are the options of climate change mitigation, what are the
options of climate change adaptation, how do we go about saving our species saving our
ecosystems and our communities from the climate change. So, that is all for today.

Thank you for your attention.

“Jai hind”.

1200
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Indian Forest Service, M.P.
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture - 31
Optimum yield problem

(Refer Slide Time: 00:19)

Namaste, Today, we begin a new module and this module is Applied Ecology. the
application of the ecological principles or whatever we have learned so far to the problems
of humanity. In this module, we will have three lectures. The first one is the Optimum
yield problem. The optimum yield problem has to do with sustainable harvest of resources.

If you talk about any resource, be it a forest, be it say fishery resources or say whales that
are there in the oceans and we are trying to harvest these resources, so, what is the level at
which this harvest will be maximum and this harvest will be sustainable. That is if you
have say 1000 fishes and if you are only taking out just 1 fish, so, this is going to remain
sustainable for a very long period of time, but then this is probably not the most
economically efficient option.

We need to ask whether we can take out say 5 fishes or 10 fishes or 20 fishes or say 200
fishes. What is the upper level or the upper limit at which we can take out these resources,
we can harvest these resources and still be able to maintain our sustainability so that we
can continue our operations year after year. So, that is the optimum yield problem.

1201
The second lecture will deal with Biological control. So, biological control is aimed at
using different predators or say different diseases of different parasites or pests so that we
are able to control the populations of pests. So, we suffered from a number of pests and
especially we have a number of insects that eat away our crops and one option is to use
pesticides or insecticides.

But as we have seen that a number of those insecticides or the pesticides are chemical
compounds and even at very low doses they are also harmful to a number of other
organisms. Besides, they tend to accumulate in the bodies of different organism. So, we
have this phenomenon of bioaccumulation. At the same time, they also tend to magnify as
we move up in the food webs. So, there is the phenomena of bio magnification. So,
biological control says or ask this question; Is there a way in which we can get rid of these
insecticides and pesticides and maybe make use of some biological entities to control
different pests.

The third lecture we will deal with ecotoxicology and pollution management and it will
also cover restoration ecology. Now, ecotoxicology is the study of the toxins that are there
in the environment or in the ecosystem. So, it has your ecosystem plus toxicology. So, here
you have the word toxic which is the poison and here you have logy which is the study.
So, ecotoxicology is the study of different harmful chemicals that are there in the
ecosystems and we will move on and we will have a look at pollution management; how
can we take care of different pollutants and also we will have a look at restoration ecology.
So, some parts of it have already been dealt with in the previous lectures, but then, in this
lecture we will look at it in more detail. So, let us begin with the optimum yield problem.

1202
(Refer Slide Time: 03:35)

If you look at this particular graph, this is telling you the collapse of a number of
megafauna. Now, mega is large fauna is animals. So, we are talking about the sequential
collapse or loss of different large sized animals in the North Pacific Ocean. So, on the x-
axis, here we have the years.

It starts from 1950 and ends at 2000 and on the y-axis, we see the percentage of the
maximum population that was present or the percentage of the maximum yield that was
taken out. So, it says the sequential collapse of marine mammals in the North Pacific Ocean
and Southern Bering Sea, all shown as proportion of annual maxima. Great whales
International Whaling Commission reported landings. So, in the case of your great whales
it is the biomass that was reported in the landing that is this much amount of biomass was
taken away from the oceans and brought to the ports; 370 kilometres of Aleutian
archipelago and coast of western Gulf of Alaska, Harbour Seals. So, this organism so, it
includes the counts and the model estimate of this particular Island and then in the case of
the third organism; you have the Fur seals and the sea lions. In the case of sea lions, it is
an estimated abundance. So, in these organisms we are talking about how the population
decline. In this organism, we are talking about the amount that was taken out of the oceans.

We will remember that when we were talking about the abundance, we talked about two
concepts and the first one was an absolute abundance; and the second one was a relative
abundance.

1203
(Refer Slide Time: 05:33)

When we talk about the absolute abundance, we are talking about the actual number of
animals that are present and when we are talking about relative abundance, here we are
talking about the relative number of animals. For instance, you went into the forest and
you saw say 10 tigers. So, that is the absolute abundance of tigers that are there in your
forest because you have counted each and every tiger. However, if you go to the forest
now and you saw say 5 tigers in one day and then, you go to the same forest after a year
and you are able to see say 3 tigers in 1 day.

These are our average majors that as in the first case you are going into the forest again
and again and on an average you are able to see 5 tigers every day. In the other case, you
went into the forest and you are able to see on an average 3 tigers every day. So, we will
see that the population has come down. So, there is a decline in the relative abundance and
when we were talking about the relative abundance we also talked about the method of
removal.

1204
(Refer Slide Time: 07:02)

In the case of the removal method, we said that if you have a forest in which or say if you
are having a lake in which you have 1000 fishes and then you are doing some amount of
fishing and so, you are able to remove 1000 fishes every day. Now, after a while the fishes
will decline in their population and then, after a while you will be able to remove only 900
fishes per day. Then, after a while you will be only able to remove say 800 fishes per day.

Now just by removing these organisms, just by hunting these animals, just by poaching
these animals, we are reducing the population and the amount of animals that we are able
to remove per unit time gives us a good estimate of the number of animals that will be
there in this particular lake. Because if our efforts are the same, we are putting in the same
amount of time, we are putting you we are using the same resources and we are able to
catch a lesser number of fishes. So, the only argument can be that your total number of
fishes in the lake has gone down.

Similarly when we are talking about this graph, this is talking about the removal of
animals. So, we are talking about the removal of the great whales from the oceans and in
these cases we are talking about either the absolute estimates or the modelled absolute
estimates.

Now, here we can observe that in the 1950s when we started collecting the data and in this
period, the number of whales that was removed every year it was increasing every year
apart from a few years here, when there was some moratorium and then, it peaked in

1205
around 1968 and then it started to decline. In the case of harbor seals, this population has
continued to decline. In the case of fur seals, the population has continued to decline. In
the case of sea lions, the population has continued to decline. In the case of sea otters, the
population has continued to decline and we call it a sequential collapse because when this
population of the great whales was going down, at that time the sea otters were roughly
maintaining their population. So, they were not undergoing a population collapse. So, after
great whales started collapsing, the harbour seals is started collapsing, after that the fur
seals started collapsing. Now the question is why is this so? Why are we seeing this
sequential collapse?

(Refer Slide Time: 09:48)

If you look at any particular species such as if you have a look at the blue whale catch. So,
here we will see a very similar trend. So, the trend increases and then it starts to decline.
Now here are a few years during the Second World War, when a lot of commercial whaling
was not possible. But then, we can see that overall, this curve moves like this and then it
declines and then it goes on declining. So, essentially this is giving us an indication that
the total number of animals that are there in the ocean, they are reducing because our
caching effort has not gone down. It has either gone up or it has remained steady and even
then, the population is declining.

Now, why would you have a situation in which the population is declining?

1206
(Refer Slide Time: 10:40)

So, suppose you have this lake and in this lake, you have say, 1000 fishes so, you have a
total of 1000 fishes. And in a year this fish population because these fishes are breeding
so, this population increases from 1000 to say 1300. Now, if this population increases from
1000 to 1300 and if we remove 300 fishes by fishing, then the population again becomes
1000. Now, in the next year, it will again increase to 1300. So, we can again remove 300
fishes. So, this is something that we can continue again and again and again.

But then, if we are removing at a rate that is greater than this particular rate. So, in case of
300 fishes, let us say we are removing 500 fishes; so, you remove 500 fishes. So, now you
are left with only 800 fishes. Now, your 1000 fishes after giving birth to the next generation
produce 1300 fishes. So, now if you are only left with 800 adults, the population will grow
at a slower rate because we have lesser number of parents. So, you will have lesser number
of progeny. So, probably these 800 fishes will only increase to say 900 fishes.

Now, with this 900 fishes, if you again remove 500 fishes, you will be left with just 400
fishes and the lesser this number becomes, the lesser will be the growth of the population.
So, we are moving from 1000 fishes to 1300 fishes when there was no fishing. But then
from 1300, we went down to 800, from there we went down to 400 and so on. So, in this
case because we are removing the fishes at a rate that is greater than the rate at which they
can replenish their own population so, the population is declining and is exactly what we
are seeing here.

1207
In this case; in the case of the blue whales, the sustainable catch had to be somewhere near
this line. So, this is somewhere around 7000 whales; that is what we could have removed
every year. But in place of removing 7000 whales, we actually removed as much as 30000
whales in a year.

So, when you are taking out a very big chunk of the population, so whatever remains, will
not be able to replenish the population. And then, what happens when you are… when this
catch reduces because people still want whales; this is the level at which you were still
having a nice demand, but then at this level your demand has remain the same, but the
supply has gone or has shrunk considerably.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:40)

What do people do? Then they just shift to another species. So, if you look at different
caches of different whales. Here we can see that as in the previous curve, we started with
the blue whales and then the population started to decline. Now, when we were there in
this declining population so, people were not getting enough number of whales. So, what
did they do? They started hunting some other whale. So, after this blue whale started
declining, we can see that this second curve which is people shift to this…which is this
Second whale which tend to decline, then they move to a fourth whale which is the minke
whale.

Now, in this case we can see that there is a sequential collapse of different species of
whales because you started with the whale that you wanted the most. Now you did an

1208
unsustainable harvest, its population declined so, you moved to the second best whale.
When the population of the second best whale also started to decline, then you went for a
third best whale, then a fourth best whale and then, this thing will continue. And after a
while we will have a situation in which you will hardly have any whales left in the oceans.
So, the population will be so less that it will become commercially unsustainable to harvest
the whales.

For instance, here we can see that already by the 1950s, the blue whale was commercially
extinct. So, by the 1950s the catch was so less that now it was very difficult for somebody
to make a living out of catching the blue whales. So, they had to shift to another whale.
Now, we come to this question, how do we determine what is the level at which we should
do this catching. Because we cannot just say that ok, we are not going to catch any whales
because people are having requirements. There are some people who want to eat these
whales, there are people who want to use the body parts for something, maybe a traditional
medicine. So, there will be some demand that will always be there.

Now, to match that demand, we will have to take out some resources because after all if
you are doing any activity, there will be some negative impact on the environment. Now
our aim is to have this activity at least till that level that it is at least sustainable for the
long period. So, how do we compute that? So, we start with the population equation.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:58)

1209
We had seen that if you have the population in the nth generation as Pn, the population in
the next generation will be Pn+1. And that will be given by the population in that nth
generation + birth, which is natality + immigration, that is animals that are coming from
outside - mortality, which is the death and - the emigration.

Pn+1 = Pn+ natality + immigration – mortality - emigration

(Refer Slide Time: 16:27)

So, what we were saying here is that, if you have any population. So, this is Pn. So, there
are two things that are adding more individuals into this population. You will have births,
so, if you have births, then the population increases. If you have immigration, so animals
are coming from outside so, here also the population will increase. And then, there are two
things that are taking individuals out of this population, we will have deaths which will
reduce the number of individuals that are there in the population and you also have
emigration, which is the movement of animals outside of this population.

So, if you do these computations, if you have this population Pn, you figure out the number
of births the number of deaths, the number of animals coming in and the number of animals
going out, you can figure out the population which is there in the next generation which is
Pn+1. Now, in our case, we are not just interested in knowing the number of animals, but
we are interested in knowing the weight of the stock; the tons of whales that we are
removing from the oceans.

1210
(Refer Slide Time: 17:25)

Now, in this case, the equation becomes slightly more involved. Now, here we say that if
the weight of the stock at the beginning of any year. So, let us say that our year is from
January to December. So, in January of 2019, let us say that the total biomass of all the
whales that was there; that are there in the oceans is S1. Now, if we look at the biomass
that is available at the end of the year, that is in December 2019, it will be given by S2.
Now, what is causing this change, if there is any change, what will be the reasons that will
cause this change?

So, the first thing will be recruitment. Now, recruitment in this case refers to not just the
births, but also the weight of all the animals that have been incorporated because of these
births. Even in the case of Pn, we have shifted it to S, where S is representing the total
biomass that is available. So, you have S2 is equal to S1 + R because there are some animals
that are born and these animals are also gaining some weight.

Now, this would also in include + G, now G is the growth of the individuals that are already
born before the start of January 2019. But then, through this period, through the through
this complete year from January to December, the organisms that are already there in the
population, they will also grow in size. Because earlier you have a calf and now that calf
is moving to a sub adult; sub adult is turning into an adult and so on.

So, even in the case of this Pn, there will be some amount of growth which is given by G.
Now, there will also be some losses and the losses will be in terms of the mortality. So, if

1211
there is any death of these individuals and because of death some individuals are getting
removed from the system. So, we will also remove that weight. So, in the case of these
deaths, we are taking a minus M which is - mortality.

Now, in this case because we are considering all the animals which are there in the ocean
or say all the fishes that are there in a lake. So, in this case we are not considering any
immigration or emigration. So, both of these parts are not there, but then there is one other
part that is leading to the loss of animals and which is the removal because of fishing, so,
which is -F. So, this -F is telling us the yield or the number of animals or the weight of the
animals that we have removed in the complete year 2019.

(Refer Slide Time: 20:35)

So, we can say that S2 which is the total biomass at the end of the year is S1 + growth +
recruitment - mortality - the amount that is taken out because of fishing. Now, if we see
that we want to maintain a constant stock. So, for a constant stock, that is we want that
even in December 2019, we should be having the same biomass as was there in January
2019; so there should not be any change. So, if there is no change, we will say that S2 is
equal to S1. So, S2 is the biomass in December 2019 and S1 is the biomass in January 2019.

So, throughout this year, there has been some growth, there has been some recruitment,
there has been mortality and we are trying to compute the amount of F that can be there.
So, we want to have the maximum amount of yield because of fishery and still we want to

1212
maintain that S2 should be equal to S1. Now, if that be the case, we will have the equation
S2 = S1. So, S1 = S1 + growth + recruitment - mortality - fishing.

So, S1 and S1 cancel out. So, here we will have the yield or the total biomass of the animals
that we can remove throughout the year will be given by the growth in the population, that
is the growth in the biomass of all the animals that are already there, plus recruitment
which is the new animals that have been born and they are also growing minus the number
of animals that are dying out naturally or we can say that F + M = G + R. So, essentially,
this is the equation that we can make use of if you want to calculate the total amount of
biomass that we can remove sustainably. So, F + M = G + R. Now, so far so good, but
then how do we compute what is the value of G; what is the value of R; what is the value
of M. So, that is something that needs to be computed. Now, let us look at one
simplification.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:04)

Now, that simplification as if we do not consider the growth of animals and if we just
consider the number of animals and if we say that every animal has an equal mass. So, in
that case the we can make use of the sigmoidal curve. So, here you have the number of
animals versus time. So, we had seen it earlier in population ecology. So, when you have
a very small population, it grows at a very slow phase; so here we have the lag phase.
Then, in this part you have a logarithmic phase. So, we call it a log phase and then here
we are reaching a steady phase.

1213
(Refer Slide Time: 23:20)

And we are also seen the equation or the logistic growth equation which is,

𝑑𝑁 𝐾−𝑁
= 𝑟𝑁 ∗ ( )
𝑑𝑡 𝐾

where K is the carrying capacity; N is the number of animals that we have and r is the
growth rate.

Now, if we take the simple example and if we say that we are only interested in the number
of animals that we can remove. So, the question will be if the carrying capacity is say 40
and the initial population has 1 and the value for the intrinsic growth rate is 0.2; how many
animals can be harvested sustainably or at least, when should be remove the animals?

1214
(Refer Slide Time: 24:24)

So, if we plot this equation, this is what we get. So, if K is equal to 40. So, this curve will
become stable or say parallel to the x-axis near the value of 40 and we are seeing this
growth phase. Now, if you want to take out the maximum number of animals, so in that
case you would want to take out the animals in a phase where there is the maximum amount
of growth.

(Refer Slide Time: 24:55)

So, we can figure out the rate of change in this curve by plotting dN / dt. Now, in this case
what we are saying is; in this phase, the growth is slow. Now, the growth is slow in this

1215
case because you have very few animals. Again, at this stage, the growth is slow. Why is
the growth rate slow here? Because the population is already very close to the carrying
capacity. In this stage the growth is very fast because this is the logarithmic phase.

If you have the maximum growth that is going on at this stage, then probably it makes
much sense to remove the animals when your population is in this stage because when that
is the case, so you will be able to extract the maximum amount of biomass or the maximum
number of animals per unit year.

If we plot this dN / dt, it will come up like this. So, this green curve is showing us dN/d t
and of course, these are in different scale. So, this one is the population size and this is the
growth rate per year. Now, when the curve; if you look at this portion. So, this portion has
a very low growth rate. This portion has a high growth rate and this portion again has a
very low growth rate. So, because it has flattened out so, here again the growth rate
reduces. So, the growth rate increases and then, it reaches a peak and then it decreases.

Now, when you have this peak; so, at this peak, you have the maximum growth rate in this
population. You are having maximum number of animals that are added into this
population. So, probably if you can maintain your population at this point. So, you will
have the maximum growth rate and you can take out these many number of animals every
year.

So, for this particular question, if we do the analysis, we will have that the maximum
growth rate is 2 per year and so, if your population is somewhere here, you will be able to
remove 2 animals every year. And this is when we are only considering that the…that the
number of animals has to be removed and every animal is having an equal weight. Now,
in this equation, if we put in the weights of different animals so, we can get to the
computation of the yield.

1216
(Refer Slide Time: 27:28)

So, in this; in that case when you are having this growth curve so, probably when you have
reached this section. So, you have more number of adult animals. So, probably the growth
rate will move something like this and you will have a curve that goes something like this;
so again, it can be computed by these methods.

(Refer Slide Time: 27:51)

So, we can say that the maximum yield is near the midpoint of the sigmoidal curve. But
then, can we take out these many number of animals, that is the next question. This is what
we are getting by doing our computations that the maximum yield is 2 per year. We can

1217
take out 2 animals every year, but then can we in field; in practice, can we take out these
2 animals, now that is the next question; or is there something else that we have to be
cautious about.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:26)

Let us look at the impact of environmental fluctuations because so far in the case of the
sigmoidal curve, we were expecting that there is no environmental fluctuation.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:39)

Or you have this population that has been put into an environment, where the only thing
that it can do is to grow, is to reproduce and there are no external impacts. Because it is

1218
also possible that when you have reached this stage, probably there was a huge poaching
because of which the numbers go down and then, they will have to again start that is also
possible. But then, we are not considering those circumstances when we are doing our
computations of the growth rate.

Now, in this is an example of the impact of environmental fluctuations. So, in the country
of Peru, we have these anchovies. So, anchovies are fishes that were in huge demand and
this is how you the catch varied versus different years. So, here we have a catch that has
been increasing and then in 1972, it crashed. Now, why did this population crash? The
crash was attributed to a phenomenon that is known as El-Nino and we will come to it in
a short while. So, this population crashed and once this population crashed, it took roughly
25 years to again reach to the maximum values.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:03)

In all the earlier curves, we were seeing that the catch had been increasing and then, you
start having lesser and lesser number of animals and so, it gradually decreases in the case
of animals such as the whales. Now, in the case of the anchovies, the population crashed
here. So, it went right from this point to a very low value and then, it had to again start
with another sigmoidal curve and it took a very long period of time as much as 25 years to
again come to the peak value.

This is what we are seeing here the population has crashed and then, it again starts to grow
and then, now these periods we can neglect these 3 years because in this case what we are

1219
seeing is that the population is crashed, but still because people are very used to having a
large quantity of fish. So, they are overfishing. So, this is not an example of a sustainable
harvest, but then when the population has crashed, then it again starts increasing with a
very slow rate and it takes roughly 25 years. Now, the first question is why can a population
crash like this?

(Refer Slide Time: 31:10)

So, when it was attributed to El Nino; what is El Nino? El Nino is “an irregularly occurring
and complex series of chemical changes… of climatic changes affecting the equatorial
Pacific region and beyond every few years and it is characterized by the appearance of
unusually warm, nutrient-poor water off the northern Peru and Ecuador, typically in late
December.

It is also called as the Child in Spanish because it comes very close to the Christmas time
and the effects of El Nino include reversal of wind patterns across the Pacific, drought in
Australasia, and unseasonal heavy rain in South America. So, this is a regular climatic
phenomenon and what happens in this climatic phenomenon is that you have warm waters
that develop in the coast of Peru.

1220
(Refer Slide Time: 32:14)

Now, we have seen earlier in the case of energetics that if you have a water body. So, in
this water body the photosynthesis occurs in the very top layer and for this photosynthesis,
you require sunlight and you require the planktons plus you require the nutrients. So,
nutrients are very important and we also saw in the case of primary production that most
of the waters are nutrient poor.

Now, why are the waters nutrient poor because once you have these phytoplanktons that
have come up. So, after a while they will start dying. When they start dying, so all their
bodies they will come up and they will accumulate in the bottom of the water body and
that will also take all the nutrients along with it downwards.

Now, what is the way in which we can have nutrients back up into the system, if there is
say some amount of water moment that goes like this. So, you will have a system probably
you have a system in which you have winds that are blowing in this direction. So, that is
taking the top layer of the water away because of which you are having this upwelling and
the upwelling is bringing cold nutrient rich water to the top layer and once you have lots
of nutrients here, you will have a plentiful growth of the phytoplanktons and these
phytoplanktons will then serve as food for the fishes.

Now, in the case of these El Nino years what happens is that you do not have these vents;
probably their direction changes and once that happens, you have the wind direction that

1221
is moving like this. So, it is bringing all the warm water to this area. So, let us represent it
by warm water. So, this is the warm water that has now accumulated near Peru.

Now, if you have warm waters here. So, the cold water that was nutrient rich is not able to
reach to the top and so, the nutrients that were there downwards, they are not able to reach
to the top. So, it is characterized by warm water and it is characterized by nutrient poor
water because of which you do not have a lot of planktonic growth in this area.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:34)

Now, if you have low nutrients and you have low growth of planktons, it also means that
you have a low availability of food for the fish larvae.

1222
(Refer Slide Time: 34:44)

Now, there were some experiments that were done that if you take the larvae of Haddock.
So, this is another fish, this is not anchovy, but the experiments were done on Haddock.
Now, in the case of Haddock, if you take the eggs and you let the larvae come out and you
give them planktons at different amounts. So, different quantum of planktons are given.
So, planktons per ml of water is 0.01, 0.1, 0.5, 1 and 3 and there are 1000 eggs and we are
looking at the long-term survival of these eggs.

If you have very less amount of planktons, all the larvae that come up, they die because of
lack of food. If you have 0.1 planktons per ml of water again 0 larvae are able to survive.
If you have 0.5 planktons per ml, you have 11 larvae that are able to survive. With 1
plankton per ml, you have 79 larvae that are able to survive. With 3 planktons per ml, 139
larvae are able to survive.

So, here we are seeing that if you are having more amount of food for the planktons, the
number of survivors increases or conversely if you are having a less amount of food that
is available to the larvae, there will be very less survival of fishes and this is probably what
we saw there.

1223
(Refer Slide Time: 36:09)

Also, the larvae that are able to survive. So, in this case, the experiment was only done up
till three planktons per ml of water, probably you can also go with even higher amounts of
food for these fishes. But it was also seen that if we look at the length of the larvae or the
weight of the larvae that also show the very direct correlation with the amount of food that
is available. So, if you have 3 planktons per ml, so that is this squarish graph. So, this top
curve that is coming up, then 1 plankton per ml is the middle curve; 0.5 planktons per ml
is the bottom curve.

If you give the larvae more amount of food, they are able to survive better plus they are
able to grow faster, they are able to reach longer lengths. Now, in the case of El Nino
because we had waters that were warm and nutrient poor. So, we did not have ample
amount of planktons because of which the fish population crashed and once the fish
population crashed you did not have enough number of recruitments. So, the total number
of fishes that could be captured or that could be harvested also dropped instantaneously
which is why we are seeing a crash in the population.

Now, even when we were having this crash and this population had crashed like this, even
then we were taking out a very huge amount of fishes from the waters and once that
happened, the largest sized fishes which were mostly the adults, they were still being taken
out and once that happened, you had very few number of adults that were left, the larvae
that were there were not able to survive because they were not having enough amount of

1224
food. They were not able to grow, they were not able to convert into adults and so, the
population took a very long period of time.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:09)

In the case of fishes, not only do we have to take into account, the growth of the fishes,
but we also have to take into account when do we have these planktons. So, there is a need
to match these timings.

If you have these fish larvae and they come up at a time when you have an abundant
amount of phytoplanktons. So, in that time they will be able to survive better, they will be
able to grow better, but if both of these curves are not matching. So, in that case you will
have a severe mortality of the fishes, which brings us to this hypothesis that is known as
the match-mismatch hypothesis.

1225
(Refer Slide Time: 38:38)

On the x-axis here we have the time, on the y axis we are seeing the frequencies of different
events. Now, if you look at the laying of eggs, different fishes do not lay eggs right at the
same time, but there is some difference. So, there would be some fishes that startling eggs
early. They would be a maximum number of fishes that lay egg at this point of time and
there will be some fishes that will lay eggs at a later point of time. Now, why is that so,
again because of variation that we see in different populations and also take into account
the food availability at different time points.

Suppose if we consider these fishes that are laying eggs earlier and if you are getting your
planktonic growth at this point of time. So, probably all these larvae will die out, but then
suppose there was a year in which this plankton growth occurred before this. So, all these
larvae will be able to survive. So, nature has built in this mechanism so that at least some
of the organisms are able to survive at all times. So, here we are looking at the variations
in the timing of laying of the eggs.

Similarly when you look at the timing when the larvae are formed; so, these eggs will give
out larvae at an earlier time; these eggs will give out larvae at a later time. So, probably
this is the curve where we are seeing the larvae and again, the peak of this curve will vary
with time. So, you can have this peak that probably, comes say in December or you can
have this peak that comes in around 15th of November or it can come around 15 of

1226
December or it can come around 1st of December. So, you will have some variation in
their time at which you will have this peak.

Here we are looking at the larval food. Now, the larval food can come at this time period
or it can come at this time period. So, if it comes early so, there is a good match. So, this
is your larval population, this is the food population. So, probably these larvae are not able
to get enough amount of food, but then the maximum amount of larvae right from this
point to this point will be able to get a plentiful supply of food. But then, if the growth of
the planktons comes up here and there is a mismatch. So, from here to this point the larvae
will not be able to get any food and only these larvae will be able to get the food.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:20)

What we are referring to here is, suppose this is the curve of the larvae. Now, there are two
instances; the first instance is that you get planktonic growth very early or the second
instance is that you can have a planktonic growth after a while. Now, if the planktonic
growth occurs early, so these larvae do not have access to the food in the early stages of
their life. But all these larvae that are coming up later on they will have access to enough
amounts of food. So, in this case they will be a bumper growth because most of the larvae
are able to get sufficient amounts of food.

But then, if the growth of the plankton is delayed so, there is a mismatch between this
curve and this curve. So, in that case only these larvae are able to get some food from the
very beginning and we will see survival only in this particular portion of larvae and rest

1227
all that is everything to the left of this line it, will die off. So, probably all these larvae will
die off, if the growth of the planktons comes up later and that is also one reason because
of which you can have a crash of the populations.

We talked about coevolution; coevolution is when you have two species that are evolving
at the same time. In this case the egg laying has to be matched in timing with the growth
of the planktons so that the larvae as soon as they are able to come out of the eggs, they
have a sufficient amount of food, but then if there is a mismatch and this mismatch is
because of an environmental variation and the fishes do not know that this environmental
variation is going to come in this particular year. So, there can be a mismatch and which
can lead to a severe population crash.

(Refer Slide Time: 43:36)

When we were talking about the removal of fishes in the log phase, we need to take into
account that this log phase might not come at the same time always because there are also
environmental variations. Now, apart from the ecological variabilities that we need to take
into account such as this match mismatch hypothesis; the other things that we need to take
into account are things like tragedy of the commons.

1228
(Refer Slide Time: 44:01)

Tragedy of the commons is a concept that was given by Garret Hardin and this is an
example that he has given in his paper.

(Refer Slide Time: 44:20)

This example talks about an area, where you have a piece of grassland and on this
grassland, you have say 10 herdsmen that are having their cows or their cattle and they are
grazing their cattle onto this particular land. Now, the example of the tragedy of the
commons is an example of how if everybody is acting rationally by their own thinking, it
can lead to a situation and which becomes irrational for the whole of the community. So,

1229
the example says that if we have, say these nine cattle that are there grazing on this farm
and if you look at the point of view of any single herdsmen. So, let us talk about this
particular herdsman and this particular herdsman has seen this cow that is grazing in this
grassland.

Now, should this herdsman have only 1 cow or maybe he should have 2 cows. Now, if you
think from the point of view of this herdsman, if he in place of having just 1 cow, if he
increases his number of cows by 1. So, he will be able to gain the benefits that are coming
from 1 extra cow that he is owning. But then if you have an extra cow which you are
putting into this grassland so, that will be putting some more amount of pressure on this
grassland because the grasses will not be sufficient for maybe 10 cows.

So, but in that case the loss that will be suffered by this particular herdsman that will not
be equal to 1. So, if the gain is plus 1 cow and all the benefits that he will be gaining out
of that cow; whereas, the loss is very much less than the value of 1 cow that he will be
gaining because not only his cow will be getting less amount of grass, but everybody’s
cow will be getting less amount of grass. So, from the point of view of any particular
individual, the most rational thing is that by looking at the cost benefit analysis he or she
should have 1 more cow for himself or herself. But then if everybody tries to increase the
populations of their cows, the grassland will not be sufficient for all the cows.

So, if in place of 9 cows, if we have more number of cows so, every cow is now getting
less amount of grass and the productivity of every cow will decline. And at the same time,
you will over exploit your grassland to such an extent that they will not be any grassland
left. So, if we go with his words- “As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize
his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, “What is the utility to
me of adding one more animal to my herd?” The utility has one negative and one positive
component.

The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman
receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly
plus 1. Because he is owning this animal and so, all the proceeds of this animal will come
to this particular herdsman. On the other hand, the negative component is a function of the
additional over grazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of over
grazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-

1230
making herdsman is only a fraction of minus 1. So, it is not completely minus 1.” It is only
a small fraction because it is shared by a number of herdsmen and we see a very common
phenomenon everywhere.

If you look at an industry so, the industry is giving out pollutants. Now, if the industry is
manufacturing something, the profits of that industry goes to the person who is owning the
industry, but the losses that are being given out in the form of pollutants, they are being
shared by the whole of the society. So, from the point of view of every industrialist, he or
she would want to have as many industries as possible.

Even if it gives out pollution from the point of view of society, we should have less number
of industries or maybe less polluting industries, but because every industrialist would want
to have more and more industries. So, even though every industrialist is thinking rationally
from his point of view and it becomes a decision which is irrational for the whole of the
community.

In this case because the positive utility is plus 1, the negative is only a fraction of minus
1. “Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that
the only sensible course for him to persuade is to add another animal to his herd and after
one he will add another and another, but this is the conclusion reached by each and every
rational herdsman sharing a commons and therein is the tragedy.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:26)

1231
Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit - in
a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination towards which all men rush, each pursuing
his own best interest in a society and believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in
a commons bring ruin to all.” And we see the same situation in the case of fishing.

Every fisherman wants to increase the share of his or her own catch because if the number
of fishes in the ocean or the number of fishes in any water bodies if it goes down, so, in
that case the negative consequences will be shared by all the fishermen that are there in
this area, but the positives will only come to the particular fisherman who is doing the over
catching.

So, it becomes a very rational decision for him and it becomes a negative decision for the
whole of the society and then, in certain cases the convents also feel compelled to keep
this process on and on. So, this is an example; it is known as Ludwig’s ratchet.

(Refer Slide Time: 50:32)

A ratchet is a device that can move only in one direction and in this case, we are talking
about a situation in which everybody is compelled to do over fishing. Now, let us look at
this ratchet. Now, suppose this is the current harvesting rate and suppose you have a good
year.

So, in the good year, there is a very good match between the larval outcomes and a very
good match with the amount of phytoplanktons that you have. So, you have larvae that are

1232
able to survive very well, they are able to grow very fast and so, you are having more
number of animals or more amount of biomass that can be harvested. So, because it is a
good harvest so, the amount that you can harvest will be greater than the current harvesting
rate and so, everybody would want to have an increased amount of harvesting.

So, probably if you were having one 1 boat, probably you would want to go for two boats
because there are more number of animals that you can catch. So, why not take them out?
And then, because of this increased harvesting, there is higher amount of profits; higher
amount of profits brings in additional investment. So, from 2 boats you see take 3 boats, 4
boats and then when you have these increased number of boats. So, if you were having
only 1 boat you could only harvest say 1000 fishes in a day. If you are having 4 boats now,
you can harvest 4000 fishes per day. So, the harvesting rate increases.

Probably, if you have another good year from you are able to harvest even more number
of animals, you get even more profits, you invest even more into your resources and in
place of having 4 boats now you have 10 boats. Now, because you have 10 boats, you
harvest again, the harvesting rate again increases, but then after a while you will have a
situation where the number of larvae that are there, it would reduce because it is not a good
year anymore.

Now, if it is a poor year, so, as a fisherman you would tell the government that he is having
10 boats and we do not have so many amount of fishes and he will be ruined in a short
while. So, he needs to have access to some subsidy. So, this is what we are seeing in the
case of farmers; this is what we are seeing in the case of fishermen; this is what we are
seeing in the case of even the industrialists, whenever there is a lean time, people tend to
ask for subsidies. Now, consider a situation that would have happened in the normal case
in an ecosystem.

1233
(Refer Slide Time: 53:16)

In an ecosystem, say that if you have an ecosystem in which you have prey and you have
the predators. Now, if the prey number increases; now prey number increasing is the same
as your good news here or the good amount of harvest year. So, if you have more number
of prey that would lead to more number of predators. So, the number of predators also
increases.

In this case, the number of predators increasing is the same as the additional investment,
you are having more number of boats. Now, when you have more number of predators,
they would be taking out more and more number of prey. They would be feeding on more
and more number of prey so, this is what we are showing here. So, you have more number
of prey. So, you increase the number of predators which now increases the harvesting rate
of the prey.

But then, because you have this system in nature, the number of prey would then go down
because you are taking out the prey in a number that is greater than their growth rate of the
population. So, once that happens, the prey number would reduce. Now when there is a
reduction in the prey number that is similar to a poor year. Now, in the poor year, because
you have less number of prey that would lead to a decrease in the number of predators
because the predators now do not have access to enough amount of food and when your
predators do not have access to enough amount of food, they will not grow at that faster
rate. Their population will come down, there will be mortality because of mortality when

1234
you have a reduced number of predators, the number of prey would then increase and then,
we will have this cycle that goes on again and again.

In the case of our human systems, we are not allowing this number to go down. So, if your
investment increased in a good year, it should decrease in a bad year, but then the
investment does not decrease because you apply for a subsidy and once you get your
subsidy, you are able to maintain your investments.

Even in very bad years you are able to maintain 10 boats and once you have your 10 boats,
you will again be doing more and more amount of harvest, but then you do not have enough
number of fishes out there to harvest. So, what will happen? You will push the fish
population towards a crash. So, this is known as Ludwig’s ratchet because this only tends
to increase the rate of harvest. Even in a good year, it tends to increase; in a bad year also,
it tends to increase or at least keep it at the same rate.

Some people would argue that this is the situation, but then we need to have more and
more amount of fishes. So, is there any way out; can we look at it ecologically.

(Refer Slide Time: 56:08)

And then, some people have come up with this sort of a solution. So, you have some fishes
that are there in your oceans you are taking it out in the form of the fishing industry and
there are some top predators that are also fishing. Let us say that you have some big fishes
that are eating up the small fishes. So, why not kill all these big fishes; why not kill all the

1235
sharks; why not kill all the whales because if you are able to remove the whales from the
system, your number of fish fishes would increase and so, you will be able to get more
amount of fishes for your industry and that looks like a very logical argument. Ok, you
remove the top predators; if you remove say the tigers that are there in a forest, your chital
population will go up.

(Refer Slide Time: 56:51)

But then, we have seen in the case of a number of eco systems that are systems are not
simple they are complicated. Suppose this top predator also feeds on a middle predator
what will happen now? If you remove this top predator, the middle predator will increase
in its numbers. Once your middle predator increases in number, the fish population will
go down, because it is not so having a much greater amount of predation pressure. And
this is something that we have seen in the case of trophic cascades; so, if you remove your
top predator the middle predator increases, the next one goes down after that one will
increase and so on.

1236
(Refer Slide Time: 57:33)

And, if you look at a number of our food webs, this is what is the situation. The actual
food webs are so complicated that you cannot have such a simple solution. What about the
impacts of sizing?

(Refer Slide Time: 57:46)

So, somebody would say that we should only remove those fishes that are large in size and
for those fishes that are small in size. So, we if there are any young ones, if there are small
size fishes, we should not take them out that looks like a logical argument that only of the
adult fishes are big sized fishes, if we remove only the adults so, the young ones will be

1237
able to grow. So, this was an experiment that was done and we looked at four different
stages or four different generations of fish and so, there were fishes that were kept in a
tank and then these fishes were harvested using one of the three ways.

In the first way, you removed all the smaller fishes. So, if you remove the smaller fishes
the bigger fishes are able to survive and so, their genes are able to be passed to the next
generation and in just four generations you see fishes that are larger in size from what you
had started in. On the other hand, if you have the fishing in the normal logical way that
you are only removing the large size individuals.

Only the small individuals are able to survive. Because the larger ones have been removed
from the system and so, the population tends to become smaller and smaller and then, this
is the impact of the random fishing. If you have a random fishing it more or less remains
parallel. So, your total harvest remains the same, but if you go for a size based selection,
if you remove the smaller fishes you have the harvest that goes on increasing every year.

If you remove only the larger fishes, your harvest goes on decreasing every year and that
is the same with the total harvest as well as the mean weight of the harvested fishes. So,
now, this is something that we need to take care. So, there is no very simple answer to
managing of these sustainable resources.

(Refer Slide Time: 59:34)

1238
But the only thing that we can say is that whatever system you are proposing, you need
your system need to take into account the human motivation, responses, greed and short
sightedness that is bound to be there; no matter what is the system that you are proposing.
You need to act before a scientific consensus achieved. Call for additional re research may
only be delaying tactics.

If you are seeing that your population is decreasing, you will have to act, you cannot just
wait for more and more scientific findings. Because scientists can recognize the problems,
but they often may not be able to remedy them because remedy requires an understanding
of several disciplines; even when we are talking about the sustainable harvest of a natural
resource, we need to take into account psychology, we need to take into account,
economics, finance and a number of other things.

Distressed claims of sustainability. Often past plants of sustainability have not delivered
in the field. So, this is not a new field and we have seen that so many populations have
already crashed. So, we need to distress any claims of sustainability, we always have to be
on the lookout for newer methods and you need to confront uncertainty. Theoretical
niceties are not required and you have to take different steps once you a come face to face
with any problem.

So, this is in-short what we know about the sustainable harvest of resources. So, that is all
for today.

Thank you for your attention. “Jai Hind”.

1239
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture - 32
Biological control

Namaste,

We carry on our discussion on applied ecology, and today, we will have a look at the
Biological control of pests.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:23)

So, we begin with the definition of a pest. “A pest is a plant or animal detrimental to
humans or human concerns including crops, livestock and forestry. The term is also used
of organisms that cause a nuisance, such as in the home.” Essentially a pest is any organism
that is concerning us, that is disturbing us, that is giving us some sorts of harms or losses
or is in a general term, it is a nuisance for us and especially, those organisms that are
causing damage to crops, livestock and our forestry applications, they are the major pest.

1240
(Refer Slide Time: 01:07)

Some examples of pests include mice and rats. Mice and rats are the number one causes
of the losses of our food grains, even in the fields and also when they are stored in the
warehouses. Then we have rats; mice and rats are also very important for the passage of a
number of pathogens. Then, we have rabbits. Now rabbits are harmful pests especially in
the agricultural system because they can eat up a number of crop products. Then, we have
feral cats; so feral cats and feral dogs are also pests in a number of areas, where the
specially people are rearing things like poultry.

If you go to a poultry farm and if there are cats around, the cats might eat up the chicken
that is being reared there. Feral cats are a big issue and there are also big issues when we
talk about the environmental concerns. Because in a number of islands throughout the
world, when the cats were introduced, they started eating up the native birds that were
found in those islands and quite a number of birds became extinct because of the feral cats.
Then, we have foxes, snails and slugs which are also pests especially in the agricultural
areas and when people are rearing small animals such as your poultry or things like rabbits.

1241
(Refer Slide Time: 02:41)

Pests are divided into controlled pests and uncontrolled pests. A pest population is called
controlled when it is not causing an excessive economic damage. Now, here the term to
note is an excessive economic damage. Even if there is a pest that is causing an excessive
environmental damage, but then that environmental damage has not yet been counted in
terms of economics. People might say that it is not an uncontrolled pest. And a pest
population is called uncontrolled, when it is causing excessive economic damage. Thus, a
concept of economic threshold applies to the questions of pest control.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:30)

1242
Essentially if we look at the pest populations. So, let us see that this is the pest population
and here we have the time. If the pest population is and are economic threshold is let us
say this much. In this case if the pest population is hovering above the economic threshold,
we will say that the pest population is uncontrolled. And when the population goes down
and then, starts hovering at a level that is below the level of the economic threshold, we
will say that the pest population is a controlled population. Now, when we are using this
term control, it does not mean that the pests have been eliminated completely; it does not
mean that you have achieved a 100 percent extermination or removal of the pest from that
particular region. But it is just that the levels of damage that they are doing economically
are those that we can tolerate.

This brings us some paradoxical situations such as if you have a pest that is destroying
around 5 percent of an agricultural cost, you will start calling it an uncontrolled pest. When
we are talking about especially the fruit trees, if you have an apple orchid and there is a
pest that has infected say 10 percent of the fruits and you will start saying that yes, this
pest is an uncontrolled pest; we need to do something about it because the 10 percent
economic loss is a very big loss for a farmer.

Whereas, if you have a similar pest that is infesting seed 70 percent or even 90 percent of
some particular forest species and probably it is leading to a very heavy damage to all the
leaves, you will still call it a controlled pest as long as the damage that it is causing
economically is not very high. Now, if you have pest and especially when you have these
uncontrolled pests, you need to have some ways of solving the issue.

1243
(Refer Slide Time: 05:44)

We have a number of pest control methods that have been used for a very long time. Now,
the easiest method is the natural control. In the case of a natural control, you do not do
anything. How does natural control work?

(Refer Slide Time: 06:06)

A national control generally works because any pest that you have in the system; let us say
that you have this particular pest which is say affecting the crops. It is inhibiting the crops
or it is damaging the crops, but then we will also have some other organisms that will be
harmful to the pest. Let us say that you have a predator for these pests. For instance, if

1244
there is a particular insect that is affecting your crops because it is eating away the leaves
of the crops. It also has a predator, probably an insectivorous bird. Now, when we did not
have any other method of pest control, the natural methods work for us because if you
have a last size farm, you do not have a very large population. The population is your own
population or the human population is limited. In that case, suppose you require this much
amount of field to produce crops, you may start producing this much amount of crops so
that even if there are losses, they will be taken care of. And especially in such situations,
if the population of the pest increases, if the number of insects increases, then the number
of predators will also increase in a short while and they would start impacting the pest. So,
when you have a large number of insects, you will also have a large number of
insectivorous birds, they will probably start flying from other areas into your area because
in your area, they are having a plentiful supply of insects. And once that happens, they will
start eating up the insects and so your problem will start to solve by itself. So, this type of
a method is known as a natural control through naturally occurring predators, pathogens
or parasites.

The second one is pesticide application and we have seen pesticide application in one of
the earlier lectures and pesticide application is also very much responsible for a lot of
environmental damages. So, we will come to it in a short while. Then, there are some
methods which are known as cultural controls such as crop rotation or burning of crop
residues. Now how does this work?

(Refer Slide Time: 08:21)

1245
Suppose, you have a field and you have a particular crop and then, this crop is also having
a number of pests with it. Now, at the end of the season, your crop will be ready and you
will be cutting and removing your crop. Now, what happens to all of these pests? Probably
they will also spend some time somewhere else; probably they will also spend their time.
Let us say that this is your wheat. Now, when you are cutting the wheat and let us say this
is the ground level, you typically cut the wheat at say this level.

When you are removing this wheat, you will be removing some of the pest that are
associated here, but then also some of the pest will remain here. You have removed this
top portion, the bottom portion remains. You have removed this top portion and then, when
you use this field again and next time also if you are growing wheat only, so, what will
happen is, you will have some small wheat plants that are coming up here and you also
have the pests here and it is very easy for the pest now to start infecting your new plants.
To reduce this possibility, one way that farmers have used for quite a while is to burn up
the stocks.

Once you have removed your wheat, you put the whole thing on fire and in the fire all the
pests are killed. So, that is one way, that is known as the burning of the crop residues.
Otherwise another way is that there are a number of pests that have very specialized
requirements. Let us say that you have a particular insect that only impacts the members
of the grass family. It will be impacting your rice, it will be impacting wheat; but probably
it does not impact something that does not belong to the rice family. Let us say if you grow
something that belongs to the leguminous family your pest will not have access to food
because it does not eat the plants of the leguminous family and after a while in the shortage
of food, it will start dying.

How will you make use of such a process? You again have this field that is all full of wheat
and it is all full of pests and in this case after you have harvested your crop, you next put
in another crop. Let us say that this is another crop. Let us say that this is your chickpea.
Now, your stubbles are still here. So, the stubbles of your wheat are still here, they still
have these pests, but then these pests are not able to infect the chickpea crop. So, after a
while in the absence of food, they will start dying off. So, once these pests are dead and in
the meantime you will start having some other pests and that are infecting the chickpea
crop.

1246
After a while you will grow something else. So, probably in the next season you will
neither go for wheat nor do you go for rice, nor do you go for your chickpea. Probably you
go for something like a soya bean. So, by this time all the pests that were there of the weed
are now gone, you have some chickpea pests, but probably they are not able to infect your
soya bean.

After a short time, you will start having the pest of soya bean in this area because now you
have abundant supply of food for them and after this season, you again shift to your
previous crop. Now, this is a method of crop rotation. So, by crop rotation and by burning
of crop residues, you can have a control over the pests and these methods are known as
cultural controls because you are just using some good farm practices to keep a control
over the pests.

The other two methods are biological control and integrated pest management that we will
come to in a short while. But so far what we have seen is that the natural control does not
work these days very well because our requirements have grown up, our greed has gone
up and we cannot spare any amount of our food grains for the other organisms; we want
everything for ourselves. So, these days the mainstay of agriculture is the pesticide
application.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:53)

1247
We have seen earlier that “Pesticides are substances that are meant to control the pests,
including weeds.” Most often, they are very extremely toxic substances; they are
poisonous substances.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:12)

When you have your crop, where you have a pest infestation, so, let us say that this is again
your wheat crop and this wheat crop is having these pests. You will apply your pesticide
over the whole of the area and once that happens, the plants will survive; but all the pests
will be killed. Once that happens you have a situation where you have controlled your pest
population. Pesticides are another good way of or, they are the mainstay of our current
agricultural practices.

1248
(Refer Slide Time: 13:44)

And a number of countries are using these and they are also using it in very high
concentrations and we have seen this in the chart before.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:51)

We also saw that the pesticides are increasing in their usage for quite a time. So, if you
look at from 1940s till present the amount of pesticide production, it has been increasing.
And so far, so good; if you had a pesticide that only killed the pests, it would have been a
wonderful solution.

1249
(Refer Slide Time: 14:15)

But the problem comes because the pesticides also have other negative impacts on the
environment and some of these we have seen before. So, there are lethal effects. Now,
lethal effect is something that can kill an organism, and in this case, the lethal effect is not
just confined to the pest but it is also affecting a number of other organisms. So, for
instance in this particular example, suppose you had things like butterflies and when you
are applying your pesticide, the butterflies will also be killed. Similarly, a number of other
pollinators also get killed because of the pesticides.

Apart from the lethal effects, you also have a number of sub-lethal effects in which case a
number of organisms will start becoming extremely lethargic, they will have a reduced
fecundity which means that they will not have a large growth of population. They will not
be able to produce their off springs properly and when we have these sub lethal effects,
they would add to the existing stressors.

For instance, you have a population of some organisms that was in some way coping with
the impacts of, say a particular disease. But then, if you put these pesticides also on the
same population, so, this population will now be suffering from two impacts at the same
time; one is the sub lethal impact of a disease, the second one is a sub lethal impact of the
pesticides and together a number of sub lethal impacts if you give it together, they might
result in and a large amount of lethality in these animals.

1250
Then, in a number of cases we also observed genetic changes, teratogenic changes and
developmental changes. Now, genetic changes, it means that you have some mutations
because of some pesticides. Teratogenic changes means that in a number of organisms
though the birth of the off spring, it is impacted in a way that the off spring when it is
inside, the foetus or when it is inside the womb, it is in the form of a foetus, it is not able
to grow properly. So, ‘terato’ refers to a monster and ‘gen’ refers to producer.

(Refer Slide Time: 16:37)

So, when we look at the word roots, teratogenic. So, ‘terato’ is a monster and ‘gen’ is to
produce. So, a teratogenic chemical is a chemical that produces a monster. So, for instance
if you think about human beings. So, are you a human being has 2 hands, it has 2 legs.
Now if there is a teratogenic chemical probably the hands will not be formed properly. So,
you will have very small hands or probably you will have a situation where you have very
long hands or probably you will have multiple hands.

Now, if you have such condition, we will say that there are some teratogenic chemicals
that are there in the environment or there are some teratogenic chemicals to which the
foetus is getting exposed to because these changes are not genetic changes. So, these are
not genetic changes, but they are actually altering some of the developmental mechanisms
through which the body is getting formed.

In one of the earlier lectures, we had seen that throughout the biosphere, most of the things
are formed in the form of small blocks. Lets look at a centipede. Now in the case of a

1251
centipede, you have a repetition of all of these segments and every segment has the legs.
Now, in this case, suppose the formation of the segment itself is hampered or say it has
changed. So, in that case, it is possible that in place of having these segments, you will
have a centipede that will have, say rounded segments.

Now, with these rounded segments, it will not be able to move properly. It will probably
die in a very short time, but then such kinds of changes, if they are produced not because
of genetic changes, but because of some chemicals when it is developing, we call it a
teratogenic change. And we also have a number of developmental effects which also come
up when the off spring has been produced and is now developing.

So, we have had a look at a number of such impacts before as well. So, there are impacts
of a number of chemicals and pesticides are no exceptions.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:08)

But then, another big factor is that the pesticides also have another set of impacts. So, for
instance, here we are looking at rice grains and we are looking at the number of pests that
we have in this particular rice. Here, what we are talking about are the secondary pest.

1252
(Refer Slide Time: 19:35)

You had a pesticide; so, you have this rice that is growing and this rice was impacted by
this particular pest and you sprayed your pesticide over your crop so that all your pests die
off. But then, what happens is in the absence of these pests, you will probably start getting
another pest because in ecology we earlier talked about niche differentiation or niche
partitioning.

In this case there are two species of pest that will make use of the same rice grain and when
you have the red coloured pest that was earlier there, it was able to out compete the purple
coloured pest. So, in that case you will not see any of your rice with a very substantial
population of the purple coloured pest. When you spray it with your pesticides and you
kill off the red coloured pests, so in this case now there is nothing to stop the purple
coloured pest to grow in this area.

Typically we will observe that in this case, the y axis is showing you the N lugens nymphs
and the adults per plant and this is a logarithmic scale. So, it is 0.1, 1, 10, 100 and 1000.
Now, in the normal case, you will see just around 1 nymph or 1 adult per plant, if you are
not spraying the pesticides. But then when you spray the pesticide, it may even rise to as
high as something that is greater than 1000 adults or 1000 nymphs per plant. So, that is the
impact of pesticides on a secondary pest. So, when you are removing the primary pest,
then probably you will have some secondary pest and it is possible that your secondary
pest may then lead to a much greater harm the new primary pest was causing.

1253
The other thing especially in the case of this particular secondary pest is that when you are
killing off your primary pest, you also kill off those predators. In this particular area you
will also have some predators. So, let us say that these are the spiders. Now, when you
have these spiders, these spiders feed on these purple coloured secondary pest and they
keep their population in check.

It is possible that when you are spraying your pesticide then along with your primary pest,
you also kill off these spiders which were again predators. Now, we have seen earlier in
ecology that if we talk about the food chains; so, here you have the producer which in this
case is rice and then, let us represent it like this. So, you have the primary pest and you
have the secondary pest and both of these will be feeding on the rice.

Now, in this case, the secondary pest also has its own predator in the form of spiders. So,
the spiders were feeding on the secondary pest. Now, when you spray your plants with the
insecticide, you are hoping that you are will get rid of the primary pest and so the crop will
be saved. But in this case, you are also killing off these predators because of which your
secondary pests are now able to increase their numbers because there is nothing to stop
them.

They have ample amount of food because there is no competition and at the same time,
they have no predators to predate on them. So, there is nothing to keep their population in
check. So, in that case the secondary pest population will increase to such an extent, then
that it becomes a much more serious problem than before.

Now, because the insecticides and the pesticides they are having a number of negative
influences and because we cannot make use of just the natural controls so, then people
thought why not make use of biological controls.

1254
(Refer Slide Time: 23:50)

Now, biological control is something that works very similar to a natural control. So, in
the case of a natural control you had a field that had rice, there were insects and there are
insectivorous birds. If the insect population increases, the bird population also increases
and that saves the crops.

(Refer Slide Time: 24:14)

So, here we had, say a rice and rice was being eaten by the insects and the insects were
being eaten up by the birds. Now, if the insect population increases, in turn birds will have
more amount of food and the bird population will increase which in turn will reduce the

1255
insect population. This is how a natural control works. Now, in the case of a biological
control what we do is if we know this system and we are seeing that the insects are
increasing, why cannot we bring birds from outside?

Let us say that we have an aviary, and in this aviary, we are raising a number of birds. We
are giving them controlled situations, controlled conditions, we are giving them plenty of
food, we are taking care of their other nutritional requirements, we are saving them from
diseases pests and parasites. So, you will have a large population of birds here.

Now, what you do is when you are growing your rice, you let loose of these birds. These
birds can always come out and they can substantiate the already existing bird population.
In that case the number of insects will drop considerably. Whenever you are using such a
method, you need to ensure that these birds are not also eating your rice because if that
happens this will not solve your problem. You want to have those birds that are only eating
the insects and if you can release those birds in large numbers, you will have a control over
your insects. This is the basic idea of biological control. It is reduction of pest by biological
introductions of predators; now in case of predators, you can also make use of parasites or
diseases or by genetic manipulations of crops or pests.

When we talk about genetic manipulation, probably you can have a particular rice variety
that is more resistant to the impacts of insects. Probably it has some other chemicals and
its leaves that is not suitable for the insects. In that case the insects will not be eating this
particular variety of rice. You can go with some genetic manipulations or you can go with
some breeding procedures through which you select for those rice varieties that are more
resistant to the insects or you could go for a genetic manipulation of the pest.

In this case, probably you can catch hold of a large population of these insects. So, you
take these insects out you select them. So, you select the females, you select the males and
then, you let the females probably you kill these females and all these males that have been
collected you sterilize them.

If you have sterilized these males, so, in that case they will not be able to produce office
springs and then, you release these males back into the system. So, what will happen is if
you have any female insect here. It will try to mate with this particular male and because
this male is sterile; so they will not be able to produce the off springs. You can go for a
genetic manipulation of the pest as well or probably you could give it certain genes such

1256
that it becomes a sterile after a while or you could go for these direct sterilization of pests
or by mating disruption by the use of pheromones or sex attractants.

(Refer Slide Time: 27:57)

Now, if you have a large sized field, so you have a number of crops, a number of plants
and there is a female here, and a male insect here. Now, how does the male insect get to
know that it has a female here so that it will be able to come here to this location. So, in
this case the females release some chemicals that are known as pheromones.

So, these are certain sexually attracting chemicals and when these chemicals are released
the male gets to know that, yes there is a female there and I should go in that direction.
Now, you can make use of this information to disrupt their mating cycles. So, what you
can do is, you can just say set up a small trap in this area and in this trap, you put some
pheromones. Once you have, once you know what is the particular chemical that is there
in the pheromones, you can just set up a small trap and you can put that chemical here.

In that case, and when if its concentration is greater than what the female will be releasing;
so in that case the male will think that yes there is a female here and it will just go and it
will be captured in that particular trap or at least if you are not even using a trap, the male
will get confused it will not be able to find the female and in that case it will not be able
to mate. You can make use of these pheromones or the sex attractions, also for the control
of these pest populations.

1257
(Refer Slide Time: 29:29)

The most common way in which we make use of the biological control is by using the
predator or parasite or pathogen because for things such as your pheromones, it has to go
with through a number of stages. You will first have to identify what is the chemical. So,
you will have to identify the chemical.

Firstly, you will have to purify this chemical from the females and then you will have to
identify this chemical, then you will have to find out a method to make it chemically. And
in a number of cases these pheromones are extremely specific to the particular species. So,
for instance, if you find out the pheromones for one particular species let us say species 1.
So, you have the pheromones. If you try to use it in another field that has pest of species
2, it will not work because these pheromones are extremely species specific.

And so, every time you have a new species of pest you will have to go through all of these
cycles, purify, identify and then make it chemically in large enough amounts and in an
economical way, so, that you can use it for your biological control. In a number of cases,
it is much easier to find out a predator or a parasite or a pathogen. In this case the steps
are, one, you select the pest that is causing a heavy damage and you give preference to the
invasive alien species.

Why do you give a preference to the invasive alien species? Because, if your species is
invasive, that means, that it has a very large amount of spread, it is out competing all the
natural vegetation or your native organisms and so, it is a big problem; so you give

1258
preference to an invasive species. You also give preferences to alien species. An alien
species is a species that is not natural to your area, but has come from somewhere else.

(Refer Slide Time: 31:39)

For instance, when we talk about India, we have a number of species such as lantana.
Lantana is a species that is not native to India, but it has come from Africa; so it has come
from Africa. In this case, because this is not a native species to your area, if you find out a
pest or if you find out a predator for lantana, so that predator when it comes, when you
release it in India; it will only be feeding on lantana because this particular predator does
not know or it does not like the native vegetation that is found in India.

In this case, you can increase the specificity because you will find out a predator and this
will be a predator that will not be impacting your native species. For instance, we had
talked about the role of the birds. So, we had found out, we had discussed about using
birds for your pest control.

1259
(Refer Slide Time: 32:52)

In this case, if you have your crop fields and there are say insects that are feeding on your
crop fields and you release certain birds into this area, you use it as a natural predator and
if these birds start feeding on the crops as well; so that will not serve the purpose. Now,
similarly, if you find out a species that is an alien species, when you get a predator for that
alien species, it should not be one that can eat up your native vegetation.

In this case it makes much more sense to go for invasive alien species. Then, you find out
the pest specialized predator. Again, we are emphasizing on this word specialized. It
should not be a generalized predator, it should not be feeding on anything and everything
that it can lay its mouth on. You find the pests’ specialized predator or parasite or pathogen
in its home country, and then, you introduce the agent and you monitor. If successful, the
pest population will get to a level, where there is no significant economic damage.

1260
(Refer Slide Time: 34:11)

In this particular case, when you are bringing in a species from outside and let us say you
brought a predator to your country and this predator did not like the pest. It is feeding on
the pest when it is there in the native country, but it is not feeding on the pest when you
have released it in India.

But then there is a large chance that this predator will also not recognize the native
vegetation. Now, if that is the case, if this predator is not liking the native vegetation, it is
not liking the pest, so, in that case in a short time the population of the predator will also
go down. This ensures that you are not bringing in more and more alien species into your
area.

1261
(Refer Slide Time: 34:57)

To give an example we look at the case study of the prickly pear. Prickly pear is an Opuntia
species. So, it is a species of cactus.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:09)

And you will often have seen it in the textbooks; it looks like this and it has these thorns,
it is green in colour and also it has a lot of cells that are doing photosynthesis at all times,
it is able to store moisture. In the case of Australia which is a very dry land, this species is
able to grow very fast.

1262
Now, this is species primarily grows through vegetative propagation. For instance, if there
a large wind and if some portion of this pear it gets broken. It falls on the ground. It will
start growing from there. It will give out another shoot and then it will start growing
vegetatively. It grows mostly by vegetative propagation. In the case of Australia, this
prickly pear was brought from outside, it was brought from the Americas; because it looks
good and people wanted to use it as a hedge plant.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:16)

For instance, if you have your garden, now in place of a fencing this whole garden, you
can just grow these Opuntia on the borders and because it has a number of thorns. Animals
will not be able to get into your garden or into your farm lay for that matter and because it
grows very easily, it is very easy to propagate it vegetatively. So, it is a preferred species
and it also looks good.

If you look at the invasion of this species in Australia, it started in the year 1787. At that
time, it was brought to these areas and then, through time we can see how it got dispersed
to different areas. By the 1920s, it so happened that it had become a large sized pest.

1263
(Refer Slide Time: 37:03)

In place of being restricted to these areas, it started going into the national environment
and it started establishing itself there. If that happens, and in the case of Australia because
you have a large amount of dry area that is a very suitable habitat for the prickly pear; now
if you have a lot of prickly pears, then you cannot use these areas for any other purpose as
well.

You cannot use it for ranching, you cannot use it for cultivation of anything , but then the
second problem with prickly pear was that when it grows it makes a very abundant mat
like structure when it is there on the ground.

1264
(Refer Slide Time: 37:54)

You will have this ground and this ground will be full of these prickly pears and in this
case, if you want to remove these; so it is very difficult to remove these because all of
these are having thorns. You cannot remove this manually plus they grow very fast. So,
even if you have removed these and even if a small portion gets left behind, it will start
growing up vegetatively and when you are using these lands for say ranching purposes,
the cost per unit land is less. For instance let us say that if you have 1 acre of land and 1
acre of land is say costing you 500 rupees. because these are very outskirts areas. And
these lands are full of this prickly pear and if you remove prickly pear, if you want to
remove this prickly pear; then per acre it is going to cost you say 15000 rupees. There is
no way somebody would want to buy up a land that is worth 500 rupees and then, pay
15000 rupees for it. This is the situation that happened in the case of Australia.

1265
(Refer Slide Time: 39:09)

People started looking for their predators and their predators could be formed from the
Americas and we have this paper and if you look at the year, it says 1924. This is the issue
of using the biological control mechanisms. It is not a new mechanism. It has been used
for a very long time. Now it is nearly a century that it has been in use. Now, it says
biological control of prickly pear in Australia contributing efforts in North America. The
introduction from North America of natural enemies of Australia introduced prickly pear
pest has been underway about 3 years. So, it essentially started in the year 1921.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:54)

1266
What did people do? They took the prickly pear that was growing in North America and
then, from there they started to look at different predators or different organisms that were
feeding on it and then, they used to bring out all these prickly pears and then, they would
pack it up in these boxes so that these could be shipped to Australia and a number of
species were tried and most of them did not work, but then there was this particular moth
species that actually worked.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:26)

In this case, what we are seeing is that there was this moth species that is known as
cactoblastis. If we look at the growth of the prickly pear; so, by 1920s, so this job started
in 1921 and by this time, you had this much amount of area. You have these millions of
hectares; so roughly you had 7 million hectares that were all full of prickly pears.

1267
(Refer Slide Time: 41:02)

We have seen in the case of population growth curves that if you have a species that has
been introduced into an area. Here if you look at the number of organisms versus time;
earlier the growth will be very less because it is in the lag phase. Now, in the lag phase,
you do not have enough number of parents for the population growth, but then it will start
getting into the log phase. Here we can see a very similar thing. Here we have a lag phase
till this time and then we have started getting into the log phase. In the log phase it says
that we had as many as 1100 hectares of area that were getting infested by prickly pear
every day. We are not talking about weeks or months or years, 1100 hectares every day
were getting infested because of these prickly pears.

Once they started looking at different predatory species for this and then in September
1927, they started releasing these particular moth and now you can see how the population
declined. It started declining right there, but then in a very short time it declined
completely. Now, what does this moth do?

1268
(Refer Slide Time: 42:25)

This moth when it infects a prickly pear; so let us say this is the prickly pear, the
characteristic of this particular species is that it lays its eggs in a large cluster. There will
be a large cluster of eggs that will be laid on one particular plant. So, you have a number
of predators that are attacking the same plant at the same time. Now, what will these eggs
do? When the larvae come out, they will start getting to the inside of this prickly pear and
they will start eating it from inside.

Now because there are a large number of larvae that are there on the same plant; so there
is a very little chance that this plant is going to survive because there are so many predators
that are feeding on it at the same time. Also, when these larvae get to the inside, when they
have made these holes in the plant; so, a number of other pathogens can also enter through
these holes.

We have a number of bacteria, some fungi that also infect these plants once these holes
have been made. And because this is a concerted effort that is happening on one particular
plant at one time; so, we see a large drop in the population of the prickly pear. Again, if
you remember the class on population dynamics, we have the prey population.

1269
(Refer Slide Time: 43:52)

In this case, you had a large number of prey and you release the predator. The predator
started feeding on the prey and the prey population started reducing and at the same time
the predator population started increasing because they were having ample amount of food.
Now, after a while, you will get a situation where you have a very small prey population
and you have a large population of the predators. Now, in that case, when your prey
population is less, the predator population will start to crash.

It also starts reducing because it does not now have ample amount of food that is available.
Once that happens and when the predator population goes down, then we see another
increase in the prey population because, now you do not have ample number of predators
to predate upon the prey and this is what we are seeing here in the natural circumstances.

The prey population in this case the prickly pear, it dropped and then it started increasing
again and here the cause was a mass mortality or in the case of the predator population.
After a while they again started to increase in numbers and then they started to feed on
these prickly pears again and then the population has now been brought under control.

1270
(Refer Slide Time: 45:16)

If we look at the situation of before and after, here you are seeing a particular ranch area
where you have this house and all this area is now full of prickly pear. If you have so many
of these cacti that are there in your ranch, you will not be able to grow any crops, you will
not be able to use it for ranching, you will not even be able to get to your house. In this
case the house gets abandoned, but then if you look at the picture, right, 1 year after.

(Refer Slide Time: 45:47)

1271
Here we can see that all the prickly pears, they have been eaten up and so, there is no
prickly pears that is seen in this area. Biological control in this way is very good because
the impacts will be very dramatic if you are able to release a large number of the predators.

(Refer Slide Time: 46:06)

Other ways of doing the biological control including breeding for resistance; for instance
if you have your crops such as the wheat crop.

(Refer Slide Time: 46:19)

Wheat again if we talk about it in the evolutionary terms, every population will be having
some variations. When a wheat is getting infested because of some insect, there will be

1272
certain plants or there will be a number of plants that will die off, but then there will be
certain plants that are spared because they have certain specific traits that make them more
resistant to the impacts of this particular insect.

In the case of breeding, what you do is that you select for these plants and then, you mate
these plants together. You have a number of plants that are resistant to this particular insect.
In case of collecting seeds from everywhere you only collect seeds from here and then,
you use this as a founder population to get a number of wheat plants.

All of these will or say most of these will be having the characteristics of resistance to this
particular insect. So, now when this insect tries to invade into this particular crop, it will
not be able to kill off a number of wheat plants. This is known as breeding for resistance.
In this case, you are not reducing the number of your pest, but at the same time you are
generating resistance in your crop so that it is able to resist the pest. The second option is
that of genetic engineering. You would have heard of BT cotton.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:57)

When we say BT cotton, here BT refers to a particular bacterium which is known as

Bacillus thuringiensis. This is a particularly bacterium that produces a protein that is
known as a cri protein and when insects eat this particular protein, then this protein will
get into their intestines and it will kill off those particular insects. When you introduce this
particular gene into your crop of cotton; so you will have a cotton plant and in this plant,
it is all the cells of this plant, they are also producing the same BT protein or the cri protein.

1273
In this case if you have an insect that is coming and trying to feed on this plant, the insect
will get this protein and the insect will die. You can make use of genetic engineering also
to control your pests or you can make use of Immunocontraception.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:09)

In the case of immunocontraception which is generally used in the case of deer populations
when they are becoming pest, what you do is you can take outlet us say you have this
particular organism which is a deer. In this case, if you look at an egg of a deer, so, this
egg will be having some surface proteins. You can take one of these proteins out and then
you can probably grow it inside a virus. So, you have made a genetically engineered virus
that is showing this particular surface protein on its surface.

You are putting the egg surface protein onto the surface of the virus. Now, you infect your
deer population with this particular virus. What will happen? The deer population every
individual will start giving off an immune response. This immune response will be against
the surface of the virus. The surface of the virus is now having the egg protein or the egg
surface protein.

What will happen in this case is that you will have a number of antibodies that are made
in this deer. You have a number of antibodies that are made in this deer which are against
this particular protein that is being shown in the surface. Once that happens, you will have
a situation that all the eggs that are there in the female deer they will also be acted upon
by the antibodies and now this deer will be will become infertile because it does not

1274
produce any ova. All the ova that are inside these deer are killed and so, this deer becomes
infertile.

You can make use of things that are known as immunocontraception in which case you
are using the immune system to perform contraception of these animals or we can make
use of pheromones as we have seen earlier in the case of insects or you could go for
integrated pest management which we will come to in a short while.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:10)

There are 6 factors if you want to have a successful eradication using your biological
control. You should have sufficient resources.In this case, when we talk about prickly pear
you needed to go to America and get different kinds of predators for your prickly pear,
bring them to Australia, breed them so that you have a large enough population, release
them; do some controlled release; look at the experimental results and then release them
at a larger scale; all of this requires time, all of this requires money and all of this requires
manpower. So, you need to have sufficient resources. You need to have clear lines of
authority for decision making.

If you are bringing these predatory insects from Americas into Australia. There has to be
a mechanism that you are getting permission from the customs, for instance. If you want
to release it in some area, you should have the power to make the decision to release these
insects. Clear lines of authority are also needed. You need to have a target species that is

1275
easy to find and kill; in this case, the prickly pear was very easy to see and you need to
have an effective means to prevent reintroduction.

It does not make any sense if you are killing off the prickly pear and people are bringing
prickly pear again to use in their gardens; so that it releases again into the environment. If
you are going for any such mechanism there has to be an effective means to prevent
reintroduction. So, you need to tell everybody that they should not be bringing more and
more prickly pears and they should not be using these prickly pears in their gardens and
probably some amount of penal penalties as well.

Then, you need an easy detection of the species when it is scarce. So, even if you have say,
a few prickly pears that are remaining somewhere you need to know that they are there.
Because if you stop your biological control after a while, then these prickly pears might
again start to grow. So, in that case you need to have a way of finding out each and every
individual in this area so that you can exterminate the population completely for a complete
eradication.

And in the case of prickly pear, it has not yet been eradicated, so, even though it has been
going on for nearly a century we still have some patches where we have prickly pear. The
process is still on. It takes time and you need to have plans for restoration management if
the species becomes dominant. Probably if, in this case if the moth became a dominant
species, you would need some mechanisms to control that as well.

(Refer Slide Time: 53:51)

1276
And a good example of successful eradication is these islands, the South Georgia Islands,
where all the rodents were taken off. They were given baited pills with that were laced
with poison and now you do not have any rodents on these particular islands.

(Refer Slide Time: 54:12)

Before we move forward, there is this particular story from the Panchatantra that plays a
role in the case of biological control. So, this is the story of The Foolish Crane and the
Mongoose. A big banyan tree was home to a number of cranes in a forest. In the hollow
of that tree lived a cobra, which used to feed on the young cranes which did not yet learn
to fly.

When the mother crane saw the cobra killing her off springs, she began crying. Seeing the
sorrowing crane, a crab asked her what made her cry. The crane told the crab, “Every day,
the cobra living in this tree is killing my children. I am not able to contain my grief. Please
show me some way to get rid of this cobra.”

1277
(Refer Slide Time: 55:00)

The crab then thought, “These cranes are our born enemies. I shall give her advice that is
misleading and suicidal that will see the end of all these cranes. Elders have always said
that if you want to wipe out your enemy, your words should be soft like butter and your
heart like a stone.” Then the crab told the crane, “Aunty, strew pieces of meat from the
mongoose’s burrow to the hollow of the cobra. The mongoose will follow the trail of the
meat to the cobra burrow and will kill it.”

In this case what the crab is suggesting to the crane is to use a biological control in the
form of a mongoose. We are seeing very similar situation here.

1278
(Refer Slide Time: 55:48)

You have a population of cranes that is being eaten up by a cobra and now the crab is
suggesting that why do not you bring a mongoose to this area so that the mongoose feeds
on the cobra and the cobra is destroyed. The crane did as the crab advised her. The
mongoose came following the meat trail and killed not only the cobra but also all the cranes
on the tree.

“This is why,” the king’s men said, “if you have a strategy, you must also know what this
strategy would lead to.” In this particular case this biological control failed because the
mongoose ate away the cobra, but then it started feeding on all of these cranes and so, the
crane population also decimated. All of these cranes also died; only the mongoose remains
now.

Whenever we are bringing in any particular species that is used for a biological control,
we need to ensure that this species will not have a negative influence on our native
vegetation, on our other crops, on the people who are living in this area, on the animals
that are living in this area. All of this is extremely important.

1279
(Refer Slide Time: 57:06)

And the twist to this story is that the Indian mongoose has now become a pest species in
Hawaii. In the case of a number of Hawaiian Islands, the small Indian mongoose was
introduced to these islands. It was introduced to remove some pest and then, it removed
the pest and now it has become a pest in itself which is the same story as what we have
seen in Panchatantra.

(Refer Slide Time: 57:33)

This brings us to the next topic which is integrated pest management In the case of
integrated pest management, we integrate all these different options that are available with

1280
us. We have the options of biological control, we have the options of pesticides, we have
the option of cultural controls and so on. Biological control is probably one of the cheapest
options because you bring these predators, the predators prey on the pest, the pest
population goes down and at the same time the predator population increases and the more
number of predators you have, the more amount of pest that is getting killed.

This is one of the cheapest options that you have, but then you need to integrate it with the
other options. Along with the biological control, you should also have the cultural controls.
For instance, things like crop rotation. You put you make use of biological controls, you
make use of cultural controls, you probably make use of some amount of pesticides where
they are essential and then it is not either or situation, it is using both of these at the same
time.

In this particular lecture we had a look at biological control. We started with what is the
pests, what are the kinds of damages that it does, what is an ecological damage, what is an
economic damage, when do we call a pest a controlled pest, when do we call it an
uncontrolled pest and then, we looked at different options that we have. We looked at the
option of using pesticides, but then pesticides have their own issues, they are extremely
cost intensive, they require a huge amount of labour to put those pesticides and they also
inflict a very great amount of damage to the environment.

We have other options one of the options is a natural control which makes use of the Lotka
volterra dynamics that we have seen. If the pest population increases, the population of
their predators will also increase. We make use of some cultural operations in which case
we burn up the crop residues or we go for crop rotation and things like that or we can go
for a biological control which is essentially an amplification of the natural control. In the
case of a biological control, you bring in the predators of your pest species, you grow them
in an artificial environment and then you release them; so that they are able to eat all the
pest.

Biological control has worked in a number of situations, but then in some situations the
predators that were released to kill off the pest also became a pest in themselves and a
good example is the Indian mongoose. We need to think which method will work in which
scenarios. Even in the case of biological control, we should go in for a controlled release

1281
in a very small area earlier and then if the results are good, if we see that these predators
are not killing of other organisms; only then we should be going for large scale operation.

An integrated pest management makes use of all these different options that are available
to us so that we have an effective control over the pest at a reduced cost and without having
much impacts on the environment. So, that is all for today.

Thank you for your attention. Jai hind.

1282
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Indian Forest Service
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture - 33
Ecotoxicology and pollution management, Restoration Ecology

Namaste,

We carry forward our discussions on applied ecology. And today we will have a look at
Ecotoxicology, pollution management and Restoration Ecology.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:25)

Eco-toxicology is the study of the effects of toxic chemicals on biological organisms,

especially at the population community ecosystem and biosphere levels. So, essentially
we are talking about toxicology which is studying the impacts of different toxins or
poisonous substances on the ecosystem, so which is why we call it eco-toxicology.

Generally when we talk about only toxicology; it is concerned with how much amount of
a toxic substances required for say a median level of death for of an organism or to kill
all the organisms in a particular case; so these are what are studied in toxicology. In the
case of eco-toxicology we make it a bit more broader; so we look at the impacts not just
on individuals, but also on different populations community ecosystem and biosphere
levels.

1283
And at the same time when we talk about eco-toxicology we talk about not all the toxic
chemicals, but especially those toxic chemicals that are present in the environmental
conditions.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:37)

Some common toxic elements that are present in the environment, they include
pesticides and their residues; so for instance if we have DDT and after a while it will get
degraded and will have DDE or DDD; so we will consider not just the original pesticides
but also all their residues.

Then we have a look at the impact of the heavy metals that are released especially in the
mining operations or the impacts of plasticizers. So, plasticizers as we have seen earlier
are those chemicals that are added to different plastics to make them more elastic or to
make them supple enough so that they can resist some amounts of disturbances, or we
locate the impacts of volatile organic compounds, like formaldehyde.

Now, in this case we are looking at those organic compounds that are volatile. So,
especially if say you go to a petrol pump and you get the smell of different organic
compounds that are there as a part of the petroleum, now some of those might be harmful
for health.

So, in this case, they are those organic compounds that are volatile because of which they
are getting into the air. And we can locate the impacts of those chemicals the toxicity of

1284
those chemicals to the populations, communities, ecosystems or the biosphere levels, or
we can locate the impacts of the naturally occurring toxic chemicals, such as micro
toxins. Now, micro toxins are those toxic chemicals that are released by different species
of fungi.

These are naturally available in the environment, so for instance if you look at ground
nuts. And in the rainy season you might have a growth of fungus in those ground nuts,
and there could be some ground nuts that taste extremely better. Because there is the
presence of a toxin that is known that is aflatoxin. Now, that is a mycotoxins and we also
look at the impacts of different national toxins also on the environment.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:47)

Based on the levels of toxicity, a toxin can be classified into these four categories, you
could have some that are extremely poisonous. So, in that case the oral lethal dose is 1 to
50 milligrams per kg. Now, when we talk about toxicology or the amounts of toxic
chemicals that are required to kill an organism, we generally refer to it as milligrams per
kg body weight.

1285
(Refer Slide Time: 04:13)

If there is a chemical that is whose lethal dose is say 30 milligrams per kg body weight.
And you have an adult individual who is say 60 kgs. So, in that case the lethal dose will
be calculated as 30 milligrams per kg into the body weight which is the 60 kg in this
case.

Both of these cancel out and so you get 1800 milligrams or 1.8 grams of this toxic that is
required to kill this particular individual. Now, if we look at the toxicity levels of these
four different categories. In these extremely poisonous cases you have oral lethal dose
that is very less just 1 to 50 milligrams per kg bodyweight is sufficient to kill an
organism.

For a number of chemicals when we are talking about say insecticides this dose is going
to be very less, because the weights of this insects or the body mass of these insects is
also very less. So, when we talk about these poisonous substances, when we are saying
that you require say 30 milligrams per kg of body weight, see the weight of 1 insect is
only say 1 gram.

In that case you will require 30 milligram per kg into 1 by 1000 kg. So, that will be only
30 micrograms of this particular insecticide or this particular toxin will be sufficient to
kill 1 organism. So, now in the case of these poisonous substances, you can have a wide
range of mortality.

1286
(Refer Slide Time: 06:17)

For instance; if you have an environment, let us just say talk about a forest region. Now,
in this forest area suppose this particular toxin gets released. So, there will be a large
amount of mortality in the insects, because in the case of the insects this very small
amount of toxin will be sufficient to cross the lethal dosage. So, you will have a lot of
lethality or a very large lethality in the insects or the smaller organisms.

In the case of the larger organisms or larger animals you will have a sub lethal impact on
larger organisms. So, even if you are releasing the same chemical the impacts will differ
or depending on what is the species, what is the size of the individual in that species.
And also on what are the underlying predisposing factors that that particular individual is
having.

For instance, if you have those organisms that are already diseased in that case probably
the amount of lethality will be much greater. Or for those organisms that are not living in
burrows, but are living out in the open or are safe flying such as birds. So, birds will have
a very great amount of lethality because they are completely exposed to these toxins.

We can have this extremely poisonous once, we can have the moderately poisonous
chemicals where the oral, lethal dose is between 51 and 500 milligrams per kg or we can
have some dangerous chemicals where the lethal dose is even lesser it is between 500
and 1 milligram that is half a gram to 5 grams per kg or you can have some other

1287
chemicals that have a less amount of toxicity. But still, you need to maintain a caution
because they still have can have lethality in doses that is greater than 5 grams per kg.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:29)

When these chemicals are released into the environment or when they are present in the
environment, they can have lethal effects in which the organism dies, they can have sub
lethal effects in which the organism continues to live. But is having an impaired bodily
function or they can have genetic impacts or they can have teratogenic impacts.

Teratogenic impacts as we have seen before they are monster causing impact, so, they
lead to fetal abnormalities. So, they lead to abnormalities in the unborn off springs or
they can lead to developmental impacts to the born off springs and a good example in
this case is the number of plasticizers.

As we have seen in the case of plastics there is this particular chemical that is known as
Bisphenol A or BPA. Now, if you expose tadpoles to this particular chemical it leads to a
change in their sex. So, that, that is a particular developmental defect that this chemical
is causing, or otherwise it can lead to a reduced fecundity in several animals.

When you have a reduced fecundity it means that the animals are not able to produce
enough number of off springs; the number of off springs per individual reduces. And so
the population growth rate reduces which may further bring a population towards the

1288
blink of extinction. Or you can have the impact of addition to the existing stressors
which could be say diseases or parasites or a huge predatory pressure.

If you have these toxic chemicals they may add up to those impacts and then together
with the other impact they may lead to large scale lethalities in different populations.
Now, in a number of situations we have seen that with these toxic chemicals you also see
the impacts of bio accumulation and also the impacts of bio magnification.

(Refer Slide Time: 10:25)

So, we saw this in the case of our energetics classes that if you have grass and on the
grass you sprayed certain pesticides. So, grass is eaten by the insects, then these insects
are eaten by some frogs, then these frogs are eaten by say some snakes, and then these
snakes are say eaten up by eagles. Now, if there are certain chemicals which are there on
the surface of the grass and the insects are eating those. So, there would be some amount
of lethality in these insects, but then there will also be some insects that have been
exposed to these chemicals but are not yet dead.

In those insects you will have some chemicals that are inside their bodies. Now, when
these insects are eaten up by the frogs, the chemicals reach into the bodies of the frogs.
And for certain chemicals especially those chemicals that can reside in the fat tissues of
the body, so, if there is a chemical that is say water soluble.

1289
In a number of instances that chemical will be removed from the body along with the
urine. But, if there is certain chemical that is fat soluble that will go on accumulating in
the body. So, you have this body of the organism there is a certain rate at which the
chemical is entering into the body and there is a certain rate at which the chemical is
getting removed or the chemical is getting destroyed. Now, if the rate of addition is
greater than the rate of removal, we say that there is a bio accumulation in that particular
organism.

Now when we talk about biomagnifications because as a frog is eating a number of

insects; suppose the insects get this particular 3 ppm of certain toxic chemical, because
this toxic chemical was sprayed on the grass. So, it is there on the surface of the grass
and the concentration in the grass is let us say 0.03 PPM. So, in that case because the
insect is eating a large quantity of grass, so, it is getting much more amount of these
chemicals into its body. And then if these chemicals are getting stored in the fat tissues
and so there will be by accumulation of these.

Now, if they if you consider a frog a frog is eating a number of insects. So, probably if
let us say this frog is eating say 1000 insects. So, the body size of the frog is larger. So,
essentially these chemicals are getting diluted, if you consider the chemical in the body
of one insect and let us say that it is 3 ppm on an average. Now if there is a frog of a
larger size it is eating insect of this size, this was 3 ppm and when it gets into the body of
the frog, it will become a reduced concentration.

Let us say it becomes say 0.5 PPM; because it is getting diluted up because the mass of
the frog is much larger. But then because this chemical is getting accumulated in the
body what is happening is that you have this chemical, let us say that this is in amount x.
So, the frog eats one insect it got x amount of this chemical. Then the frog ate another
insect it got another x, it go it another insect it got another x.

Now, because it is eating a large number of insects; so the chemicals that were there in
small quantities in all of these different insects they are getting more and more
accumulated in the body of the frog. And in this case may be on an average or in totality
the concentration will be much greater than what is there in the insects. Let us say that in
the case of frogs it is suppose 30 ppm; in the case of insects it will be even more because
the insects are eating frogs which already have a high concentration of these chemicals;

1290
the frogs already are having 30 ppm of these chemicals. So, probably the concentration
in the snakes will be much greater.

Let us say it is 500 PPM. When it reaches into the eagles because the eagles are eating a
number of snakes and all the snakes that they are eating are already having the high
concentration of these chemicals they are also having the high body mass. So, the total
amount of these chemicals in the body of the snakes is also large. Now because the eagle
is eating a number of snakes, so the concentration will be even higher. Let us say it will
be something like 2000 PPM. So, what we are saying is that as you are moving up in the
food chain, there is magnification of the concentration that is present in different
organisms at different tropic levels.

Now, if that happens we will see that even though you have a very less concentration of
this chemical in the environment; there will be such a high concentration in the case of
the top predators that it will start showing up its negative impacts and one negative
impact that has been studied in detail is the shell thickness in these eagles.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:41)

This was the Bald Eagle that was considered and it was seen that if you make a
correlation between the amount of DDE that is there in the egg shells.

Now, DDE is the residue that comes out of the degradation of DDT. So, you had an
insect infestation and to kill off the insects, you sprayed DDT. Now, after a while it is

1291
lost one SCL and it became DDT or it is also known as DDE in certain literature. Now if
you look at this DDE concentration and if you look at, the productivity of these bald
eagles, we will see that the productivity is let us say 1 every year and after a while it will
start decreasing as you increase the DDE concentration and then it will become very less
it will become close to 0.

What is happening in this case is that the birds are laying eggs, now because bald eagle is
a bird so it is laying an egg. Now the egg is the outer layer of the egg is made up of
calcium, it is made up of certain chemicals that are rich in calcium, which are giving it
the rigidity.

(Refer Slide Time: 16:55)

Now, the egg has to be kept at a certain temperature, so that the chick is able to develop
inside.

1292
(Refer Slide Time: 17:25)

To keep this egg at the fixed temperature what the birds do, is that they sit on these eggs.
Now if you have a bird if you have this egg and you have a bird that is sitting on this
egg. So, you have some amount of force that is being applied on this egg; now the egg is
able to withstand that force because of this thick shell that it has. So, this shell acts as a
mechanical support for these eggs.

When you have a high amount of DDT or DDE in the body of the bird, it hampers with
the calcium metabolism in the body. And what happens is that the shell thickness, this
reduces. Now if you have an egg that has a very thin shell. So, in a number of situations
the bird will not even be able to lay an egg, because it is not able to put a in enough
amount of calcium in the eggs. Or in certain situations even if the egg has gone has been
laid when the bird sits on it to maintain temperature the egg will break.

Now if you have eggs that are breaking, so we will have a situation in which in this
population, there is a very less number of births that are happening because all the eggs
are breaking off before the eggs; before the chicks have a chance to mature. So, as we
had seen if you talk about a population it is equal to the number of individuals in the last
generation plus births minus mortality plus immigration minus immigration.

There are only two things that are adding to this population; we have the birth and you
have the immigration. Now if you consider a bird that is found in the whole of the
continent so in that case it is not found anywhere else. So, you are not having any

1293
immigration or emigration in totality. So, essentially the only things that are regulating
are the births and the mortality. Now even if you are not having mortality of the birds
because of the DDT. But because it is hampering the number of births that these birds
can give it will lead to a decline in the population.

Because in this case if the number of births is very close to 0, so for instance here we
have average 5 year productivity, it becomes very close to 0. So, there are no births, but
the number of deaths or the number of birds that are getting reduced in the population
because of mortality that is remaining same. So, even in that case you will have a
decrease in the total population of the birds and because of which we actually started
seeing a decline in the population.

(Refer Slide Time: 20:07)

If we see here you have the mean number of young per breeding area and the mean
number of young per breeding area was close to 1.3, and after a while it started going so
low, that it became very close to 0.5. So, you have a very less number of births and the
number of deaths, continue to remain as before. Now in the case of these birds it was
figured out that the actual reason for this population crashes DDT.

In the US they went for a ban on DDT in the 1972. And here we can see that after a short
while, it again started increasing. So, it again these very close to 1.3. What we are seeing
here is that a number of populations are quite resilient. Especially if the harm that you

1294
have given to the particular population is not very high, now suppose this decline had
continued for a very long period of time.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:11)

If we say that this is the population size and with time t because you have a very less
number of birds. So, probably the population started going down.

And let us say you were only left with 1 bird. Now if you only have 1 bird left and there
is no other bird for it to mate with; obviously, though this population is going to become
extinct. So, you have to put a break on your toxic substances way before it has reached to
that stage. So, if you were able to bring it back from this stage, it would again come back
to the normal levels, but then there is this point of no return after which if you have given
it much more amount of stresses as that have crossed the point of no return in that case
the population might become extinct.

In this case we are seeing that the population was resilient and so even though you have a
very less number of young spirit per breeding area in this area and then it after a while it
started increasing again and then the population is stabilized. Now there are two things
that you can do; to keep your population resilient or to bring it back to the normal.

1295
(Refer Slide Time: 22:29)

One is that; you put an end to the toxins and 2 is that; you do something that is able to
assist the population.

Now, if you are doing something to assist the population; you could probably take some
birds out in an aviary, you could probably go for an ex-situ conservation method. In
which you keep some birds out and you are giving them certain amount of certain food
materials that do not have any amount of d DDT in them. So, in that case you will be
able to create an ex-situ conservation facility in which these birds are able to breed and
after a while you can release them. That is one way that we have seen before.

The other way is that you need to put an end to these toxins. Now if you want to reduce
the concentration of these toxins or if you want to end these toxins again there are two
things that you need to do. The first thing is that, you reduce the release you reduce or
you end the release of chemical in the environment, which is what we saw in this case
there was a ban on DDT. So, this is one thing that is important. The second thing that
you can do, to reduce the concentration of these chemicals in the environment is to do
something, that increases the decay of chemicals, already present in the environment.

So, there are these two kinds of things that you can do. Now when we are doing such
measures we are trying to restore the ecosystem back to the normal step. So, essentially a
number of species are resilient.

1296
(Refer Slide Time: 24:41)

But if you want to recover a number of these populations and communities, if you are
doing some restoration work that is going to aid the recovery. Now, restoration ecology
is the scientific study supporting the practice of ecological restoration, which is the
practice of renewing and restoring, you are renewing and you are restoring degraded,
damaged, or destroyed ecosystems and habitats in the environment by active human
intervention and action.

So, what we are doing here is that, you already have these ecosystems that are degraded,
damaged, or destroyed and you are doing something to this ecosystem so that it is able to
come back to the normal state and we will look at a number of such examples in a short
while; what are these kinds of interventions.

1297
(Refer Slide Time: 25:39)

Now to give you a very small example; if there is a forest, so this forest is having a
number of trees and then there was a mining activity. Now for mining you need to clear
up all the trees, so you remove these trees. Then you perform the mining operation so in
the mining operation you created a last sized hole in the earth.

(Refer Slide Time: 25:57)

You probably also created a lot of gunk matter that is there in this surrounding. So, now
what you have done after at the end of your mining operation, you are left with an area
that does not have any trees that has big sized holes and that has a lot of this landfill.

1298
So, what are the kinds of things that you can do to aid in the restoration? Now if you do
not do anything probably in say 000 years or say 10000 years nature will reclaim this
area by itself. So, probably with the rains all this gunk will start getting inside. So, it will
start filling up after a short while and then you will have some plants that will start
invading into this area, and after some time you will have the successional processes that
start again.

Because again you will have some species that will be more resistant to the impacts of
the lizards that are there in the environment plus at the same time, you will also see that
when you have these mining gunk, then probably with the rains some amount of it is
getting into the stream.

(Refer Slide Time: 27:05)

When you have these materials that are getting into the stream; one is that you are
getting the sediments, second is that if you probably went for the mining of metals you
would also have a high amount of heavy metals that are getting into the water streams.
Now heavy metals are extremely toxic and that might lead to the death of a number of
organisms.

But then, again after some time probably the concentration of heavy metals would reduce
with time, because you will not have so much amount of heavy metal that is there in the
gunk. And after some time, the concentration will reduce enough so that some organisms
are able to live there.

1299
But then, when we talk about restoration ecology, we are trying to aid this process. So,
how can we aid this process? One is that, because you have this gunk that you can get
into the reverse if it is left outside, you probably put all this gunk into this hole. So, what
will happen is, you now do not have any of these landfills here; plus you also do not have
these holes here, because you have filled up the hole. Plus you can also bring some
amount of soil from outside.

So, basically you bring some amount of dirt from outside and you create a layer of soil,
over all of these areas. Now why would you want to do that? Because in case you have
these gunk materials inside they are still having a lot of heavy metals, they are still
having a number of chemicals. So, you put a layer of soil on top so that even if there is
rainfall in this area, the water is not able to reach to this gunk. So, you essentially create
a layer on top of your landfill material so that the water is not able to reach inside.

So, now you have saved your rivers. So, in this case nothing is getting into the rivers,
now the river is clean. Plus, the other thing is; the other thing is that, even after you have
done this, it might take say now because you have already added the soil so probably it
will now take in place of 10000 years, it will probably take 100 years, for nature to
reclaim this place. Because after a while some seeds will come into this area, some sports
will come into this area; the process of succession will start.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:29)

1300
But then, you can aid in that process even further by say, planting those particular plants
that are already found in this area. So, you are adding those plants, you are bringing
those plants and probably even in this gunk area you are planting those plants. And to
protect them from the high heavy metals what you do is, that you make a small hole and
you fill it up with soil and you put these plants here.

What will happen after a short while, is that these plants will give a roots. And these
roots will slowly enter into these gunk areas as well, but then because they also have this
soil to dilute the impacts of the heavy metals these plants will be able to survive. So, in
place of having an area that nature would have reclaimed in say 1000 of years, now you
have helped nature to reclaim this area in say a couple of years.

So, that is something that we know that we call as restoration. So, we are restoring this
area, so that the systems can get back to normal. Now in this case the restoration will
move according to certain principles.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:39)

So, we have these four principles of Ecological Restoration. Whenever you are doing any
restoration activity, you have to maintain ecological integrity which means that if you are
good if you are planting these trees in say a tropical area, you need to have the plants that
grow in the tropical area only. You cannot bring in some other invasive species and you
are trying because your invasive species will probably establish faster in this area.

1301
Because they have lower nutritional requirements or because they spread very fast, but
then what will happen is that if you in place of going for native species.

If you go for nonnative, exotic, or invasive species then even though this area will have
certain vegetation cover, but then it is also possible that they will spread even further and
after a while they will destroy a much larger ecosystem. So, you need to maintain an
ecological integrity and all of your operations. Secondly, it has to be informed by past in
future. So, basically when we say that we are doing some planning operations here, we
need to look into all different case studies that have been done.

We need to go for the best practices whenever we are planting any material here. So, for
instance you need to know what is the size of the hole that you need to dig, in this area,
Do you need to irrigate this area or not? If you want if you need to it you to irrigate this
area, how often do you need to irrigate this area and things like that. So, all the past
information and even those information that come up in future they need to be integrated
into any of your restoration activities. You just cannot say that I did not have a time to
look at this information, and so I did the wrong thing. It has to be well informed.

Then it needs to benefit an engage the society. Because once you have done this
plantation, they will also be say, some villages that are nearby. So, the people the local
people who are there in those villages, they need to get a benefit out of this activity. They
need to be actively involved in this activity.

For instance, when you are planting these trees; if you give employment to the local
people; if you involve those local peoples; so, they also become stakeholders. What will
happen is, because it is their forest they will try not to cut this forest, they would want
this forest to grow, because it is after all a result of their own hard work.

So, in all these activities you need to make a point that you are benefiting and you are
engaging the local people, you are engaging the society. And at the same time the 4th
principle is that it should have a long-term sustainability. You cannot go for short term
solutions it has to be a long-term solution. So, for instance you cannot go for your exotic
plants; that is also another example here.

1302
(Refer Slide Time: 33:43)

Now, we look at some activities that are degrading and some activities that are restoring
activities. Now degrading activities could mean things like, cessation of prescribed
burning.

So, you require certain areas to be burnt after every few years or say after every few
months, because let us say there are some invasive organisms that have come up into this
area and you want to keep their population in check. So, one of those operations could be
the burning operations. Now, if there is one particular manager who comes into this area,
and says no, I am not going to burn this area; so he is actually performing a degrading
action by not acting on the prescribed prescriptions.

Another degrading action could be cultivation and cropping in this area, because if you
have a very heavy cultivation in an area, you would probably go for a large amount of
pesticides, a large amount of fertilizers that could again be degrading to the ecosystem.
Or things like disturbance, excavation, or burial of substrate.

So, things like mining operations or things like you dig a hole and you fill it with waste
materials, that is included in these things. Another degrading action is eutrophication or
hydrological disruption; hydrological disruption means things such as creation of dams.
So, if you have a dam you will disrupt the hydrology.

1303
(Refer Slide Time: 35:11)

So, if suppose there is this particular stream that is going a very long distance and there
are supposed certain fish species that need to feed in this area and this area or they are
going to lay eggs in this area.

There is a migration of these animals from one area to the next area. Now suppose you
create a dam in this area. So, once you have this dam these fishes will not be able to
move, their movement is hindered. Once that happens they will not be able to go out to
the other area to lay eggs and in a short while their population will collapse. So, or
invasion by nonnative species such as lanthanum or logging of trees that is a
deforestation or over grazing which might lead to desertification these are all degrading
actions. Or removal of carnivores or herbivores, especially through hunting if you have a
forest you do not have any tigers you have posed up all the tigers, the deer population
will increase and it will eat up all the forests.

And so your forests will turn from a well functioning ecosystem to a degraded ecosystem
or things like soil contamination. So, if you are adding a lot of pesticides or heavy metals
into the soil, or if there is say a radioactive fallout, that is contaminating the soil these are
all degrading activities. Now we will have a look at some restoring activities cessation of
degrading action only. So, this thing is known as passive restoration.

In the case of a passive restoration you stop degrading. So, essentially when we talked
about the release of DDT, and you have stopped releasing DDT that is a passive

1304
restoration. Because at least you are reducing any further inflow into the system, but you
are not removing the things that are already there you are not helping in its degradation.
So, this is known as a passive restoration.

Another example is extirpation of damaging a species including nonnatives, such as what

we saw in the last lecture in the case of prickly pear or open chia. So, that was a
nonnative species that was coming up in a largely in Australia, and you got rid of it. So,
that is a restorative action, because in this case, the native species will be able to
reacquire that particular area, that was earlier that was earlier invaded by the prickly
pear.

Or things like nutrient removal, in the case of eutrophication you can have nutrient
removal by some way and that would be a restoring activity, because it is reducing the
impacts of eutrophication. Or planting of forbs or grasses, or planting of trees or
afforestation or reinstatement of burning.

So if you have an area that required a prescribed burning and then you stopped burning
that area if you start it again that will again be called a restorative action because you
will be able to take control or reintroduction of herbivores or carnivores; so for instance
in the case of Sariska tiger reserve we lost all the tigers because of poaching and once
that happened the environment started degrading again.

And so we put a control on poaching, we were able to stop poaching and we brought in
tigers from other areas. We brought in tigers from Ranthambore into Sariska. So,
reintroduction of organisms into an area will also be a restoration action in these
organisms can be herbivores or carnivores. In the case of Madhya Pradesh we are
shifting bara singers from Ghana to other areas. So, that is also a restoration action. Or
remodeling of topography, remodeling of topography say in the case of mining, you
created hills and you created holes. So, you can flatten out the hills and you can fill up
the holes that will be a remodeling of topography and that will be a restoration action. Or
soil amendments to bind or dilute contaminants or to restore fertility. So, you can amend
the soil; so for instance in the case of mining, we saw that we add a layer of soil and that
is the restoration activity.

Or in areas that are suffering a heavy amount of erosion you could go for things like geo
textiles, to bind the soil or you could dilute up your contaminants by adding more

1305
amount of soil, or you could try to restore the fertility, by say planting some specific
species, such as if you go for leguminous species the amount of nitrogen will go up.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:37)

Whenever we are talking about restoration of natural communities, we need to keep in

mind that the restoration will always be a function of the digital components and the
local components. So, if you are trying to do restoration in an area locally you have to
make that area good enough. So, you have to remove the constraints and you also need to
ensure that from the region the organisms are able to come to your area. So, in this case
we can define four different kinds of scenarios.

1306
(Refer Slide Time: 40:09)

So, you can have the scenario in which in your area you have stable and predictable
communities or you can have areas where you have stochastic and non equilibrium
communities. So, these are two ways in which you can have the communities. Or when
we talk about the regional scale, we can have a high level of exchange or we can have a
low level of exchange.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:43)

Now, when we say that you have a high level of exchange, it means that suppose this is
your forest and then you have this surrounding forest, and in this forest, you did some

1307
amount of restoration activity. Now for instance earlier this forest was all invaded with
certain exotic species, such as lantana and you perform a restoration action of removal of
this lantana ok. So, now the lantana is gone, what next? You need to bring in the
organisms from outside.

Now, if there is a good amount of connectivity with the surrounding other forest areas
then your animals will migrate by themselves because now there is a niche that is made
available after the removal of lantana. But then you can also have a situation in which
this area is not connected to the surrounding forest areas in which case you might need to
translocate animals into this area from outside.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:33)

You will have to manually bring animals into this area. So, this is what we are talking
about here. So, in the case of those areas that have non equilibrium communities. So,
these communities have not yet become climax communities, they are still in the process
of making. And if there is a high amount of exchange that is possible; so in that case
even if this community is not having certain organisms, these organisms will able to
come, will be able to come to this area because it is connected.

In this case we aim to restore the community function. So, once the function is restored,
once you have your weeds that are or the invasive species that have been gotten rid of the
rest of the things will be taken care of by nature itself. But then if you have those
communities, where you have you already have a climax population. So, in this case you

1308
have a forest that is a climax forest. And this area is not connected to the other areas the
connectivity is low.

In that case you will have to bring the organisms from outside. In that case you not only
have to maintain the function, but you also have to restore the community structure, you
will have to see to it that the all the trophic levels are now there in the system.

(Refer Slide Time: 42:59)

We will look at two case studies one is this mine restoration.

(Refer Slide Time: 43:15)

1309
If there is a mining activity then there will be a number of degrading activities that are
there, deforestation, soil erosion, water pollution and a heavy amount of heavy metal
release. In the case of mine restoration, we flatten up the base dumps, we fill up the dug
pits and we also flatten the landfills to prevent the erosion.

(Refer Slide Time: 43:25)

In this case if you have this area and here you have a big waste pool. If there is any
amount of rain; it will be easier for rain to take these sediments away through erosion,
but then if you flatten it out; so you put all of this gunk inside.

(Refer Slide Time: 43:29)

1310
In that case all of it comes here and this portion is gone. So, now, the amount of erosion
will be much less, or you cover it with a layer of clay, to prevent access to rain and
oxygen or you cover it with a layer of topsoil do some transition activities. Or perform
some evaporation of the tailings dams. Now what is the tailings dam?

(Refer Slide Time: 44:17)

Essentially earlier when you were doing the mining operation, you were still having this
gunk here and then it was giving rise to certain leachates and these leachates were then
collected in a lake.

In this lake you should perform evaporation so that all the water is now gone because it
is all full of heavy metal chemicals. So, once you have gotten rid of the chemicals all the
heavy metals will come to the bottom and then you can scrape and scrape it off and then
you can keep it in some other area so that it does not reach into the water table.

1311
(Refer Slide Time: 44:47)

Another example is a Riparian zone restoration. Riparian refers to rivers. So, in a river
zone area you can have different kinds of degradation, you can have changes in
hydrology because of dams, diversion or overuse of groundwater or stream
channelization for better navigation.

When we say stream channelization what you are doing is that you have this particular
area, in which you have this stream and what you do is that you make it a flattened or a
streamlined stream.

(Refer Slide Time: 45:07)

1312
So, you connect these two areas like this. So, now all of these bends are gone and you
have a straight channel which you can use for navigation. But then this can also lead to a
certain amount of degradation to the ecology because there could be certain species that
are dependent on these bends. Because on these bends you will be having a number of
sand banks and there would be certain species that lay their eggs in the sand such as
gharial.

So, if you make the whole stream straight then you do not have any further sand banks
and this species might get extinct. So, these are also the causes of degradation or you can
have changes in habitats, such as clearing of land, grazing of livestock, mining or
invasive species. So, these are the kinds of.

(Refer Slide Time: 46:09)

Now, if there are these degrading activities you can go for certain restorations, now these
could involve restoring the hydrological processes and geomorphic features.

So, if you have straightened up a stream you could make it bent again, if you have a dam
you can create some revenue so that the animals are able to cross the dam or you could
go for restoration of the riparian vegetation which is the natural vegetation which is
found on these river banks. Or you could go for a restoration of the animal life. Now
these are some common ways in which we perform these restoration activities.

1313
(Refer Slide Time: 46:47)

One other thing that has come up these days is known as Bioremediation.
“Bioremediation is a process that is used to treat contaminated media, including water,
soil and subsurface material, by altering environmental conditions to stimulate the
growth of microorganisms and degrade the target pollutants”.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:11)

Essentially what we are saying is that you have a particular stream and in this stream,
suppose there is some heavy metal that is coming from a nearby hill. So, you have these

1314
hills and because they are rich in heavy metals there is in stream that is bringing these
heavy metals into your river.

To perform the restoration you could either go for say making of a big water treatment
facility. So, in that case you divert all this water into your facility you get it treated and
then you release it back here. So, that from this point onwards you do not have any of the
heavy metals that are there in the stream. That is one way out, by putting up a treatment
facility.

(Refer Slide Time: 48:13)

The other way is to go by bioremediation; now in the case of bioremediation what you
could do is that in place of setting up this facility, you could just divert the water so that
this area or you create a large size wet line and you divert the river into this area. And
probably so it becomes like this so all your heavy metals are now coming into this area
and then you are growing certain plants in this area that are able to absorb these heavy
metals. And then from time to time you can take these plants out, you can cut them, you
can burn them, and you can extract these heavy metals and remove them from this from
the system.

You are having this water that is coming here and then the clean water is then let again
into the stream; so that is another way. So, if you go for these biological measures this is
known as bioremediation.

1315
(Refer Slide Time: 48:57)

In this case, you can make use of number of microorganisms that are degrading your
pollutants or you can make use of certain plants that are absorbing these pollutants.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:13)

One good example of such plants is the plant known as phragmites. Now, phragmites is a
plant that is a wetland plant and in the case of your sewage disposal, it is extensively
made use of in the case of root zone treatment method. Now in the case of root zone
treatment method, what you have is that you have this inlet tank, now in this tank you put
in all your sewage and there is some amount of sedimentation that happens in this tank.

1316
So, all the solid matter they come down and whatever remains on the top now this is
extremely polluted water, this is your black water that is having a very high amount of
organic materials and that is also having a very high amount of microorganisms. So, after
the sedimentation tank this top water is then put into these layers and in this area you
have some amount of soil and you are having these plants which are phragmites plants.

And you create this area in such a manner; so on the bottom you have an impervious
membrane you generally make use of plastic or concrete so that the water is not able to
seep down into the water table; so the water has to go like this only. Now if the water
goes like this and this is generally put on a slope so, that the water naturally flows down
and in this case you have these plants and this water is stretching all the roots. So, it is
stretching the zone of the roots of these plants and in this zone you have a number of
redox reactions that occur.

(Refer Slide Time: 50:55)

Now, redox reaction, ‘redox’ means reduction. So, you have ‘red’ plus ‘ox’ which is
oxidation.

1317
(Refer Slide Time: 51:09)

Now, what is happening in this case is that you have this upper zone that is oxidized, you
have the bottom zone, which is a reduced zone. So, whatever are the chemicals that are
there they will be acted upon, they will either be oxidized they will either or they will be
reduced plus there will be a heavy amount of microorganisms that will be growing in this
area.

Because the roots are providing shelter to the microorganisms and when you are bringing
in your sewage water; it is also having a number of organic chemicals that these
microorganisms can use for food. So, in this case you in a concentrated manner you are
performing a treatment of the sewage water and once that has happened; so, it will reach
into the second chamber in which you can control the level of water and then it will
move out into an outlet, and this outlet water this can be used either for irrigating of your
different plants. So, you can use it in agricultural purposes or horticultural purposes or
maybe you can release it, now back into the streams.

1318
(Refer Slide Time: 52:13)

And these kinds of systems, these kinds of bioremediation of phytoremediation systems

they have a very good amount of efficacy.

So, this curve is showing us the amount of organic loading and the amount of BOD
removal. And we see that even at a very high amount of organic loading, so if you are
giving it to say 30 grams per cubic meter per day as much as 20 grams per cubic meter
per day is getting removed by this system.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:47)

1319
So, by having a bit larger system probably you can remove it even further. And similarly,
if you look at the Total Suspended Solids or the TSS it is able to remove it to quite an
extent. So, if you are giving it say 35 grams per meter cube per day of total suspended
solutes. So, in that case out of this 35; it is able to remove 30. So, whatever comes out is
a very clean source of water and probably you can treat it further if needed be or you can
use it for agricultural or horticultural purposes. Now that is about bioremediation.

(Refer Slide Time: 53:27)

When we talk about restoration of a system, what we are trying to do is that we have a
degraded system, and we are trying to bring it back to the natural state, by putting in
certain interventions. And these interventions have to be guided by science these
interventions have to be guided by the use of social beneficence so that everybody gets a
benefit and these also have to be guided by the technologies that are available. But then
when we move into restoration; we also need to keep in mind that there is a limit to what
we can restore.

One thing is that we cannot restore if there is a system that has become extremely bad.
So, for instance you added so much amount of pesticides, that now your system does not
have enough number of organisms. So, it will never be able to bounce back. So, one
thing is that you have to put your step down before you have crossed a critical threshold.
The second is that you should not take it to a logical extreme; so this was a paper that

1320
was published in nature and in this case the authors talked about rewilding of North
America.

(Refer Slide Time: 54:33)

So, they said that in the other continents we have all these different animals and we had
these large megafauna even in North America in the very old times, but then when
human beings came into the system they killed off all of these.

Now let us bring everything back into the system. Now while it might look like you are
you are changing those system into a natural state and while you are saying that the
current system is a degraded system, but then why we are saying that that you need to be
a very of it, is that even in this degraded system if your degree the system has continued
for a very long period of time. Then probably that has become a norm for the species that
are now present in your system.

For instance, if you have our forest and you are having lantana, and these forests with
lantana are say allowed to continue for say 200, 300 more years. So, in that case there
would be a number of bird species that would become more and more dependent on this
lantana as a food source. Now later on, if you try to remove lantana you will also be
getting rid of all those bird species. Because they had the source of food, they change
their niche and they are now using this lanthanides food whereas, their ancestors were
not using it as food. But if your system changes so that your degraded system has

1321
become a norm. So, you need to keep a check on the amount of interventions that you are
ready to do.

In this case if we talk about rewinding of an area by bringing in those animals that were
say extinct long back in those particular areas, that might not be a very good proposition.
So, essentially this paper was highly criticized later on.

In this particular lecture we looked at restoration ecology. We began with what are
pesticides, what are the kinds of impacts that they are doing and we also looked at
different kinds of restoration activities that we do in certain environments. We looked at
the case studies of a mining area in case studies of a stream area which has been
degraded, what are the kinds of restoration activities we will bring there.

And then we also looked at the process of bioremediation. Now there are two to three
things that you need to keep in mind; one is that restoration is a process which is aiding
the natural process, if you do not do any restoration, nature will take care of itself, but it
will take a very long period of time. Now the amount of disturbances that we are
bringing in are very vast and the amount of disturbances are coming in at a very fast
pace.

So, you cannot have a system where you bring in disturbances very fast and then you
allow nature to take care of it in a very long period of time. So, if there are fast
disturbances, you should have a system that permits it itself to get restored in a short
period of time. So, that your disturbances are equalized by the amount of restoration. So,
manual restoration becomes necessary because we do not have so much amount of time.
If we leave the degraded areas as such it is possible that they will become further
degraded or it is possible that they leach out a number of heavy metals or the
contaminants that will harm the larger ecosystem.

So, we need to go for these restoration activities. Now whenever you are doing a
restoration activity that has to be guided by the science and technology, that has to be
guided by your previous learning’s, that has to be guided taking into account the future
uses, that has to be guided taking into account the ecology of that place and that has to be
guided taking into account the aspirations of the local people; they also have to be
involved, they also should get a benefit out of it.

1322
And whenever you have a system that is getting degraded it is always prudent to stop
degradation as soon as possible so that the system is still in a position that it is resilient.
If you cross the amplitude then probably your system will not be able to come back to
normal and that being said if your system has changed into another system, then
probably it makes much more sense to let that system remain as such. Because now the
organisms have become more and more adapted to it; so that is all for today.

Thank you for your attention.

1323
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Indian Forest Service, M.P
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 34
Revision

So, now, we have reached to the end of this course and in this module we will be having
three Revision classes.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:24)

So, the first one is that we had started this course with this introductory module.

1324
(Refer Slide Time: 00:28)

Where, we had begun with the introduction to the course. We talked about this girl who
was living in this particular village and there are so many organisms around and you also
have mosquitoes and if there is a spring and all of these organisms are dying. Now, that
you have gone through this course we can now come back to this problem and whenever
there is a spray of insecticides. So, the insecticides do not only kill the insects, but they
also remain in the environment.

And in this case if there are some insects; so, we saw it in the case of evolutionary
biology as well, that whenever you spray any insecticide on an insect population there
will be some organisms that will remain, because of the variations that are there in a any
population. Now, if you have some insects that have been exposed to the insecticides and
they are not completely dead, so, in that case their body is are having slight amounts of
insecticides.

And, when those insecticides get into the food chains so, at every level you have the
accumulation of these chemicals which is known as bioaccumulation and at the same
time we also have a magnification of these chemicals which is known as
biomagnification and the more you move up in the trophic level the more is the serious
consequence. So, it is no wonder that some of the birds that are eating or that are staying
at the top of the food chains or at the upper tropic level much more deleterious
consequence of these insecticides and they die out.

1325
(Refer Slide Time: 02:06)

And we had seen that this also is a case that is very prominent in the case of human
beings because human beings are also top predators. They also come at the very top of
the food webs and they also occupy the very top of the trophic levels and so they are
very much exposed to the impacts of different chemicals and pesticides and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:26)

Then we began with the definition of ecology. Oikos is household, logos is study.

1326
(Refer Slide Time: 02:33)

So, this the study of law of life at home or the scientific study of interactions among
organisms and their environment or the scientific study of interaction that determine the
distribution and abundance of organisms. So, in the first case we are talking about
interactions. So, we are talking about population ecology, community ecology,
ecosystem level ecology and we are looking at different interactions. In the second case,
this definition has more to do with biogeography which is asking their different
organisms are and why are they, where they are.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:05)

1327
Then we looked at that what all we study in ecology. So, we have habitat, biodiversity,
population level interactions, community level interactions, impacts of different changes.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:15)

And there are these three different approaches to ecology; the theoretical approach which
utilizes equations and models. So, we have looked at different equations and models
solve this course the most prominent ones are things like the Lotka-Volterra equation
which are telling us the dynamics between the population of the pre animals and the
populations of the predator animals. We also looked at different equations of population
growth. So, we looked at the exponential growth curve, we looked at the logistic models.
So, those are or they belong to the theoretical approach.

The second one is the laboratory approach which utilizes the scientific method of
formulating hypotheses and testing them through experiments. So, the laboratory
approach included things like if you are transplanting in an organism from one place to
another, if you are say looking at the populations of different caterpillars and you are
seeing them then change their colors and so on that we have seen in this particular
course.

And the third one is through field observations. Field observations are things like the
Langur-Chital association that we also saw in the case of community interactions. So, we
have made use of all these three different approaches throughout this course.

1328
(Refer Slide Time: 04:32)

And then there was this outlined, assessment, final examination. Then the second lecture
was about a historical overview of ecology.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:43)

Now, in this we started with Theophrastus. Theophrastus was a very ancient person he
was a Greek scholar who lived in the Greek Asian era. So, from 371 to 287 BC. He is
considered the father of Botany and he was the first one to have described the
interrelationships between animals and their environment. So, that forms a backdrop of
event or current understanding.

1329
(Refer Slide Time: 05:07)

He wrote 10 different books and he has done a lot of work in classifying different
organisms based on their modes of generation, locality, size and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:20)

Then we had the look at Carolus Linnaeus who give us our current system of naming
different organisms based on the binomial nomenclature. So, when we say homosapiens
it is derived from Carolus Linnaeus, if we say that a tiger is Panthera Tigris then that is
because of Carolus Linnaeus and so on. And then he also gave us a system of classifying

1330
the species. So, all different organisms that are deleted they come together in a
classification.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:48)

We also looked at Thomas Malthus and we looked at his theories in much more detail
when we are talking about the growth of human population. So, here again the most
important thing to remember is that the population growth in the case of human beings it
is exponential or it goes by a geometric progression whereas the food production
increases as arithmetic progression. So, there is a mismatch which has to be covered and
he talked about different ways of covering that mismatch.

1331
(Refer Slide Time: 06:21)

Then we talked about Alexander von Humboldt who is considered the father of
biogeography and we have devoted quite a lot of an engine to biogeography and he
performed quite a lot of quantitative work on botanical geography especially in South
Americas.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:39)

1332
(Refer Slide Time: 06:42)

Then we have Wallace; Wallace and Darwin who together came up with the Theory of
Evolution and we have looked at Theory of Evolution in more detail in some of the
lectures. So, thus we have the Theory of Evolution and the Theory of Natural Selection.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:55)

Then we also have Herbert Spencer who coin the term survival of the fittest.

1333
(Refer Slide Time: 07:07)

Then we have Ernst Haeckel who coined the term ecology.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:05)

Vladimir Vernadsky who was the first to have thought of biogeochemical cycles and we
have looked at biogeochemical cycles in much more detail in one of the lectures.

1334
(Refer Slide Time: 07:17)

Then we have Arthur Tansley who founded the British Ecological Society.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:21)

Charles Elton who is called the father of animal ecology and the he is also a pioneer of
the study of invasive organisms and we looked at a number of invasive organisms
throughout this course. The most important of which are lantana which we have in our
country and things like muscles that move when you are transporting ships from one
place to another. So, they move along with the last water that we have seen in detail in
the case of biogeography.

1335
(Refer Slide Time: 07:48)

Then, we talked about George Hutchinson who lived at interspecific competition and he
also wrote a Treatise on Limnology. So, inter species competition is something that we
have dealt with in great detail in the case of community ecology.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:04)

1336
(Refer Slide Time: 08:06)

Then we have Lotka and Volterra who were famous for the Lotka-Volterra equations.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:08)

Eugene P. Odum, who wrote the book Fundamentals of Ecology and then we move to
the third lecture which was ecology and evolution.

1337
(Refer Slide Time: 08:20)

In this lecture we began with the definitions of ecology and evolution. So, ecology is the
scientific study of interactions among the organisms and their environment. And
evolution is the genetic adaptation of organisms to their environment.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:37)

So, we looked at this term genetic adaptation. So, adaptation is any alteration in the
structure or function of an organism by which the organism becomes better able to
survive and multiply in its environment. Genetic it refers to something that is related to
genes and genetic adaptation is inheritable fitness. So, fitness has got little many if it is

1338
not heritable. So, if you are a fit organism then your off springs should also carry this
straight forward which would lead to final evolution of the species.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:08)

And we define fitness as the ability of a particular organism to leave descendants in the
future generations, relative to the other organisms. And evolution acts to maximize
fitness through the process of natural selection. So, whenever we are talking about
evolution it is maximizing the fitness. So, you are selecting those organisms that are
more fit as compared to the other organisms.

So, those organisms that are the better able to move, better able to get their food, better
able to find their mates or those organisms that are able to devote time to their off-
springs, their getting food for their offspring, they are protecting their offspring those are
the organisms that are more fit as compared to as have described in this definition and
evolution tends to select for those particular organisms.

1339
(Refer Slide Time: 10:59)

Then, we looked at different characteristics. So, fitness is environment specific. If there

is a change in the environment the organisms that are fit today might not remain fit in the
future. It is a species specific just high reproductive rate is not good enough. You have to
make sure that you certainly your progeny also survives. Then fitness has to be measured
across several generation it is a long-term measure and it works at the level of the
complete organism not on just some individual traits such as size or speed.

So, if we see that there is one tiger that is a say larger in size or this tiger is faster than
other tigers that does not mean that this tiger will be more fit because it is a combination
of all different traits and fitness is measured at the level of the organism not at the level
of specific traits.

1340
(Refer Slide Time: 10:52)

Then natural selection is the process in nature by which only those organisms that are
best adapted to the environment tend to survive and transfer their genetic characteristics
to the succeeding generations while those that are less adapted tend to be eliminated. So,
essentially when we say natural selection. So, those organisms that are most fit they
survive those organisms that less fit they die out which is very low also termed at as
survival of the fittest.

(Refer Slide Time: 11:20)

1341
Then there are five steps in natural selection it begins with variation. So, every so,
different individuals in a population are different.

(Refer Slide Time: 11:30)

They have different characteristics. We looked at peppered moth which has two different
colors.

(Refer Slide Time: 11:34)

Then there is overpopulation. So, organisms tend to produce an excess number

offsprings.

1342
(Refer Slide Time: 11:40)

Because you have excess number offsprings there is a struggle for existence because, not
everybody will be able to get enough resources to survive and for their progeny to
survive. So, there are more organisms less resources. So, there will be a struggle.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:00)

And we looked at the example of cheetah that is hunting impala and in that case the
cheetah was not able to get its food.

1343
Now, after struggle for existence we have the survival of the fittest only those individuals
that are best able to obtain and use the resources will survive and reproduce. So, you
have survival of the fittest.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:21)

So, such as this; so, in this case if the bird is able to survive because it is able to get the
resources from the environment.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:29)

And then because of survival of the fittest you have changes in the gene pool because
those inherited characteristics the increase in frequency and of favored traits in the

1344
population. So, in this case if this bird is able to get its food properly. So, the offsprings
will also have those genes that are enabling this bird to get its food in a proper manner.
So, in that case if you have some birds that are less fit some birds that are more fit so, the
genes of the more fitter organisms they will increase in the gene pool and the genes of
the less fit organisms we will decrease in the gene pool. So, that will lead to changes in
the gene pool.

And we looked at the peppered moth case study in which there was a change in the
environment because of which these lichens died out. When the lichens die out; so,
before when we have the lichens you cannot see the light-colored version, we are only
able to see the darker colored version and the darker colored version gets predated upon.
When you do not have the lichens, you have a darker colored bark in which case the
lighter colored moth is visible, the darker colored moth is if more camouflage. So, this
will preferentially gets eaten. Once you again have the environmental laws you move
back to this stage and again this one is at a loss and the lighter one is at a profit.

So, in that case because you have these variations, because you have lateral solution that
is working so, this species was able to survive through all of these different stages.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:00)

Then we looked at different kinds of selection. So, we have directional selection in

which one particular trait is preferred, the other one is less preferred. You can have a
stabilizing selection in which the central traits are preferred. If you have different colors

1345
and if this one is preferred and this is the current population the current frequency it will
become even more centered and then you have a disruptive selection in which the two
ends are preferred and the middle ones are not preferred.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:33)

Then, we looked at examples of these directional selection as in the case of the size of
beaks.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:37)

Stabilizing selection, as in the case of the birth of human baby at birth.

1346
(Refer Slide Time: 14:43)

And the disruptive selection also in the case of Galapagos birds where the two ends were
more selected.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:47)

Then we also have look at co-evolution; the evolution of two or more species that
interact closely with one another, with each species adapting to the changes in the other.
So, in this case you have this bee hummingbird and the flower. So, if there are changes
in this flower at this flower becomes long becomes longer or more funnel shapes. So, in
that case the bird of the beak will also be it that will also tend to evolve towards about

1347
longer beak length so that it is able to get the food. So, changes in one organism also lead
to changes in another organism.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:21)

And a good example is the state of horns or the speed of carnivorous or the teeth of
carnivores and so on. So, we looked at different examples and it is important because
ecological interactions are driving the evolution.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:41)

Next in the 2nd module we looked at ecological structure, the levels of organization,
biodiversity and biodiversity in more detail.

1348
(Refer Slide Time: 15:48)

So, the levels of organization we defined this with the story of these two people Hora and
Tempus who are making watches and we came to the conclusion that those structures
that are more organized they tend to be preferred.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:59)

So, hierarchy emerges almost in inevitably through a wide variety of evolutionary

processes, for the simple reason that hierarchical structures are stable. So, because they
are stable, so, it tends to get selected through the process of evolution.

1349
(Refer Slide Time: 16:17)

So, we looked at these hierarchical principles and you can see it everywhere in the case
of a centipede you will have all these different blocks. they have these two legs. For
these segments have the same kind of a structure and this segments are then repeated.

(Refer Slide Time: 16:36)

Then we looked at the emergent principle the whole is greater than the sum of its parts or
the whole has properties that the parts individually do not have.

1350
(Refer Slide Time: 16:43)

And then we looked at some emergent properties and the fire ants.

(Refer Slide Time: 16:49)

So, emergent properties in termite mounds; then we looked at the levels of organization.

1351
(Refer Slide Time: 16:57)

So, we begin with the sub-cellular organelles. Now, sub-cellular organelles are special
subunits within a cell that have a specific function such as the nucleus of the cell.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:02)

So, that is sub cellular, it is below the level of the cell and it is an organelle because it is
the small organ in sense.

1352
(Refer Slide Time: 17:13)

Then you have cells that are the basic structural, functional and biological unit of all
known living organisms or this smallest unit of life. So, like in this case we are saying
the onion cell.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:25)

And tissue is an ensemble of similar cells and their extracellular matrix from the same
origin that together carry out a specific function.

1353
(Refer Slide Time: 17:33)

So, in this case we are looking at epidermis tissue that is made up of different cells and
all of these cells have a similar structure, they have a similar origin, they have a similar
function plus along with the cells you also have the extra cellular matrix and the cells
along with the extra cellular matrix make up the tissue.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:52)

Now, different tissues together make up an organ.

1354
(Refer Slide Time: 17:57)

So, it is a collection of tissues with similar functions such as the intestines. So, it has
different tissues. In our case the intestines have the muscular tissue, they have epithelial
tissue, they have blood vessels, they have nervous tissues and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:10)

Next you have organ system which is a group of organs that work together to perform
one or more functions such as the digestive system, the respiratory system, the
reproductive system or the excretory system and so on.

1355
(Refer Slide Time: 18:25)

Next organism is an individual entity that exhibits the properties of life.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:31)

So, properties of life is that this organism is able to get its own food, this organism is
able to reproduce and so on and this organism is able to respire and in the case of the
number of organisms they are also able to move. So, these are the properties of life.

1356
(Refer Slide Time: 18:47)

Then organisms of the same group or species which live together in a particular
geographical area and have the capability of interbreeding are known as population.

(Refer Slide Time: 18:57)

So, here we have a population of cheetah.

1357
(Refer Slide Time: 19:00)

Then you combine populations of different species that are living together in the same
geographical area and the same time and you get to a community.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:07)

So, in the case of a community you will have in this case you will have a population of
langurs, you have population of chitals, you have populations of grasses, populations of
different species of trees and all together they form a community.

1358
(Refer Slide Time: 19:24)

Now, to the community you had abiotic components and you get the ecosystem. So, a
community made up of living organisms and non-living components such as air, water,
and mineral soil altogether it will from the ecosystem.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:35)

So, you have the air, you have the soil, you have the water and all of these are regulating
the communities and the communities are regulating these abiotic factors. So, for
instance if you do not have water here, you would not have the animals here and because
you have the animals here so, that is also bringing in some changes in the water because

1359
the animals are drinking away water, they are taking water from this area to another area.
They are probably disturbing the bed of this particular lake. So, when you have all these
changes the abiotic and the biotic components, they are influencing each other and they
are responsible for each other. And in this case, we have the ecosystem.

(Refer Slide Time: 20:19)

Then, biome is a community of plants and animals that have common characteristics for
the environment they exist in.

(Refer Slide Time: 20:26)

1360
So, an example is a tundra biome. So, in the case of a tundra biome you will have lots of
ice and the vegetation will be very similar. Whether we talk about a tundra in Asia a
tundra in Europe or a tundra in North America all of them will be having vegetation that
has very similar characteristics. Or desert biomes; so, whether you talk about a desert in
North America, desert in South America, desert in Africa, a desert in Asia, a desert in
Australia all of them will be having vegetation that has very similar characteristics.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:02)

And from biome we move on to biosphere which is the top level of organization. The
worldwide sum of all the ecosystem which is all the living organisms that are living on
the planet earth.

1361
(Refer Slide Time: 21:08)

So, that is the biosphere or a combination of the lithosphere, hydrosphere and

atmosphere which is supporting the life.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:24)

So, to sum up you have sub-cellular organelles, then cell, tissue, organ, organ system,
organism, population, community, ecosystem, biome and biosphere.

1362
(Refer Slide Time: 21:38)

Next, we looked at biodiversity. So, we looked at different things that we are seeing in a
forest and all these different organisms are examples of biodiversity.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:49)

So, we define biodiversity as the variety of life in all its forms and all the levels of
organization.

1363
(Refer Slide Time: 21:55)

So, when we see all its forms, we have plants, animals, vertebrates and invertebrates,
fungi, bacteria, microorganisms everything put together is biodiversity. And all different
levels; so, we have diversity at the level of genes at the level of species, at the level of
ecosystems.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:10)

Then we define species biodiversity as how many species are there and how are they
distributed.

1364
(Refer Slide Time: 22:17)

Similarly, we talked about genetic biodiversity.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:21)

And in genetic biodiversity, we talked about polymorphism and heterozygosity. So,

polymorphism is the proportion of percentage of genes that are polymorphic. So, a gene
is polymorphic if the frequency of the most common allele is less than some arbitrary
threshold typically 95 percent. So, if the frequency is more than 95 percent, so, more
than 95 percent of all the alleles that are there in this particular gene pool or of this

1365
particular variety. And in that case, we will say that it is not polymorphic it is
monomorphic.

Then, we will looked at heterozygosity. Heterozygosity is the population of percentage

of genes at which the average individual is heterozygous.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:06)

Then ecosystem biodiversity is how many ecosystems are there and how are they
distributed.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:11)

1366
Now, there are two measures of biodiversity species especially the species biodiversity;
we can talk of the species richness and species evenness. Now, richness asks the question
how many species are there? Evenness ask the question how are the individuals of
different species distributed? So, do you have one species that has the maximum number
of individuals or a number of a species each having roughly equal number of
individuals? If you have a number of species that have roughly equal number of
individuals then we will say that the amount of evenness is much more.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:47)

Then, we talked about the species accumulation curve. So, in this case the total number
of species that you have discovered in any area, it goes on increasing with time, but then
after all it will restart becoming flatter and we will say that this is the total number of the
species that we have in our particular area.

1367
(Refer Slide Time: 24:08)

Now, measures of biodiversity we have Simpson’s index and Shannon's index. So, we
looked at their formulae, we looked at how would they are used.

(Refer Slide Time: 24:16)

And then we talked about alpha, beta and gamma biodiversity. Alpha biodiversity is the
diversity that exist within an ecosystem, beta is that exist among different ecosystems
and gamma is that the diversity that exist amongst different geographies.

1368
(Refer Slide Time: 24:32)

So, in this case we talked about alpha. So, we took this example of lizards. So, in the
case the alpha biodiversity in this particular ecosystem is two here it is one. If you look
at the beta biodiversity; so, here you have two species that are not found in this
ecosystem. Here you have one species that is not found in this ecosystem this ecosystem.

And then we looked at gamma biodiversity. We have three species that are not found on
this island and we have one species that is not found in this island. And whenever we are
working to increase biodiversity, we have to look at all these three levels separately
because, if you drain out this particular form and if you replace this area with this area.
So, you will have these two species at this place as well when once you have drained out
this swamp, we have grown this forest.

But, in that case this particular species will be lost because its habitat is now gone; and in
that case, you will be increasing the alpha biodiversity at the cost of the beta biodiversity.

1369
(Refer Slide Time: 25:35)

Next, we looked at biodiversity and spatial scale that is the hotspot. These are the areas
with the high species richness, high level of endemism and high degree of threat.

(Refer Slide Time: 25:47)

And these are the areas that we tend to protect the most.

1370
(Refer Slide Time: 25:51)

Next, we had a look at why do some areas have more biodiversity and some have less
biodiversity. So, there is this hypothesis evolutionary speed hypothesis that if you have
an area that has gotten more time to evolve. So, it is an old area and it has been having
evolution for a very long period of time or an area that has been having a very rapid
evolution because the generation times are shorter where as a higher mutation rate or the
natural selection is acting very quickly. So, in that case we will be having more amount
of biodiversity.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:22)

1371
The second hypothesis is that if you have an area that is larger in size so, it will have
larger areas and physically and biologically more complex habitats. So, these will
support more niches or more rules for organisms and so, you will have more of different
kinds of organisms.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:42)

And third was interspecific interactions hypothesis. If you have competition and if you
have predation in an area, so, in that case your biodiversity will tend to be more.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:55)

1372
Then you have the ambient energy hypothesis there is more biodiversity in areas with
more energy because, if you look at areas with very few or with very less energy such as
are polar regions. So, it cannot support a very wide variety of organisms and so, the
biodiversity in polar areas will be less.

(Refer Slide Time: 27:14)

Then we have the fifth hypothesis which is the intermediate disturbance hypothesis. If
there is an area that has a very high disturbance, so, there will be lots of extensions. If
there are very less or number of disturbances are very less quantum of disturbance, so, it
will lead to an equilibrium and loss of species of low competitive ability. So, both of
these extremes are not good. If you have an area that is in intermediate level of
disturbance then probably it will have more amount of biodiversity.

1373
(Refer Slide Time: 27:46)

Then we looked at the economic value of biodiversity. So, this is the chart total
economic value is a combination use value and non-use value. Use value is of 3 kinds –
direct, indirect and option. Non-use value is also of 3 kinds – existence, altruistic and
bequest value. So, if you want to quantify or put a monitory value to the biodiversity of
any place you can go with all these 6 different kinds of biodiversity, add them together
and you get the total economic value of biodiversity.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:19)

1374
So, we looked at different definitions, use value and non-use value. Then direct value,
indirect value, option value, existence value, altruistic value and bequest value.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:33)

Now, we will then we looked at the methods of valuation. So, you can have market price
method or revealed willingness to pay. So, in this case people are actually paying for
different things and you are adding up the cost to get to the market prices. Then you have
the circumstantial evidence or the imputed willingness to pay such as replacement cost or
damage cost avoided.

So, in this case we were asking the question that if you remove this biodiversity what
will be the cost that will be involved to maintain the services that this particular
biodiversity was given to you and then if you compute the cost of that replacement or the
cost of the forgone benefits and that is the imputed willingness.

And, the third method is the contingent valuation where you ask people their opinions
about how much they are willing to pay to conserve this particular biodiversity. So, we
can have different methods of valuation.

1375
(Refer Slide Time: 29:34)

Next, we looked at ecological interactions, positive, negative and behavioral ecology.

(Refer Slide Time: 29:38)

So, in the case of positive interactions we first began with what are interactions? So,
interactions are the effects that organisms in a community have on each other.

1376
(Refer Slide Time: 29:48)

And these interactions are of two kinds. We can have interspecific interactions and
intraspecific interactions. Intra is within so, intra specific is within as a particular species
or the effects that an organism in a community have on the members of their own
species.

Interspecific interactions; so, in this case inter is among and specific is species. So, these
are the interactions or the impacts or the effects that organisms in a community have on
the members of species other than their own that is on a different species.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:26)

1377
Then, you can also classify the interactions is harmonious or inharmonious. So, in the
case of harmonious interaction and they are also called positive ecological interactions
where none of the participating organisms is harmed.

So, the main principle is not benefit, but harm. So, if there is any harm to any of the
participants, we say that it is an inharmonious interaction; if there is no harm to any of
the participating organisms then we call that it is a harmonious interaction.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:53)

And then we looked at different interactions. Harmonious interactions include colonies

and societies and inharmonious interactions; these are the intraspecific interactions. So,
intraspecific and harmonious you have colonies and societies, intraspecific and
inharmonious you have intraspecific competition and cannibalism.

1378
(Refer Slide Time: 31:18)

Then if you look at the harmonious interaction when you look at the interspecific
interactions so, interspecific and harmonious would be protocooperation, mutualism and
commensalism. And interspecific and inharmonious that is negative which are acting
between two or more species that includes interspecific competition, parasitism,
predatism and ammensalism.

(Refer Slide Time: 31:46)

Then we had this table in the case of competition both the organisms are harmed in the
case of amensalism. There is one organism that is neither harmed nor is benefited, but

1379
there is another organism that suffers the harm. In the case of exploitation, you have one
organism that is benefited you have another one that is harmed. In the case of neutralism
there is no gain or no loss to any of the organisms, but in most of the situations,
neutralism can further be examined and in most of the situations, neutralism tends to give
rise to one of the other interactions.

So, they are very few examples of pure neutralism that we have between different
organisms. Then you have commensalism in which there is no harm or benefit to one
organism, but the other one is benefited and you have mutualism in which both the
organisms are benefited.

(Refer Slide Time: 32:45)

Then, we looked at different positive interactions we will we started with colonies. They
are functional integrated aggregates that are formed by individuals of the same species.
So, they look as one bit says individual such as coral reef, filamentous algae, microbial
colonies.

1380
(Refer Slide Time: 33:03)

So, these are what are the colonies.

(Refer Slide Time: 33:07)

Then, societies are interactions for the labor division and collaboration among
individuals of the same species. So, in the case of societies you have a division of labor
and you have collaboration. And good examples are bee hives or ant colonies; they are
actually societies or you can have termite mounds or you can have wolf packs. So, these
are examples of societies.

1381
(Refer Slide Time: 33:32)

Now, the next one is protocooperation. Protocooperation is an ecological interaction in

which both the participants benefit, but which is not obligatory for their survival. So,
when we say not obligated for their survival it means that even though both these
organisms are getting a benefit, but then they can remain away from each other, it is not
essential for their survival. And examples in this case are birds that are eating
ectoparasites on the bodies of animals or cleaner fishes that clean up the bodies of other
animals or hermit crabs and sea anemones.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:08)

1382
So, we looked at this example of the birds on giraffe. In this case, the ectoparasites that
are on the body of the giraffe they are being eaten up by the birds. So, this giraffe is
getting a benefit because the ectoparasites load is reducing and at the same time these
birds are getting a benefit because they are getting a good source of food. But, then it is
protocooperation because both of them can remain away from each other, it is not
essential for their survival. We also looked at hippo spa, sea anemones.

(Refer Slide Time: 34:39)

Then we had a look at mutualism. It is an ecological interaction in which both the

participants benefit and it is obligatory for the survival. So, it is essential for the survival
the organisms cannot live without it and good examples are microbes that digest
cellulose in the stomach of ruminants. So, in this case the ruminants are able to digest
cellulose through the action of these microbes. So, the ruminants are getting food and
these microbes are getting shelter as well as food. Another example is rhizobium in the
root nodules of leguminous plants.

1383
(Refer Slide Time: 35:12)

So, these are the root nodules in soya bean.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:17)

Then, next one is commensalism. So, this is an ecological interaction where one
organism benefits and the other one is neither benefited nor harmed. Example is bacteria
and other microorganisms that live on the skin without being pathogenic or beneficial.

So, in this case the organism that is harboring these bacteria is neither benefited nor is
harmed, but the bacteria are getting sheltered, the bacteria are getting food. So, they are
getting benefit. And this second example is egrets that are that feed with the buffaloes.

1384
(Refer Slide Time: 35:45)

And we saw this example when these buffaloes are feeding when they move. So, there is
moment of the grass blades because of which of the insects move and when the insects
move then they are very easily caught up by the egrets. So, in this case the egrets are
getting a benefit. The buffaloes are neither getting a benefit nor are they harmed. So, in
this case this is commensalism. Then we looked at negative interactions.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:13)

Now, in the case of negative interactions, we have competition. So, competition is the
ecological interaction in which individuals explore the same ecological niche or their

1385
ecological niches partially coincide and therefore, competition for the same
environmental resources takes place. Then this case we have a situation where you have
more than one organism that is bind for the same resources which is, they compete with
each other.

And here we have the types intraspecific versus interspecific. So, again intra is within a
species, inter is between two species. You can have exploitative competition or
interference competition and you can also have apparent competition.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:55)

So, we looked at penguins and blackbucks that were fighting amongst each other. And
intra specific and inter specific something that we have seen. In the case of exploitative
competition that is scramble competition where the individuals are competing for the
same limited resource. And interference competition is contest competition in which the
individuals are depleting others resources by interferences such as aggressive displays or
fighting. So, in the case of interference competition, the individuals are not using of the
same resource, but even if they are not using, they are not allowing anybody else to use it
at the same time.

So, in exploitation organisms use up the resources directly so that it is no longer

available for use by others, in the case of interference one organism prevents others from
using the resources. So, it is not using it, but it is not allowing others to use it. In the case
of exploitative competition there is often no direct contact or conflict between the species

1386
or individuals in exploitation and in the case of interference competition there is a direct
contact or conflict between the species or the individuals.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:07)

Then in the case of exploitative competition the competitive ability is the rate at which
one organism is using up the resources. In the case of interference competition, it is the
ability to interfere in or to put up aggressive displays or to put up fights. Then
exploitative competition can be modeled as affecting the carrying capacity and pure
interference competition can be modeled as affecting the rate of increase per individual.

For pure exploitative competition the relation between the rate of change per individual
of one species and the abundance of another is non-linear whereas, in the second case it
is linear. So, we have seen this in the case of our equations where we were governing
these interactions.

1387
(Refer Slide Time: 38:57)

And then the examples are in the case of exploitative and intraspecific. So, there is an
organism that is overgrazing on a land that is shared by several individuals of the same
species. So, you have a number of deer that are grazing together and in that case one
individual if it is eating up the grass then that grass is not available for use of another
individual. So, this is an exploitative intraspecific competition.

And in the case of inter specific competition you can have competition between say cows
and buffaloes and deer that are grazing on the same field or and the second example is
the canopy trees of several species that are competing for the same available sunlight.
So, if one is expanding itself so that it gets more amount of sun the others will not be
able to get sunlight and that much amount. So, this is exploitative, the individuals are
exploiting the resources.

In the case of interference competition, the intra specific is an animal that is showing
territorial behaviour to its conspecifics or members of the same species and in the case of
interspecific it is allelopathy. And in the case of allelopathy one organism is giving out
some chemicals that is inhibiting or killing of the other organisms.

1388
(Refer Slide Time: 40:18)

Then we have apparent competition it is an interaction between two prey species with a
common predator. So, a good example is that of chital and sambar.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:31)

So, here you have chital and here you have sambar and both are having a common
predator which is tiger. Now, if the chital population increases the tiger gets more
amount of food the tiger population increases now this tiger is eating up the chitals and it
is also eating up the sambars. So, essentially in this case the sambar is getting affected

1389
negatively because of an increase in the chital populations. This is an example of
apparent competition.

So, it is an interaction between two prey species with a common predator an increase in
the population of one prey species in this case chital may lead to an increase in the
abundance of the common predator that is tiger, leading to a stronger predation pressure
on the second prey species which is sambar. In this manner the two prey species have a
relation of indirect competition between them mediated by the numerical response of the
common predator species.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:28)

And then you we have several different characteristics. Generally, the predator as a food
limited generalist species. So, it is food limited because of which species increases in
numbers it gets more amount of food and so, this limitation is gone and it is able to
increase the numbers.

And it is a generalist species because it does not have a particular preference it is eating
it is preying upon both these preys. Some prey species can act as keystone species in the
community. At times some prey species may even get excluded from the community
through diffuse apparent competition. So, there are situations in which you can push a
particular species towards a brink of extinction because the predator has increased in
numbers. And while the prey trophic level as a whole gets regulated by the predator,

1390
each prey species is regulated by an ensemble of the predator along with the available
resources.

(Refer Slide Time: 42:30)

And other examples are grasses and plants, through rodents or exotic shrubs and trees
through the action of seed predators or insect host and parasitoid communities. And this
is also a good way in which the invasive species are able to increase their numbers.

(Refer Slide Time: 42:47)

So, apparent competition results in the reduction of the prey species equilibrium densities
and growth rates and is a common phenomenon that is observed in several food webs. It

1391
helps us understand the dynamics of prey predator systems and provides insight into the
top-down regulation of food webs. It helps create positive feedback loops for invasive
species enabling them to quickly colonize newer areas by negatively influencing the
established species. Thus, an understanding of the phenomenon is critical for the proper
management.

So, if you have an invasive species that is producing large number of fruits, large number
of seeds in that case those seed predators that feed on this invasive species they will
increase in number and then they will start eating up the seeds of other established
vegetation as well because of which the established vegetation will go down in numbers
making way for the invasive species to extended statutory.

(Refer Slide Time: 43:45)

Then finally, we have cannibalism. It is the act in which one individual of a species is
consuming all or part of another individual of the same species as food. And, good
examples are black widow and praying mantis.

1392
(Refer Slide Time: 43:58)

Then we have parasitism, an ecological interaction in which one organism lives at the
expense of another, but at in most cases does not lead to its death. So, good examples are
ectoparasites such as leech and endoparasites such as plasmodium vivax which leads to
malaria.

(Refer Slide Time: 44:20)

Then we looked at predation; an ecological interaction, where one individual mutilates or

kills another to get its food.

1393
(Refer Slide Time: 44:27)

So, this is predation the bird is predating on this particular centipede.

(Refer Slide Time: 10:32)

And we also have predatory plants such as the pitcher plant.

1394
(Refer Slide Time: 44:36)

And then we have amensalism. It is an interaction where an organism inflicts harm to

another organism without any costs or benefits received by itself example trampling of
grass due to movement of animals. So, in this case the grass is getting harmed, but the
animal is not getting any benefit out of trampling the grass.

(Refer Slide Time: 44:53)

Such as blackbucks that are grazing.

1395
(Refer Slide Time: 45:00)

Next, we had a look at behavioural ecology. So, behavioural ecology is the study of the
evolutionary basis for animal behaviour due to ecological pressures. It is the study of
evolutionary basis of animal behaviour. So, here we are looking at not just the animal
behaviour, but also the evolutionary basis and we say that these evolutionary bases have
a root in the ecological pressures. So, we also have a look at the pressures that are there.

Then, we define behaviour as the ways that organisms respond to each other and to
particular cues in the environment and ethology is the scientific study of animal
behaviour.

1396
(Refer Slide Time: 45:36)

Some things that we study here a foraging behaviour, anti-predator behaviour, social
behaviour, mating behaviour and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 45:44)

Now, we looked at the cost benefit approach. So, this approach says that we need to
make an assessment to determine whether the cost of an activity is less than the benefit.
If the cost is less the benefit is more though the organisms go for that particular activity.

1397
(Refer Slide Time: 46:01)

(Refer Slide Time: 46:05)

We looked at examples of why do lions live in groups. What are the cost and benefits to
the male and the female?

1398
(Refer Slide Time: 46:08)

Then we looked at why herbivores live in groups.

(Refer Slide Time: 46:12)

Such as wolves that are hunting on bisons. So, as long as these herbivores are together
the wolves are not able to hunt them.

1399
(Refer Slide Time: 46:22)

But, as soon as they come out of a group, as soon as even a individual is left out.

(Refer Slide Time: 46:25)

So, in that case the wolves are able to prey upon it.

1400
(Refer Slide Time: 46:27)

Next, we looked at the potential benefits and cost of group living animals. So, the
benefits are increased foraging capacity; the cost is competition for food, increased risk
of diseases or parasites. The potential benefit is reduced predation, but then the potential
cost is that it leads to attraction of predators because we have more amount of food that
is available in the form of this particular species. It leads to an increased access to mates
because all the animals are together, but it leads to loss of paternity and brood include
parasitism and there is help from kin that is available, but it also leads to loss of
individual reproduction.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:05)

1401
Then we looked at Langur-chital association, both these animals come together. Now,
the langur is having more of an advantage. So, in the summer seasons it is having access
to the food that is growing on the trees and when it is feeding it, it is the petals and
throws out the other parts of the leaves, some fruits also come down and in that case, the
chital are able to feed on that food. At the same time the langur is also at a more wantage
position. So, it can have a look out for the predators and then when it gives out a warning
call and it gives at an alarm call, the chital also get to hear that alarm call and they are
also alarmed.

On the other hand, if there is some predator that has been missed by the langur, but these
chital are able to smell that predators. So, they will also give out an alarm call and so, the
langurs will also get some benefit, but in this case the benefit is not equally shared
between both of these. So, the langurs are doing much more, but the chitals are getting
much larger amount of benefit as compared to the langurs. So, it is an example of
asymmetric mutualism or asymmetric protocooperation.

(Refer Slide Time: 48:23)

Now, we also looked at the example of sacrifice for the group such as altruism in the
ground squirrel.

1402
(Refer Slide Time: 48:28)

And we look looked at when a particular organism calls, it depends on how many
individuals in that colony are genetically relate to itself.

(Refer Slide Time: 48:40)

And then we looked at the concept of kin selection which is the evolution of traits that
increase the survival and ultimately the reproductive success of one’s relatives. Group
selection is the natural selection for traits that favor groups rather than individuals
because group selection operates much for slowly than it. Then individual selection it is a

1403
much weaker selective force in most circumstances, but in the case of kin selection it is
worked to a large extent.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:09)

So, we had here the Hamilton’s rule genes increase in frequency where r into B is greater
than C, where r is the genetic relatedness, B is the additional benefit that is got and C is
the reproductive cost to the organism or the individual that is performing the act.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:26)

And then we have Haldane’s statement. If an individual loses its life to save two siblings
or four nephews or eight cousins then it is a fair deal in terms of evolution, as siblings are

1404
on average 50 percent identical by descent, nephews are 25 percent identical by descent
and cousins are 12.5 percent identical by descent. So, if an organism is seeming it is
giving up it is life to save more than two siblings, if it is saving three siblings then
evolutionarily that particular trait will be considered of a trait that is worth selecting for.

(Refer Slide Time: 55:02)

Then we looked at the example of territoriality. It is a type of intraspecific or

interspecific competition that results from the behavioral exclusion of others from a
specific space that is defended as a territory. So, here we have a definite space that is
actively defended. And it aims at excluding the conspecifics or occasionally animals of
other species from certain areas through the use of auditory, visual or olfactory signals as
well as ritualized displays.

1405
(Refer Slide Time: 50:32)

Such as these tigers that are fighting.

(Refer Slide Time: 50:35)

We also looked at penguins that are fighting for the territory, blackbucks that are fighting
for mates.

1406
(Refer Slide Time: 50:39)

And then we looked at the cost and benefit for the territorial behaviour. The cost is that it
requires more amount of energy, there is more demand on time, there is more risk of
predation. But, then the benefit is that once you have devoted all of these then you have
exclusive access to the resources because there is nobody else that you have to share
your resources with. Once it is established then the territory actually reduces competition
because the other animal stays away and it also regulates the size of the population.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:12)

1407
Then we looked at whether this behaviour is regulated by the environment or not and we
came to the conclusion that yes, it is regulated by the environment because if you have
more amount of food the territory size tends to decrease.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:30)

And then we looked at how do we study these behaviours. We can have a look at the
activity patterns. So, in the case of carnivorous and herbivorous their activity patterns
will not match very well.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:39)

1408
Whereas in the case of organisms that are not quite related such as two carnivorous their
activities patterns will match very well or may match very well.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:46)

Then we looked at ethograms which is an inventory of behaviours that are exhibited by

an animal during a behavioral exercise.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:57)

In the case of ethograms, we begin with a description of the site, define the behaviors, do
scan sampling and focal animal study and then do a time budget analysis.

1409
(Refer Slide Time: 52:07)

So, we looked at making of this ethogram that we did in Sarisca. So, we describe the site
and the settings. So, in this case you have a water body, you have some trees here, you
have this elevated road and here you have a particular population of the deer or the
chitals.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:25)

And then we define different acts what is sitting, what is standing, what is walking
looking feeding and so on.

1410
(Refer Slide Time: 52:33)

So, that every person is having a look at your ethogram should be able to understand
what exactly each and every of this activity means such as auto grooming is scratching or
licking some part of one’s own body. So, you are grooming yourself.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:47)

Allo-grooming is you are grooming somebody else scratching or licking part of

somebody else’s body.

1411
(Refer Slide Time: 52:51)

Then we looked at two methods which is scan sampling and focal animal study.

(Refer Slide Time: 52:57)

In the case of scan sampling, you move from an organism to the next with every
particular time period. So, here you started 1455 look at what first one is doing what
second is doing, what third is doing, fourth, fifth, sixth and then you started at 1455 you
ended 1456. Next you started 1457 do it again reach to this point, next to do it again. So,
in this case you are looking at one animal at a time and you are looking at the whole of
the group.

1412
(Refer Slide Time: 53:24)

And again so, focal animal study you look at only one individual.

(Refer Slide Time: 53:29)

So, you can do both these kinds of analysis and then come up with the time budget table;
how much amount of time is a spent by different individuals in different activities.

1413
(Refer Slide Time: 53:38)

Then it can be put up in the form of a graph showing it in seconds of percentage of pie-
chart.

(Refer Slide Time: 53:42)

And through this we can make out the observations. So, such as in this case the dominant
behaviour are feeding, walking and looking. Juveniles spend less time looking at adults
and sub-adults. So, it is possible that you are having some amount of parental protection
or some amount of protection that is being afforded by the group because of which the
juveniles have to spend less time looking out for the predators.

1414
Then you have sub adult male spent considerable time in auto grooming. So, probably
they are trying to establish themselves for the next phase of life. So, in this way
ethograms and time budget analysis can help us record and understand the behaviours
which have very important implications for ecology. So, that is all for the first part of the
revision and tomorrow we will have a look at the second part of the revision. So, that is
all for today.

Thank you for your attention.

1415
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

Lecture – 35
Revision

Namaste,

Today we move with the second part of the Revision.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:17)

So, we begin with the 4th module which was Ecological energetics. It had 3 lectures food
chains, food webs and trophic levels, primary production and nutrient cycles.

1416
(Refer Slide Time: 00:27)

So, in the case of food chains this is one image that we know from our school days. So,
grass is eaten by insects, insect is eaten by the frog, frog is eaten by the snake, snake is
eaten by the eagle and the grass is making food by using the suns energy for
photosynthesis. So, this is an example for food chain.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:47)

It is defined as the transfer of food energy, from its source and plants through herbivores
to carnivorous, detritivores or decomposers and this is referred to as a food chain.

1417
(Refer Slide Time: 00:57)

Then we defined autotroph and heterotrophy. Autotroph is an organism that can make its
own food. Heterotroph is an organism that needs to eat some other organism for its food
or to eat some other part of an organism for its food because it cannot make its own food.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:10)

Autotrophs are divided into photoautotrophs and chemoautotrophs depending on whether

they are using light for making their food or they are using some chemical reactions for
making their food.

1418
Then we define producers and consumers, producer is an organism that makes its own
food consumer is an organism that consumes some other organism for food. Then we
have consumers are divided into primary consumers, secondary consumer, tertiary,
quaternary and so on. So, primary is the one that is feeding on the producers, secondary
feeds on primary, tertiary feeds on the secondary, quaternary feeds on the tertiary and so
on.

Next, we defined herbivore and carnivore. So, herbivore is an organism that eats only
plants. So, they are the primary consumers and carnivore is an organism that eats other
animals. So, they can be secondary consumers, tertiary consumers or quaternary
consumers such as tigers.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:06)

Then we have omnivore that it is both plants and animals such is there and decomposer
is an organism that converts dead material into soil and recycles the nutrients. So, it plays
a very important part in the functioning of the ecosystem and it includes detritivores and
microorganisms. Detritivores are those organisms that feed on detritus, which is
decomposing plant and animal parts as well as feces and make it more exposed to the
action of microbial decomposers such as bacteria and fungi that further break it down.

1419
(Refer Slide Time: 02:36)

Then we looked at these two kinds of food chains. One is the increasing food chain
which starts from our plant base and detritus food chain that starts from a detritus base.
Now, grazing food chain have two categories we have the predator food chains in which
the size of the organisms increases as we move up the food chain. And, the second one is
a parasitic food chain or parasite food chain in which the size of the organism reduces as
we move up ok.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:05)

1420
Then we had look at the differences and typically detritus food chains are shorter chains.
Because they do not have sufficient energy to support a very long chain then we looked
at food webs.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:19)

So, food web is a system of interlocking and interdependent food chains and each of the
several hierarchical levels in the ecosystem is known as a trophic level. So, in this case
this is a food web, and in this food web you have these organisms that are eating
different organisms and in turn are getting eaten by different organisms and an actuality
a number of food webs are extremely complicated.

Next we had a locate ecological pyramids, which is a graphical representation that is

designed to show the biomass number or energy at each trophic level in a given
ecosystem, and it is also known as your trophic pyramid or an eltonian pyramid or an
energy pyramid or a food pyramid. Then we looked at pyramid of numbers how many
organisms are there at each tropic level, it can be inverted in which case you have one
plant that is feeding a number of herbivores which is feeding an even large number of
carnivores and so, on or you can have pyramid of numbers.

So, this is that example, where you have a tree, and this one tree is feeding a number of
birds each of these birds has different parasites, and each of these parasites have a
number of hyperparasite. So, in this case the pyramid of numbers is inverted then you
can have a spindle pyramid of numbers in which case you have a tree with the number of

1421
frugivorous birds, which have been eaten upon by a hawk or you can have some other
spindle pyramid of numbers like phytoplankton, zooplankton fish, and sea lion. Here
again it is spindle in shape, because the number of sea lions is less than the number of
fish is less than the number of zooplanktons.

But in this case, we have a small number of phytoplanktons that are supporting a large
number of zooplanktons, probably because the phytoplanktons are reproducing it a much
faster rate as compared to the zooplanktons. It can even be a dumbbell shape, such as
grass rat and rabbit and fleas. The second one is a pyramid of energy, which measures
the energy that is contained in organisms at each trophic level and this is typically an
upright pyramid.

And then third is the pyramid of biomass which is the biomass of all the organisms in
each trophic level it can be upright or it can be inverted as in the case of an oceanic
pyramid in which case you have planktons which have a smaller biomass as compared to
the small fishes, then large fishes, and then even larger fishes or maybe some larger
mammals, such as, if you have a blue whale. So, the biomass will be very high.

Then we define standing crop is the total dried biomass of the living organisms that is
present at a trophic level and we also define ecological efficiency as the efficiency with
which energy is transferred from one trophic level to the next. We defined exploitation
efficiency, assimilation efficiency, gross production efficiency, net production
efficiency, and then we define ecological efficiency as a product of three of these.

1422
(Refer Slide Time: 06:24)

Then we had located 10 percent rule. So, whenever energy is being transferred from 1
trophic level to the next trophic level, typically only 10 percent of the energy is stored in
the next trophic level, and as much is 90 percent is lost during transfer due to incomplete
digestion or as part of the respiration.

So, typically if you have a tiger that has chasing the sambar. So, the tiger is using of
energy during this process. Because it is expanding energy in chasing the sambar, then
the tiger will not be able to eat all the body parts of the sambar they will be some amount
of incomplete digestion, and plus the tiger is also respiring it is also energy choosing
energy for its own biological processes. So, it will also use of some other parts of
energies so.

Typically, 10 percent is past, except in the case of the very first stage where the plants
have typically 1 percent of efficiency. So, which you have 100,000 joules from the sun
only 1000 joules that is 1 percent of that energy is stored in the grass.

1423
(Refer Slide Time: 07:29)

So, we can also write the 10 percent rule in this equation.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:33)

Then we looked at trophic cascade in ecological phenomenon that is triggered by

addition or removal of top predators, and evolving reciprocal changes in the relative
populations of predator and prey through a food chain, which often results in dramatic
changes in ecosystem structure and the nutrient cycling.

So, in this case if you make changes in the top of the food chain, or the top of a food
web, then these changes get prickle down along the whole of the food web.

1424
(Refer Slide Time: 08:03)

And a good example is the wolves case study, that we saw in which case when wolves
when wolves come into the national park, they are able to change the behavior of the
deer. Because of which deer move away, and because of which a number of plants are
able to survive and they are able to grow. Because of which you get more amount of
berries. So, you start getting bears in that area you start getting birds in that area and so
on. So, just the addition of wolves makes a huge difference in the whole of the food web.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:40)

1425
And, next we looked at. primary production which is the synthesis of organic compounds
from atmospheric or aqueous carbon dioxide through the process of photosynthesis or
chemosynthesis.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:51)

We have defined photoautotrophs and the importance is that, it is releasing oxygen as a

byproduct it is supporting the whole of the ecosystems, and plants form a very large part
of the slimming mental. So, we looked at these two processes photosynthesis and
respiration, which are essentially inverse of each other.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:07)

1426
And then we define gross primary production, net primary production, and compensation
point. So, compensation point is the equilibrium point for plants, where photosynthesis is
equal to respiration and typically this occurs in early mornings and late evenings, where
the plants are doing the photosynthesis, but at the same time the photosynthesis not so
large that it would be able to counter the impacts of respiration.

During the daytime, typically you will have situations, where photosynthesis is greater
than respiration in the night time respiration is greater than photosynthesis.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:43)

Then we can measure the production by a number of ways, we can look at the amount of
gases that are utilized.

1427
(Refer Slide Time: 09:53)

The amount of gases that are released or we can look at the amount of radioactive
materials that get incorporated by labeling the carbon dioxide or you can look at the
harvest or the total amount that is stored in the plants in a particular time frame. Then we
defined efficiency, you have net you have gross efficiency and you have the net
efficiency. So, in the case of the net efficiency you deduct the amount of energy that has
fixed, which is now release because of respiration. Then productivity is defined as
production per unit time, and we defined net primary productivity as APAR into LUE.
APAR is Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation; LUE is Light Use Efficiency,
and by using these we can make use of satellite data or modelling data to locate these
different values.

And productivity depends on a number of factors it depends on the species, that you have
it depends on the amount of sunlight that you are getting, which plug in depend on the
latitude and the cloudiness of that area, it will depend on the dust and water that is there
in the environment the fertility of that area, of the leaf arrangement, the leaf area, the
concentration of carbon dioxide and so on, and a number of other variables and then we
looked at this use of modeling, through which we can set up a model by which we are
able to match the field characteristics that are observed in different plants,.

1428
(Refer Slide Time: 11:28)

And once you are able to model all these characteristics then if you are asking different
questions like what are the impacts of global warming on these different plants. So, when
you have global warming, there is an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere, which will lead to an impact that is known as carbon dioxide fertilization
because we have more carbon dioxide so, you will have more amount of productivity.

On the other hand because of changes in climate, you can have a positive impact or a
negative impact. So, for every species for every location on this planet, you can compute
whether this global warming is going to harm your plant species or whether it is going to
benefit the plant species. And we can also see how the timing of harvest changes for a
number of organisms. So, in this case we see that in the current situation if the harvest
period is say 110 years, after you have this global warming it may shift to as low as 75
years.

Next, we defined oligotrophic lakes, mesotrophic lakes and eutrophic lakes. So,
oligotrophic lake is that has low nutrient content, mesotrophic lake has a intermediate
level of productivity, intermediate amount of nutrients and eutrophic lake that has a high
amount of productivity high amount of nutrients, and hyper eutrophic lake that are even
more, then we looked at different characteristics especially the secchi depth. So, secchi
depth is a measure of the amount of turbidity that is there in water, and if you have hyper
eutrophication, the turbidity will be so high, that the secchi depth will be very less.

1429
(Refer Slide Time: 13:09)

When we looked at the sources of nutrients, dust, bird droppings, upwelling, rivers
bringing, sediments and so on.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:15)

And, then there is this role of the limiting nutrient.

1430
(Refer Slide Time: 13:18)

So, if there is a nutrient that is limiting the amount of productivity you can play with that
nutrient.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:24)

And even act on large, scale such as this example in which iron salts were put into the
oceans and the photosynthetic efficiency increased a lot. So, this is known as iron
fertilization.

1431
(Refer Slide Time: 13:38)

Next, we had a look at nutrient cycles. So, nutrient is a substance that is used by an
organism to survive grow and reproduce, you have macro nutrients and micronutrients.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:48)

Micronutrients are required in large amount micronutrients are required in smaller

amounts. Essential nutrients are those nutrients that the organism cannot live without and
this cannot be substituted.

1432
(Refer Slide Time: 13:59)

Then we looked at the rules of some essential elements and the list of macro and
micronutrients. Now, plants need to have an access to all these nutrients, but then the
earth does not have an infinite supply of these nutrients because of which the in the
nature has to recycle these nutrients in the form of biogeochemical cycles, which is the
pathway in which by which a chemical substance moves to the biotic and a abiotic
compartments of the earth.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:29)

1433
So, it this is a typical nutrient cycle we will have a pool; from this pool, the producers or
the plants are taking up nutrients from there also using the energy from the sun, and from
the plants it goes to the herbivorous from there to the carnivorous from all of these it
goes to the decomposers and through these decomposers. these nutrients again reach to
the nutrient pool. So, this is a typical generalize nutrient cycle.

And then we looked at specific cycle, such as the nitrogen cycle and we also looked at
the industrial processes of nitrogen fixation looked at carbon cycle, now in the case of
carbon cycle all of these organisms are also directly putting in the this carbon back into
the atmosphere through the process of respirations, that is one difference that we have
and then in this case you have different pools, so you not only have the on the pool in the
atmosphere, but you also have a pool in the rocks, you also have a pool in the ocean
waters, you also have a pool in the form of fossil fuels.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:31)

Then water cycle, phosphorus cycles, sulphur cycle and then we looked at the impact of
human species the kuczera curve. So, if the plants are taken out, if you have a large-scale
deforestation or a large scale forest fire, the amount of water that will be flowing in your
streams will go down, and then it will slowly start increasing and we will take a very
long period of time to reach back to its original levels, then we looked at changes in ph
and changes in the concentration of different nutrients in the water bodies.

1434
Next module was on population ecology. So, we began with population parameters and
demographic techniques.

(Refer Slide Time: 16:10)

So, population is defined as all the organisms of the same group or species which live in
a particular geographical area, and have the capability of interpreting, such as the impala
population, cheetah population and so on, and this is the equation which is very
important here. So, the population in the n plus 1th generation is equal to the population
in the nth generation, plus number of births, plus annuals that are coming in from
outside, minus the number of deaths, minus the number of animals, that are going out of
this population to become a part of some other population.

1435
(Refer Slide Time: 16:41)

Then we looked at by these numbers are important, and, what are the kinds of
demographic information that we are trying to get. So, we want to know the size of
different populations, we want to know the density of different populations, and these
densities can vary a lot. So, every different population may require a very different
method for the its measurement, then we can have two kinds of densities, absolute
densities, which is asking you the number of animals per unit area, and the relative
density, whether area x has more animals then, area y or vice versa.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:15)

1436
Then absolute population density can be measured in terms of total counts. So, which is
the census of India in which each and every individual is counted or you can go for a
sampling method in which you take a small sample of the whole population. So, this
could include quadrates or capture recapture method, and third one is the removal
method, which we typically do not use an Indian context, because we have a man on
hunting the animals.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:41)

Then we looked at different kinds of quadrates, then we looked at, because we are
looking at sampling, we looked at the different processes that are involved in sampling.
So, the objective of the sampling is to have a sample that is representative of the whole
population, it is able to reproduce the important characteristics of the population as
closely as possible and at the same time it is not as intensive as measuring the whole of
the population.

1437
(Refer Slide Time: 18:06)

So, we defined population sampling units and so, on. So, all these definitions are
important, then the kinds of plots you can have circular plots, rectangular plots, strip
plots or topographical units, then we looked at different kinds of sampling, which is very
important. So, we have simple random sampling, such as the lottery or a systematic
sampling, in which you make it every kth individual or stratified sampling in which we
will divide the whole population into strata or you can have multistage sampling or you
can have probability proportional to size sampling.

Then we looked at capture recapture method. So, in this case, you capture some animals
from the population at time t, you mark them with something to you can typically put in
some tags or you can color them with certain dies, and then you release them. So, once
they have mixed with the whole of the population, then you take another sample, and
then in that sample you assess what are the number of animals that are having your
marks.

1438
(Refer Slide Time: 19:05)

And then we can use this formula number of marked animals in the sample, divided by
the number of animals caught in the sample is equal to the number of marked animals in
the population, divided by the total population size. So, we know the number of marked
animals in the sample, the number of animals caught in the sample, and number of
marked animals in the population. So, in that case we can get to the total population size.

Of course, this includes a number of assumptions, and even the removal method so the
removal method is not very applicable in the case of India, but then we also should know
how this method works. So, we have these assumptions, and based on these assumptions,
we can say that if the population is changing at a particular rate the number of animals is
that are being caught will depend on the number of animals, that have actually present in
that particular population, and we can integrate the situation to get to the to the curve that
will give us the number of animals that have this time point.

Then if you want to measure the relative population density, you can use traps, fecal
pellets, number of counts of vocalization, and so on, that the things that we want are h
pyramid crude birth rate crude death rate. So, all these definitions are important here, the
general fertility rate, age specific fertility rate, total fertility rate, replacement level
fertility, juvenile mortality and life expectancy.

1439
(Refer Slide Time: 20:29)

And in the case of life expectancy, we divided into physiological longevity that is the life
of an individual effect is free of any predation pressure and this living under optimum
conditions. But then in the forest (jungle) all the animals are not able to live to their
physiological longevity, because they are not living in the most optimum conditions. So,
the empirical average longevity of individuals of a population under given conditions is
known as the ecological longevity.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:03)

1440
Then we, we want to note the immigration emigration net migration, naturally increase
population growth, and growth rates. Then we looked at the difference between precision
and accuracy. So, if your measurements are close together, we say that they are precise if
your measurements are close to the actual value then it is accurate. So, we want to have
those measurements that are both precise as well as accurate. Now if you have precise
measurements, but not accurate measurement, so you need to calibrate your method to
overcome the bias.

Next, we had the look at population growth and regulation. So, we looked at some
numerical examples of how to measure the main sizes, main population sizes, densities,
and so on, we also looked at some methods for sampling of rain forest reptiles, and small
amphibians and also we looked at some pan traps, and they are workings.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:00)

Now, in the case of the mark recapture species we were capturing the animals you are
making them, but then there are a number of organisms, that have natural body patterns
that can be used in view of marking the individuals one by one. So, for example, every
tiger has different markings on its body, every zebra has a different marking on its body
or some animals that do not have such different markings, such as the lion you can make
use of some other body part, such as even make use of their vibrissae pattern that is the
pattern that is there in their moustache.

1441
Even some toads, frogs, spotted deer they all have different markings on their body, and
even in your reptiles, which is crocodiles and snakes some of them may also be having
different body patterns. So, we can make use of them in the monitoring on these
population sizes, then we had a look at the rate of population growth, and here we said,
that the population size at generation t will be at generation t plus 1 will be equal to
population size, and generation t multiplied by or growth rate of the population.

So, in this case we can have a curve, that is exponential. So, the population is increasing
exponentially, but then in the in actuality your R naught or the growth rate is not
constant. So, it varies with the population size, so that you get to the sigmoidal curve or
the logistic curve. So, this is the logistic growth equation, dN by dt, that is the rate of
change of population size per unit time is a factor of the growth rate it is a factor of the
size of the population, because the more the larger area of population sizes, the more
number of bleeding females are there in your population, so you will have more number
of provisioning and, but this factor is also modulated by this factor which is measured of
the carrying capacity of your habitat. So, it is K minus N divided by K.

So, we looked at the growth equation, this is how it looks. So, any population will start at
very low numbers, you will have this lag phase. So, in the lag phase, the population is
not able to increase very much, because you have very low number of bleeding females,
then it will enter into this log phase in which the population is increasing very fast, and
then it will come to this the steady phase, where the carrying capacity of the environment
is now, becoming a hurdle for the future growth of the population. So, the population
sizes reach to the carrying capacity.

And then we did certain numerical, then we looked at the Lotka-Volterra equations, in
the case of Lotka-Volterra equations, this is telling us the pre and the predator
population. So, the population of the prey is governed by its own population size, which
is telling you the number of bleeding females that are there in the population and at the
same time it is also governed by the predator population so, because more number of
predators you will have the more will be the mortality of the animals, because more
number of animals will be eaten up for food.

Similarly, the size of the of the predator population it will increase based on the size of
its own population, which will tell you the number of bleeding females, plus it will also

1442
depend on the size of the prey population, which will tell you the amount of food that is
available or it will be an indication of the carrying capacity of the environment. So, if
you put both of this together, you will get to a situation where both the prey population
as well as the predator population, it undergoes a cyclical phenomenon, it goes through
cyclical movements, and we can also make use of these Lotka-Volterra equations to look
at the impacts of two different organisms on each other. So, say two different herbivores
on each other, and we looked at this numerical example as well.

Next, we looked at population studies and the equilibrium, and which case we talked
about the problems of dynamics, and the problems of statics the problems of dynamics
are how this a population change with time, the problem of statics is how does the
equilibrium condition and the average value what does it depend on. So, in the case of
dynamics we have to ask these three questions does the change occur in a particular time
of the year, does the change occur in a particular stage in the life cycle of the organism,
and what are the agents that operate at these times or in these stages.

So, some common agents that can operate are extrinsic agents and intrinsic agents,
extrinsic agents of weather predator parasites diseases quantity and quality of food that is
available, and shelter that is available, and intrinsic agents are physiological changes and
the behavioral changes. In the case of statics, we say that the population size is not
changing. So, we do not have to consider the dynamic factors, but we can experimentally
manipulate different habitat variables to look for the responsible factors, that are
responsible for this particular population size.

And in this case, we looked at the locust problem in which this species is found in 2
different forms one is the solitary form, one is the gregarious form, and even though,
they look very different they are members of the same species, and then we looked at
how they changed from one to another. So, the solitary phase moves via a transient phase
into the gregarious phase, and the gregarious phase moves via another transient phase
into the solitary phase, and when the population dynamics of these organisms were
worked out, then we found that there is this particular formation of plague.

1443
(Refer Slide Time: 27:48)

And this is the final outcome, that when you have a favorable weather it increases, the
density of these insects which then triggers gregarization, in which case the solitary
phase converts into the gregarious phase. Once you have this gregarious phase, you start
this gregarious cycle, because, we have gregarious phase. So, this will give rise to more
number of individuals, which will further increase density, it will further keep this
gregarious phase on and in this case you will have the insects that will form large sized
swarms and they will start moving away.

Now this would continue for eternity, were it not for the predators, were it not for the
extrinsic factors that are also operating here. So, if the weather becomes bad or if there is
a large amount of predatory pressure or if there are certain diseases that affect this
particular insect. So, in that case the population density will go down, and which will
trigger a reverse phase transformation in which the gregarious phase will convert into a
solitary phase. And then the still we are also looking into the biochemical factors, that
are responsible for it.

Next in 6th module, we looked at community ecology. So, we began with community
nature, and parameters community is an assemblage of populations of different living
organisms, that are living in a prescribed area or habitat, and the transition area, we are 2
communities meet, and integrate is known as ecotone, which can be sharp or it can be
diffused then we looked at community attributes. So, what are the things that are

1444
common between different communities how do we define a community? So, it will
have co occurrence of species, these species are occurring together they will be a
recurrence of groups of the same species, if you have two communities in two different
areas, which are having similar climate. So, you will have a recurrence of the species,
then a community is able to maintain itself, it is able to regulate itself through the process
of homeostasis.

Then there are community characteristics, which tell you how to communities are
different from each other, which are things likes species diversity growth form in
structure, dominance relative abundance, and the trophic structure. So, they can vary
between two different communities. Now, to describe our community, we have to
describe the richness or the number of species that are there, the abundance of different
species and the species dominance which is the ranking as per the abundance in terms of
a number basal area etcetera. Then we defined the relative density, relative frequency,
and relative dominance.

So, you can use this in the case of tree species, and then you can get to the importance
value index. So, a species that has a high relative density which means, that it has more
number of individuals in that community it has a high relative frequency, which means,
that the members of this species are found in all different parts of the community, plus it
has a high relative dominance that have a high importance value index, and will say that
this community is being free dominated by this particular species.

1445
(Refer Slide Time: 30:57)

Now, if you locate the association between 2 species, we can make this contingency
table and if we have situation that in most of the quadrates, you have 2 species either
present together or absent together, then we will say that both of these species are
positively correlated, but if you have situations in which one species is present the other
is absent or the second one is present, and the first one is absent in that case, we will say
that these 2 species are having a negative association. So, this is an example of negative
association.

(Refer Slide Time: 31:29)

1446
Then we looked at 3 community theories, we have the organismic theory, which was put
forward by Clements, who said that the community behaves like a super organism and it
has properties that are more than the sum of its parts.

The on the other hand you have the individualistic theory or the continuum theory, which
says that the communities are just mere coincidences and there is no such organismic
relationship. And then there is the third one which is Hubbells’ neutral theory, which
comes somewhere in between it says that the species are functionally equivalent and the
abundance of a population of a species changes by random births and deaths.

(Refer Slide Time: 32:08)

Then we talked about guilds. So, guilds are a group of species, which are utilized in
resources in a similar way, such as a group of fruit eating birds in the rainforest of forest
floor dwelling herbs and so on. Now because species in a guild utilize the same resource
so, the amount of competition between these species is much more than compared to any
2 random species.

1447
(Refer Slide Time: 32:34)

Then from guild, we also defined the niches. So, niche is a multidimensional description
of a species, resource needs, habitat requirements and environmental tolerances. So, if
you have 2 species that are having the same niche the level of competition is very high,
and then in the case of these niches, we divided into fundamental and realized niches. So,
fundamental niches are is a set of all the conditions, that the species can potentially
occupy and we can determine it experimentally.

But then in nature, when the species are competing with each other, then they are not
able to occupy all the niches that are possible and so, the niches, that are actually
occupied although by the name of the realized niche or the post competitive niche. Now
we looked at the characteristics of niches, and then the index of similarity how many
individuals are common between 2 communities we will tell you the index of similarity.

1448
(Refer Slide Time: 33:35)

Next, we have association of a species with the community. So, you can have certain
species, that have a very high level of association, they are only found in a particular
species, in a particular community or you can have lesser amount of association in the
case of indifferent species, which can be found in any particular community or accidental
species, which are very rare species and they are either present as chance invaders from
another community or as a relicts from a previous community.

So, you can have different levels of association of a species with the community, then we
looked at community stability. So, stability is the ability of a community to recover
following a disturbance, and it consists of 2 parts a resistance to changes and resilience
to changes. Next, we looked at these community changes and ecological succession. So,
from bare rocks, you start getting some lichens. So, from bare rocks, you have crustose
lichens, then you have foliose lichens, then moss, then grass, then shrub, then forest and
all of and this process through which any area gets populated is ecological succession.

So, ecological succession is the process of change in the species structure of an

ecological community overtime, and then we defined sere, a seral community or a sere is
an intermediate stage found in the ecological succession in an ecosystem advancing
towards its climax community. There are 3 kinds of seres; hydrosere which is a
community in water; xerosere, which is a community in a dry area, which can be a rocks

1449
or which can be sand, and halosere which is a community in a saline body such as a
marsh.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:20)

Next, we defined pioneer species. So, these are hardy species, which established
themselves in a disrupted ecosystem, and trigger the process of ecological succession.
Now typically these species have the ability to grow on bare rocks, nutrient poor soil
water. So, they do not have a very high nutritional requirement, they are pretty hardy
species, because they have to tolerate bare sun and maybe even very cold conditions, and
they are also species that are able to release copious amounts of seeds or spores, because
of which they are able to move into any new area.

1450
(Refer Slide Time: 35:54)

A climax species on the other hand is a biological community of plants animals, and
fungi through which the process of ecological succession in the development of
vegetation in an area over time has reached a steady state. So, this is the final level of
succession. Now, climax community can be either a climatic climax, which is controlled
by the climate or it can be an edaphic climate climax, which is controlled by the soil
conditions. Or, a catastrophic climax, which is controlled by some catastrophic events,
such as wildfires or floods or it can be a disclimax, where it is controlled by some
disturbance either because of men or because of domestic animals.

(Refer Slide Time: 36:38)

1451
Next, we looked at the characteristics of climax community. So, unlike the pioneer
species, here you have a vegetation, that is extremely tolerant of this particular
environmental condition, the species diversity is high, you have a well-formed spatial
structure complex food chains, which provides stability. There is equilibrium between
gross production and respiration uptake and release of nutrients.

Species composition continuous for a very long time, now the second is an indication of
this of this stability of the community and it is a good indication of the climate and other
conditions of the area, because here you have species that are very much tolerant, and
very much adapted to the particular conditions.

(Refer Slide Time: 37:21)

Now, you can have 3 different kinds of succession, the primary succession is a
succession, that occurs in an area that was not previously occupied such as a lava flow,
which has turned into a rock and this rock was never occupied previously. A secondary
succession is the successional dynamics, that follows severe disturbance or removal of a
pre-existing community such as a forest fire, and the cyclical succession is periodic
changes that arise from fluctuating species interactions on recurring events, such as
flooding events, if there are occurring regularly.

Now, in the case of primary succession, we have this lithosere primary succession, that
we have just seen and the second one is the hydrosere primary succession, in which you
start with water, which is very low amount of nutrients from water, you move to

1452
phytoplankton stage to submerged stage, to floating stage, to reed swamps, then sedge
and meadows, then woodland and then finally, the climax stage. In the case of secondary
succession, you can start with the forest, this forest is support from a forest fire, and then
you have a forest that is incompletely destroyed, and then begins with the succession,
with the herbaceous stage, then the shrub stage, then the woodland stage, and the climax
stage, and typically the secondary succession is much faster than the primary succession,
because you already have well formed soil, you already have nutrients, you already have
spores and seeds, probably some plants that can regenerate from their roots and you also
have a very high amount of fertility that can support a large number of organisms. Now
succession can also be divided into autogenic succession and allogenic succession. So,
autogenic successions are brought by changes in the soil that are caused by the
organisms that are already present there. So, auto is self, gen is formation. So, it is a
succession, that forms by itself.

On the other hand, the allogenic succession is caused by some external forces, external
environmental influences and not by the vegetation, that is already present there. Then
we looked at the 7 stages of succession, nudation, migration, ecesis, aggregation
competition, reaction and stabilization.

(Refer Slide Time: 39:35)

Then we have these 3 theories of climax, you can have a monoclimax theory, where we
have only one particular climax, and one particular climatic area; you can have a

1453
polyclimax theory, in which you can have more than one kind of vegetation climaxes,
which are controlled by soil moisture nutrients topography etcetera or you can have a
climax pattern theory, in which you do not have one particular climax but you have a
range of climaxes, which very near the climatic climax.

(Refer Slide Time: 40:10)

Next, we looked at community organization. So, there are two kinds of dominance for
species. You can have a keystone species, which is playing a much larger role in the
ecosystem as compared to its numerical abundance or you can have numerically
abundant species; which are determining the nature of the community and so, we say that
they are the dominant species in that particular community. Next, we defined the
community dominance index, which is the percentage of abundance that is contributed
by the two most abundant species.

Now, if you have more number of species, typically the dominance reduces; but then this
relationship is not a one to one relationship. If you have a community that has more
amount of dominance; so, it is possible that you will have certain species that are much
more efficient in producing a food and in that case the productivity increases.

1454
(Refer Slide Time: 41:00)

Dominance changes with the surroundings. So, if you have nutrients that are put in to
early that might result in an algal bloom. So, before this algal bloom, you had a certain
level of dominance and because during this algal bloom a certain species has become
predominant so, the dominance status of the community changes.

So, typically you will also see that the species diversity is going down, then it increases
again and in a number of situations, if this perturbation is not very large the community
is able to bring itself back to the original position; which brings us to the concept of
stability, which is defined as the ability of a community to defy change or to rebound
from change. So, we have three different kinds of stability, you can have global stability
or you can have local stability or you can have a situation, where you have neither local
nor global stability.

So, in this case, if you have a community like this and you are giving it any amount of
disturbance. If it is very small disturbance; then, probably this community will be locally
stable, but if it is any greater this community will become unstable. Next, the question is
does diversity increases stability; we typically see that diversity increases stability, but
there are also some counter arguments. So, this is still a matter of some debate.

1455
(Refer Slide Time: 42:42)

And, how does a system respond to instability; you have resistance or inertia which is the
ability of the living system to resist the external fluctuations or you can have resilience,
which is the tendency of a system to retain its functional and organizational structure
after perturbance of a disturbance. So, in the case of resistance the community is not
changing, in the case of resilience the community has changed, but it is able to bring
itself back to the original position.

Now, resilience can be measured in terms of elasticity and amplitude. Elasticity is the
speed with which the system returns to its original state and amplitude is the maximum
amount of disturbance that the community can tolerate. So, it is a measure of, how far a
system can be moved from the previous state and still return back to the original
conditions. Then, we had a case study of sewage Lake Washington and even after, you
had a large amount of disturbance, the community was again able to bring itself back to
the normal conditions; which tells us that, if you are within the limits; then, the
detrimental changes can be stopped and reversed.

Now, in the seventh module, we looked at distribution and abundance of organisms.

1456
(Refer Slide Time: 43:52)

So, we began with biogeography, which is a study of the geographical distribution of life
on earth and the reasons for the patterns one observes on different continents, islands and
oceans; so, it asks the question, what is found where? And why is certain thing found in a
certain location and not in some other location? Then, we looked at range, ranges or
distribution of a species is the geographical area within which the species can be found.
Then, we looked at major Indian habitats, Alpine meadows, forest; so, forests are also of
different kinds, Alpine, Dry deciduous, moist deciduous, mixed forests, Scrub forests
and so on. Sand dunes then, we have estuaries; then, Runn of Kutch gives a very
different kind of habitat. Then, we have lagoons, we have floodplains; then; we have
shola forest, equatorial forest, mangroves oceans and seas.

1457
(Refer Slide Time: 44:48)

And all of these are very different habitats from one another and because of which, we
have very different kinds of species that are found in all of these different areas. Now,
we looked at this example, in which if you ascend in altitude, the temperature reduces
and; so, you can have those species, which are typically not found in that particular
latitude.

So, if you go very high; then, probably you will find even species that are more alpine
even when we are close to the equator. Then, if we look at the distribution of any
organisms, such as snow leopards or the coral reefs; we are in the case of biogeography.
We are first noting down, where these organisms are found. Then, we ask the question,
what is there in this location that is making this organism come to this location or thrive
at this location and what is there that is not present at the other location, where this
organism is not found because of which this organism is not found in that particular area;
so, which brings us to the question of, why things are where they are.

1458
(Refer Slide Time: 46:01)

So, we looked at these examples and this is something that we have been looking for a
very long period of time and we defined the factors that govern biogeography into push
factors and pull factors. Now, pull factors are conditions that attract organisms to an area,
good amount of food that is available or good climate that is available to the organisms
and push factors are those condition that drive away organisms from an area; such as
scarcity of food or inhospitable climate.

So, even in a small mountain, we can see that there are certain areas, where you have
plants and there are certain areas, where you do not have plants. So, these things can be
right next to each other. Then, we looked at the other factors; so, apart from push and
pull factors you have the factors of dispersal, it is possible that the organism has not yet
reached that area or you can have anthropogenic factors or manmade factors in which
case, in this area plants should be there, but then because of the influence of man; this
area was all cleared off the vegetation.

So, you can have the anthropogenic factors; you also have the habitat selection factors,
which refers to the hierarchical process of behavioral responses that may result in the
disproportionate use of certain habitats to influence the survival and fitness of
individuals.

1459
(Refer Slide Time: 47:20)

And habitat selection has both innate components, which are inborn components and
some learnt components; so, this was the example in which, if you have wild caught
adults of chipping sparrow; they spend majority of the time on pine and less amount of
time on oak. But then, if you reared them in the laboratory and you do not give them any
exposure, they are able to repeat the same pattern.

So, they will prefer the pine, but if you reared them in the laboratory together with the
oak leaves; so, in that case they will start preferring the oak. So, in this case this one is
telling you that the birds have learnt to prefer oak; in this case we are saying that, there in
the absence of learning there are certain inborn preferences that the birds have. So, the
habitat selection has both innate and learnt components. Then, we make use of transplant
experiments to identify the potential range of an organism. So, if this organism is found
in this green area, you can move an organism from one point in this green area to another
point as a control experiment or you can move it to other areas, where it is not found.

Now, if it is not found there could be areas, where it survives; they could be some areas,
where it does not survive and based on its survival or its death, we can make some
outcomes. So, if it is this transplant successful then, probably the organism is not found
there because this area is currently inaccessible or it has not been able to disperse
because of lack of time or because of habitat preference. But if the transplant is

1460
unsuccessful then, it could be limited by some other species or it could be limited
because of some physical and chemical factors.

Next, we move on to the Liebig’s law of the minimum, which says that the rate of any
biological process is limited by that factor in least amount relative to requirements; so
that there is a single limiting factor. So, if you have n number of requirements, the one
that you have the least amount of that is going to be the limiting step.

The second one is the Shelford’s law of tolerance, which says that the geographical
distribution of a species will be controlled by that environmental factor for which the
organism has the lowest range of tolerance or the narrowest range of tolerance. Now, it is
important to know these different factors because we are these days observing changes in
the range. So, if you have global warming those species that could not live in the colder
areas are now able to increase in their ranges. So, we are saying that the median altitude
for malaria is increasing with temperature. Now one other factor that can regulate
whether a species is found or not found is migration which is defined as regular and
seasonal movement of animals, often along fixed routes.

Now, the reasons are you can have animals that are looking out for better resources, such
as food or breeding sites or there are animals that are moving away because their original
habitats are having a harsh climate; so, they are shifting to a more amiable climate. We
looked at the example of demoiselle cranes. Now, going back to dispersion, we have
three different modes of dispersal; you can have diffusion, which is a gradual moment
over several generations or you can have a jump dispersal in which you have a quick
moment over large distances, often across unsuitable terrains.

Such as the movement of zebra mussel through the ballast water or you can have the
secular dispersal, which is diffusion in an evolutionary time so, that the final migrants
are very divergent from the original population. Then, we also had a locate allelopathy in
which, there are certain organisms that are secreting certain chemicals that are inhibiting
the growth of certain other organisms. So, this is the, the distribution flowchart. Next, we
had a look at some push and pull factors in more detail, in which case we looked at the
distribution of sea urchins and algae.

So, in this case, we are seeing that wherever you have sea urchins, you do not have algae
and where you have algae, you do not have the sea urchins. So, this led to a study of

1461
whether predators can restrict the ranges of the prey organisms. So a certain area was
cleared of the sea urchins and if you remove the sea urchins, the algae are able to come
back to that area, which shows that there is nothing other than sea urchins that was
wanting in that area.

(Refer Slide Time: 51:54)

Then, if you have a situation where a predator is governing the distribution and
abundance of prey; so, in that case you will have four conditions that will have to be
fulfilled. The organism does not survive when transplanted to a site, where it does not
normally occur unless it is protected from predators by cages. Second, there is an inverse
correlation between the distribution of organisms and the suspected predator or
alternatively in the places where it occurs the organism is inaccessible to the predator.

Third, you should be able to see that either in the field or in the laboratory that the
suspected predator is inflicting a lethal damage on the prey. And fourth, there should be a
direct evidence that the suspected predator is responsible for the destruction of the prey
in the transplantation experiments. So, if all these four criteria are right; then, we can say
that the predator is governing the distribution and abundance from the prey.

1462
(Refer Slide Time: 52:51)

On the other hand, you can have this counter example, in which case the prey is
governing the distribution and abundance of the predator; which we saw in the case of
drosophila pachea, which is only found in those areas where you have a particular
species of cactus. Now, does it have any implications on biological control of pests and
invasive species? Yes; because, if you have a predator that is extremely exclusive to the
prey species, you can make use of that predator as a biological control.

So, we looked at this example of controlling pine rust by eliminating the gooseberries
because the fungus that was affecting the pines also was obligately dependent on the
gooseberries. So, it spent some part of its life cycle on the pine and some part of its life
cycle of the gooseberries. So, if you remove the gooseberries you will eliminate the pine
rust.

Then, we looked at this other method of governing distribution, which is inter specific
competition; in which you have a particular species of bird that is able to form colonies
in these areas, but then it gets displaced by another species because of inter specific
competition. And, this can also regulate the distribution and abundance of a particular
species in a particular area. Because once this species is displaced; now, you do not have
any individuals that are left in this particular area.

1463
(Refer Slide Time: 54:17)

Next, we looked at experimental demonstration of allelopathy. So, in this case if you

have the apple seedlings and you give it water; these apple seedlings are able to survive.
But then, if you pour water through a grass bed and then put this water onto the apple
seedlings, they start dying of. But then, if you put water only through a soil bed without
the grasses, these apple seedlings are able to survive.

So, this is telling you that there is something that is there in grass, which is leading to the
death of these apple seedlings here because there is nothing in this soil that is leading to
the death of the apple seedlings. So, this is how you can locate the impacts of allelopathy
or you can experimentally play with the impacts of the allelopathy.

1464
(Refer Slide Time: 55:05)

Now, in the case of allelopathy, it is not only that you have an impact on members of
other species, but you can also have an impact on the members of your own species, such
as this peach replant problem. If you have peach that is following an apple plantation,
you have a good yield of fruits; whereas, if you have a peach that is following a peach,
you will have a bad yield of fruits. So, there is essentially something that is released by
the peach plants that is inhabiting the other peach plants and we looked at another
example, in which case Grevillea robusta kills its own seedlings.

Now, there was one other variation that we looked at. Whenever we are talking about the
range of tolerances, those range of tolerances can be modified by acclimation of
individuals. So, if you have individuals that have been living in a high temperature; they
will probably be able to tolerate much higher temperatures as compared to other
individuals of the same species that were living in lower temperatures.

1465
(Refer Slide Time: 56:06)

Then, we also looked at one other variation, that several factors can be simultaneously
governing the presence or absence of a particular species in a particular area; so,
especially in the case of these treelines. So, treeline is the line above which, there is no
growth of trees. So, that can be because of lack of soil, draught, desiccation, lack of
snow, excessive snow, short growing season, rapid heat loss at night, excessive soil
temperatures in the day or mechanical aspect of high winds.

Now, which of these factors is playing a role or which combination of factors is playing
a role, that needs to be looked at experimentally.

1466
(Refer Slide Time: 56:46)

And then, we also saw that some amount of these variations are also stored genetically.
So, for instance, if you take plants from different areas and these plants belong to the
same species and you are bringing these same plants into the same area; they will start
showing different features. So, whenever we are talking about these distributions, ranges,
tolerances so, that is also modulated by the areas in which these organisms have been
growing. So, that is all for today.

Thank you for your attention. Jai Hind.

1467
 Wildlife Ecology
Prof. Ankur Awadhiya
Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lecture – 36
Revision

Namaste,

We begin with the final lecture of this course and this will again be a Revision lecture.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:19)

So, we begin with the 8th module, we covered till the 7th module yesterday. So, the 8th
module was management of threatened species and they said threats to species in situ
conservation and ex situ conservation.

1468
(Refer Slide Time: 00:31)

Now, in threats of the species the threat factors are the opposite question to why things
are found? Where they are found? So, if you have push factors everywhere and you do
not have a pull factor anyway, it means, that everywhere and the organism is getting
pushed from all sides and it is not having a good favorable environment anywhere. So,
that would be called as a situation of the threat.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:55)

So, we looked at different push factors, no suitable habitat, competed out, killed out,
small population dynamics.

1469
(Refer Slide Time: 01:04)

And then these push factors are divided into 2 paradigms declining population paradigm
and small population paradigm. So, for any population, it becomes smaller and once it
has become small enough, then it becomes extinct.

So, the factors that push a population towards smaller numbers are declining population
paradigm and the factors that push a small population towards extinction fall into the
small population paradigm.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:30)

1470
So, when we look at different causal factors, the different push factors. These 3 form a
part of the declining population paradigm. So, you have no suitable habitat, they are
getting competed out, they are getting killed out. So, in this way the population becomes
small.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:49)

And once the population has become very small in that case, you will have this small
population dynamics Allee effect and stochastic deaths, which will play a big role and
this will form the part of the small population paradigm.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:00)

1471
Then we looked at 2 kinds of factors, deterministic factors they act at large population
sizes and stochastic factors act at small population sizes.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:09)

Deterministic factors are birth rate and death rate and the population structure and
stochastic factors includes; demographic, stochasticity, environmental variations,
catastrophes and genetic processes.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:13)

Such as loss of heterozygosity and inbreeding depression and we will discuss all of these
and these are very important in stochastic factors.

1472
(Refer Slide Time: 02:29)

We also have deterministic processes, such as density dependent mortality and

migrations.

(Refer Slide Time: 02:35)

Next, we had a look at the factors that drive species towards extinction, we can
remember them using the acronym of hippo. So, this is habitat loss invasive species
pollution overpopulation and overharvesting.

1473
(Refer Slide Time: 02:49)

And we looked at the impact of humans it depends on adaptability of these species, the
attention that humans get to that species, the ecological overlap between humans and the
species and the home range requirements, if species has a large home range requirement
it is more susceptible to the impacts.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:04)

Then we looked at this theory of biogeography, the island biogeography model to predict
how many species are getting extinct.

1474
(Refer Slide Time: 03:09)

(Refer Slide Time: 03:11)

And even if you reduce an area by 90 percent, the number of species only becomes
halved, it does not become only 10 percent.

1475
(Refer Slide Time: 03:19)

And in this case, we estimated that we are losing as many as 27000 species every year
you know it will be very conservative estimate.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:26)

Next, we said that all species are not equally susceptible to extinction the species that are
rare are more susceptible.

1476
(Refer Slide Time: 03:37)

And some species are rare, because of their habitat selection choices, evolutionary
characteristics, limited geographical range and low population densities.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:46)

Then there are four impacts on habitat, they are habitat degradation, fragmentation,
displacement and loss. So, in the case of degradation the quality goes down and this can
occur, because of contamination such as accumulation or because of the presence of
different trashes in the habitat which reduces the quality or because of soil erosion and
the presence of forest fires or because of over exploitation of water or deforestation of

1477
the area or because of desertification or because of over exploitation of biota or draining
dredging, damming or the water bodies or introduction of exotic species.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:56)

(Refer Slide Time: 04:00)

1478
(Refer Slide Time: 04:06)

(Refer Slide Time: 04:10)

1479
(Refer Slide Time: 04:17)

(Refer Slide Time: 04:24)

When degradation becomes very high, so, the quality is so low, that the habitat is no
longer usable and we call it a habitat loss.

1480
(Refer Slide Time: 04:32)

And in the case of habitat fragmentation, the natural landscape is broken up into smaller
parcels and they become isolated from each other and it involves both loss and isolation
of ecosystems.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:43)

Now larger fragments are better, because they have more diverse environments, they are
likely to have both common and un common species and they have larger populations.
So, stochastic factors play a lesser role.

1481
(Refer Slide Time: 04:56)

Now some causal agents of habitat fragmentation are roads railways dams other
structures diversion of land for agriculture. And then we looked at the process of habitat
fragmentation and loss.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:05)

So, from this original forest, we had dissection because of the road, that lead to
perforation then a small villages came up and then after perforation there was a
fragmentation as the increase in size and after fragmentation, there was attrition in which
case the habitat was reduced to a very small portion and we looked at habitat loss in

1482
Amazon and then because of all this processes this is the forest before and this is the
forest afterwards and this is an example of an extremely fragmented habitat in the case of
Mudumalai.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:39)

Then we looked at habitat displacement in which the wild life is shifted to non prime or
subprime habitats, such as hills or rocky patches, because they are out-competed by other
organisms especially livestock.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:51)

1483
And then we said that population viability analysis is used to understand if a population
is going to persist or is that going to become extinct in n number of years.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:00)

Next, we looked at in situ and ex situ conservation.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:05)

So, in situ conservation is conservation that is on the site or within natural habitat and ex
situ conservation is conservation that is off the site or outside the natural habitat.

1484
(Refer Slide Time: 06:13)

Now, in the case of in situ conservation, we are conserving in the area. So, you designate
areas as reserves national parks or protected areas and then you perform monitoring and
interventions in this area and do some legislations to maintain these areas as protected
areas.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:29)

In case of ex situ conservation, you designate areas with suitable conditions, create the
facilities bring animals in to or organisms into those areas and then the option is

1485
statement that once you have a large number of organisms you can release them back
into the natural habitats.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:45)

Now, in situ conservation has certain advantages, certain disadvantages and same with
the ex situ conservation.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:51)

So, you can have a look at these. Now, in the case in situ conservation, there are 3
process strategies, where should we make the reserves? What should be the shape and
size of these reserves? And how do you manage the reserves?

1486
(Refer Slide Time: 07:03)

Now, if you look at way to make it. So, there were some traditional ways.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:06)

But then, this way we are looking at areas, which are high species richness, high
endemism and a moderate amount of threat. So, we go for the biodiversity hotspots.

1487
(Refer Slide Time: 07:16)

And in the case of the triage, the threat perception we go for areas that have a medium
level of threat.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:24)

We can also make use of gap analysis, which ask this question, that what are the areas
that are not represented in the existing framework of the protected areas and in those
areas you can make a new reserve.

1488
(Refer Slide Time: 07:39)

In the size and shape of reserves you have the principles of reserve design. So, big is
better than small.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:43)

We looked at the reasons we have larger populations, we have more habitat diversity,
more species diversity, you have less cost.

1489
(Refer Slide Time: 07:53)

And if this less vulnerable to catastrophes, then we said there one big is better than
several small of the same total area closer reserves are better. Cluster is better than a
linear structure and circular reserves are better, because they have less biotic pressure
and the some of our reserves are not quite circular in shape. So, that creates a lot of biotic
pressure there. Then we said that connection is important, so, that the organisms are able
to move from one place to another and if nothing else works then we should aim at
maintaining or enhancing the connectivity.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:21)

1490
And then we looked at this example, from Manas and which we are losing up the habitat.
At a very fast pace and even the connections are not being maintained then we looked at
the management of reserves.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:26)

(Refer Slide Time: 08:32)

Where we looked at the 5 different tools of habitat management which are the axe, the
cattle, the plow, the gun and the fire and even though these tools can also be used for
destruction.

1491
(Refer Slide Time: 08:44)

But if we use them properly, so, we can maximize the positive outcomes and minimize
the negative outcomes.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:52)

So, we looked at the example of livestock and look that, how we can maximize the
positive outcomes and minimize the negative ones.

1492
(Refer Slide Time: 08:59)

So, the aim of management is that is your habitat is good, maintain it in that state if the
habitat is degraded you try to improve it.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:07)

And then we looked at the option, that are available first is recovery you do not do
anything and let nature take its own course. So, it may ameliorate the degraded habitat or
in certain situations, it can make it even more degraded. Next is rehabilitation or
reclamation in which you shift the degraded habitat towards a greater value, but not
necessarily towards the original state.

1493
(Refer Slide Time: 09:30)

Third is restoration, where you are actively trying to return the habitat to its original
state. So, you restore the whole system and fourth is enhancement, in which you are
trying to improve the value of the habitat, such as construction of water holes.

(Refer Slide Time: 09:45)

And the fifth one is replacement, in which you create a new habitat in place of the
degraded habitat and the classic example is that a forest is converted into a mine and then
this mine is converted into a Marshy wetland.

1494
(Refer Slide Time: 09:58)

(Refer Slide Time: 09:59)

So, we looked at these five improvement options and these are also mitigation options,
when you have a proposed developmental activity you can avoid development in certain
areas, you can restore it or you can go for replacement or you can go for protection and
management of other habitat in lieu of the one being lost often in ratios that are very
much greater than one.

1495
(Refer Slide Time: 10:16)

And so like, that certain activities that we do for habitation management; control of
unregulated fires, control of invasive species provisioning of waterholes and salt lakes
involvement of locals and stakeholders, habitat monitoring, plantation drives trash
collection etcetera.

(Refer Slide Time: 10:37)

Next, we looked at ex situ conservation. So, ex situ is conservation that is off the sites
that is also in the natural habitat.

1496
(Refer Slide Time: 10:42)

Now, it is a required specially for critically endangered species, because it provides

urgent intervention and you have designated certain areas as you would ex situ
conservation areas, create facilities, bring the animals.

(Refer Slide Time: 10:57)

And if required you release them later on it allows much better control of variables, it
provides opportunity for close observation of organisms and it permits much more
intensive interventions including in vitro fertilization embryo transfer and so on.

1497
(Refer Slide Time: 11:10)

But, then it does not prevent the loss of habitat, it can be planned for a few species at a
time some wild behaviors may get lost captive bred and raised individuals may find it
difficult, when reintroduced. It may increase the chances of inbreeding if it is not
planned properly and it is extremely costly.

(Refer Slide Time: 11:29)

We looked at the example is zoo aquaria and so on certain organisms can be very easily
maintain in ex situ conservation, whereas certain organisms require more in situ
operations.

1498
(Refer Slide Time: 11:40)

Then the costs are much or typically greater in the case of ex situ conservation, in situ is
cheaper.

(Refer Slide Time: 11:46)

And especially, it is cheaper for the larger organisms. So, if we talk about larger
organisms, such as elephant, ex situ costs are much greater than the in situ costs.

1499
(Refer Slide Time: 11:58)

Next, we looked at the genetic implications of ex situ conservation, you have stochastic
sampling of a alleles erosion of genetic variation, the pleiotropy effects and it is genotype
environmental interactions that can play a role. Next, we looked at some ex-situ
conservation facilities in detail, the first one was zoo and this is the definition of zoo as
per the wildlife protection act. So, it is an establishment with a stationary or mobile,
where captive animals are kept for exhibition to the public and it includes a circus and
this is important includes a circus in rescue centers, but does not include an
establishment of a licensed dealer in captive animals.

Zoos are managed as per in master plans and number of them are doing conservation
breeding and they maintain studbooks for different animals, that are involved in the
captive breeding. Now, we look that case study of Mysore zoo. So, you need to create a
cosy environment look at the feed.

The feed has to be given in proper time in sort, it can meals have where exotic
requirements, that needs to be we might need to synergistically leverage the landscape
maintain proper documentation of things. Do capacity and infrastructure building
research and in reach activities go for eco friendly activities as far as possible try to
convert, some waste into wealth. Then you also need to take care of the people, who are
visiting a zoo, we need to build you image and we need to have innovative actions and
then you can also have things such as, areas where you are having a collection of

1500
butterflies or collection of hydrophytes and so on or collection of orchids open aviary or
collection of cacti and so on.

Then we also had a look at the bear rescue facility. So, that is also counted as part of a
zoo, because it is a rescue facility. In the turtle rescue facility, you bring the eggs, you let
them hatch and then you raise them tell a particular point of time and then you reach
them back. Now, there is a need to prevent stereotypical behaviors, which another step,
you will get into when they will go and so, there is a need for behaviour enrichment.
Next we looked at botanical gardens, a garden dedicated to the collection cultivation and
display of a wide range of plants labeled with the botanical names.

Now, there are several roles that we play and we had a look at Kirstenbosch botanical
garden. So, you have a number of play cards, it caters to the needs of several different
people of different interest, people can spend a quality time. So, that they become more
tuned to the causes of conservation, you have multiple use areas and you have certain
highlights such as, the canopy walk and you have a number of these play card, that tell
you what is what and they also give you a lot of information about the geology history.

Why do we need conservation? What are the kinds of adaptation? What is an invasive
species? Why do you need to control invasive species and so on next we looked at seed
banks in cryopreservation facilities. So, if you have a seed that is kept in a cold area or a
seed that is kept extremely dry. So, it is able to grow back and seed is an embryonic plant
that is enclosed in an outer protective coating.

1501
(Refer Slide Time: 15:22)

So, if you want to create a seed bank, you need to take into account a number of things
one is that, you can create an ex-situ conservation stand, you need to have good seeds.
So, these are the characteristics, you need to determine the best days for collection,
determine the best trees for collection; in this case, you need to take into account that
adequate variety is maintained in your collection.

And then there are certain requirements, you maintain all these stocks there are several
ways of collecting the seeds, they can be natural or they can be artificial, you perform
several operations to enhance the shelf-life; seeds are of three kinds depending on their
life on and depending on the amount of oil or the amount of drying, that they can
tolerate, they can be orthodox or recalcitrant seeds. And there are a number of factors
that determine the longevity of the seeds that is seed condition the age and the storage
conditions.

So, you need to take care of all of these and we looked at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault
and these facilities can also be used for certain animal cells as well. Next we looked at
topics in human ecology; the first one was introduction and impacts. So, our population
is growing and this era is correctly known as anthropocene, it is a proposed epoch dating
from the commencement of significant impact on the earth’s geology and ecosystems
including, but not limited to anthropogenics climate change, and the number of people

1502
say that, trinity experiment or explosion in 1945 can be taken as the beginning of
anthropocene.

(Refer Slide Time: 16:57)

And we are seeing several impacts on the environment ozone depletion, ocean
acidification climate change desertification habitat destruction and so on. Now, we
looked at how to quantify the amount of impacts of human beings.

It is this equation I = P x A x T. So, we have population multiplied by affluence

multiplied by the level of technology that we have. Then we saw that the population has
been growing for quite a while the technology the affluences also been growing in terms
of GDP per capita and then the technology is also growing exponentially.

So, in this case are a impact on the environment is also increasing, because all three
parts are increasing. But then you can make use of technology, so, that you are able to
reduce the impact by say recycling. Even in the case of our population growth, we have
crossed the peak growth rate and now our growth rate is much lower, than what we had
in the 1960 and so, the population is now reaching into a steady state. The fertility rates
are reducing and our population is now becoming more and more stable with time and
then we looked at this demographic transition, the 5 different stages, that happened and
these days we are entering into an era, where we will be having low birth rates and low
death rates. Next, we had a look at human population growth and food requirements
where we looked at the theory of Thomas Robert Malthus.

1503
(Refer Slide Time: 18:23)

(Refer Slide Time: 18:27)

He said that the human population grows exponentially or in geometric progression

whereas, the agriculture grows only in arithmetic progression, in this case the population
tends to overrun the food supply and in which case, we will have an imbalance. Because
you will have more people, you will have less amount of food to feed all of them. So,
this imbalance is corrected by 2 measures, you can have positive checks that nature
brings in vice, misery, famine war, disease pestilence flood and natural calamities, these

1504
are all imbalances that are brought in by nature and these he referred to as positive
checks. And he said that because all of these are bad for us, it should go for preventive
checks such as foresight, late marriage, celibacy, moral restraint and so on.

Now, on one hand, the population thus show an exponential growth and so the
Malthusian theory looks correct and we looked at the derivation of the doubling time. So,
doubling time is (1/k)*log 2, but then there are a number of criticisms to Malthus the
population growth is not exactly exponential, because the doubling time has been
changing with time. The agricultural growth is not as suggested, so, in a short while, you
can see that the agricultural growth is showing an arithmetic increase, but then you also
have exponentially. So, if you look at the larger time spans.

Then third, Malthus does not incorporate new land that becomes available. So, we have
been increasing the lands that are available to agriculture by diverting our forest and
other areas. So, there has been a very exponential increase in the amount of agricultural
areas that we have both cropping increasing areas, then he also neglects the rule of
technology, such as exponential increase in yields, that has been brought… that has been
made possible to process, the use of pesticides, which whose use has been increasing and
also the fertilizers whose also use has been increasing to a very fast rate and if you
increase the amount of fertilizers the crop yield typically increases.

And these days, we have our productivity very high and if you increase productivity your
requirement for land becomes less and less. So, essentially there are ways to tackle the
problems.

1505
(Refer Slide Time: 20:40)

The other criticisms are that the population is not actually related to the food supply, but
actually to the total wealth that is available with the population not just a food supply.
Then he does not consider population increase that is due to the lowering of death rates,
which has been seen through for some time that our death rates have been going down,
because of a use of modern medicine modern technologies.

Then preventive checks do not pertain only to moral restraints. So, in his time he did not
consider the use of contraceptives, he only talked about moral restraint, but then these
days we also have a number of contraceptives that are available, then positive checks
may occur even in low populated countries. So, he said that populated, the positive
checks will occur and you have a high population, but even in low population countries,
such as Japan, you can have things like earth quakes, tsunamis and floods. Next we
looked at sustainable development.

1506
(Refer Slide Time: 21:34)

So, this is the definition, sustainable development is the development that meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet
their own needs. So, here we have 2 concepts, one is the concept of needs as a needs
wants. So, needs of everybody has to be met especially those of the world’s poor who
have to be given an overriding priority and the second is the idea of limitations, because
we do not have an infinite amount of resources. So, limitations are imposed by the state
of technology and social organization on the environments ability to meet the present and
the future needs.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:11)

1507
Then we have three pillars of sustainability; environmental, economic and social
sustainability and we looked at what points to be considered in all three of these. And
when you are considering all three of these and you put it into your accounting
framework so, you have a triple bottom line.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:29)

Now, sustainability talks have been characterized by 2 sets of people, when talk about
weak sustainability, which says that national capital and manufacturing capital are
essentially substitutable. So, if you lose your national capital, such as forest and you
make more and more of your manufactured capital, such as roads and houses. So, you
are able to provide much more amount of social good as compared to what your forest
would have given. So, they say that it is perfectly ok.

1508
(Refer Slide Time: 22:59)

But in the case of strong sustainability, it has assumed that national capital and
manufactured capital are non substitutable and the kinds of well being that they generate
are very different. So, the society needs both the national capital as well as the
manufactured capital and both have to be sustainably used. So, we looked at the
differences between both of these and then this argument of strong sustainability brought
into picture the idea of sustainable development in the 21st century in the form of
Agenda 21, then we looked at 17 sustainable development goals.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:31)

1509
And to meet these goals, we go for environmental impact assessment which is the
process of evaluating the likely environmental impacts of a proposed project or
development taking into account interrelated socio economic cultural and human health
impacts, both beneficial and adverse. So, all the positive and negative impacts are taken
into account in the case of environmental impact assessment.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:54)

Now, there are several stages, the first one is screening to determine, which projects
require an EIA, the second one is scoping which ask you what are the impacts, that you
want to measure, what are the alternative solutions that you have and what are the terms
of reference of this impact assessment.

1510
(Refer Slide Time: 24:13)

Third is assessment and evaluation of the impacts and development of the alternatives.
So, you actually go and access the impacts. Once you have accessed the impacts, you
make a report, based on the report, you go for a review in which case you also go for
public consultation and on the basis of that report and review you go for a decision
making.

(Refer Slide Time: 24:36)

1511
Once you have made a decision, that you want to go with a project with certain writers,
you need to go with the monitoring compliance enforcement and environmental auditing
of the particular project to see to it that all the writers are being met.

Then we had a look at clean technology, which is any process product or service that
reduces the negative environmental impacts through significant energy efficiency
improvement, the sustainable use of resources or environmental protection activities. So,
we looked at number of themes in clean technologies, such as renewable energy, water
purification, air purification sewage, treatment or waste treatment, environmental
remediation, solid waste management, energy conservation and appropriate sustainable
technologies. And then we had a look at certain clean technologies that have been
proposed in the past few years.

Now, in the 10th module it was ecology of change where we looked at oil spills plastics
and climate change.

(Refer Slide Time: 25:33)

So, in the case of oil spill, we began with the impacts of disturbances. So, if you have a
large infrequent disturbance in a community, that is essentially a normal community it is
a stable community, we view at a large infrequent disturbance and it will be able to
recover back right. If you have a community that is stable and you give it multiple large
infrequent disturbances.

1512
So, if you give it multiple disturbances, it might not be able to recover or it might take a
very long period to recover. And the third case is, if you have a community that is
already stressed. So, it is not completely normal it was somewhere in between and you
give it a large infrequent disturbance and you have a community, that is not able to come
back.

Now, we looked at several large infrequent disturbances like, fire storm, tsunami, oil
spill, climatic extreme, heavy pollution and so on. And disturbed communities include
diseased communities weed infested facing competition from livestock pollutants rich or
facing climatic changes and so on. Now, oil spill is defined as the release of liquid
petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment and there are 2 kinds; terrestrial and
marine.

So, in the case of terrestrial it comes upon land, in the case of marine it comes upon the
seas or it can be classified as natural accidental or intentional depending on whether it
happen naturally, because of an accident or because people actually wanted to give rise
to this oil spill as in the case of Gulf War oil spill.

So, this is an example of a natural oil spill, this is known as an oil seep. Then
hydrocarbons are organic compounds, that consists entirely of hydrogen and carbon and
there are several different kinds and we classify them based on their specific gravity. So,
there are those that have no specific gravity they float on the surface of water, there are
those that have a high specific gravity they settle to the bottom. Then hydrocarbons are
also classified as petrogenic that are derived directly from mineral oils pyrogenic that
results from an incomplete burning of mineral oils and biogenic that are derived from
certain biological processes that are acting on the mineral oils.

1513
(Refer Slide Time: 27:42)

Then we looked at the fate of oil. So, if there are oils that have low specific density, so
they come to the bottom, they come to the top and then there is spreading, there is
evaporation, there is photo oxidation and there is certain amount of emulsification,
because these are being acted upon by regular action and if it spreads to the beach, they
can be standing on the beach. Now after now there can be certain soluble some
components of the oil, which can get dissolved or it can become dispersed in the water
and there could be some portion that will sediment down.

Now, if there are things on the top, so, if there is an animal that is coming to the top to
have a grasp of air it might get coated with this oil or it might be eating up this oil. Even
if there is some bird that comes to the surface, it might again get coated with oil or this
oil may get into its mouth parts or say lungs. If the oil has a region to the ecosystem,
there can be 2 kinds of things, one is that there will would be biodegradation by certain
organisms or otherwise there will be bioaccumulation and biomagnification as we move
up the trophic levels.

1514
(Refer Slide Time: 28:57)

Now, the impact of oil spill on the ecosystem is varied depending on what is happening.
If it is coating, then it may lead to physical smothering or inhalation that will lead to
toxicity absorption that will lead to toxicity, if it is dissolved then it will lead to toxicity,
now the factors that will influence their impact on organisms will be things like
seasonality. So, if it is a breeding season or there are presence of eggs or juveniles, the
impact is much more. If it is impacting a key species or keystone species, such as
mangroves, then the impact on the whole of the ecosystem is much larger. Then it will
also depend on the lifestyle factors whether the organism is k selected or r selected, if it
is an organism which has a long life span and is k selected, so, the impact will be much
greater.

If there is an organism that is having certain stress or it is having a bad health, so, the
impact will be much more. Then we looked at vulnerability and sensitivity. So,
sensitivity tells you if something is exposed to the oil. So, what will be the impact of it
and vulnerability asks the question, what is the likelihood that your resource or the
organism will be exposed to the oil so, deep water coral may be sensitive, but not
vulnerable whereas, a rocky shore seaweed maybe vulnerable, but not sensitive. Then we
looked at toxicity, which is of 2 kinds acute and chronic. Then exposure is the
combination of duration of exposure and the concentration of the chemical.

1515
Then there are several exposure routes, which could be say ingestion that is it is getting
into the food or it is getting absorbed, because of the skin or because of the gills or it is
getting in healed and so on. Magnitude, it depends on the sensitivity of the organism and
the concentration of the chemical and the duration of exposure to the chemical. Next, if
you have a toxic chemical, it may lead to a lethal effect or a sub lethal effect. In the lethal
effect the organism dies in the sub lethal effect, it may lead to a reduction in biological
function or health.

(Refer Slide Time: 31:02)

Now, we looked at bioavailability, bioaccumulation and biomagnification. So,

bioavailability is the extent to which a chemical is available for update into an organism;
bioaccumulation occurs, when an organism absorbs a toxic substance into its tissues at a
rate greater than at which the substance is lost. Now, this loss could be because of
degradation in the body or it could be because of excretion out of the body. Third is
biomagnification, which is also known as bioamplification or biological magnification, it
is increase in the concentration of the substance as you move up in the food chain.

So, this was an example of biomagnifications, the concentration of DDD in the water
was 0.01 ppm, but as we move up the food chain to the fish-eating birds it will increases
to as highest 2500 ppm. Now, the impacts on different animals is very different. So, we
looked at impacts on planktons, seabed animals, fish, marine mammals, marine reptiles,
birds, shoreline and coastal habitats.

1516
(Refer Slide Time: 32:07)

Now to reduce the impacts on the ecosystem, you can go for a cleaning operation, which
means, a return to a level of petroleum hydrocarbons that has no detectable impact on the
function of the ecosystems. So, in this case, you are not removing the hydrocarbons
completely, but you are only reducing its amount to a level that you are not able to detect
any impact on the function of the ecosystem.

And recovery is a term, that tells you other about the reestablishment of a biological
community after it has suffered with the disturbance. Now the clean-up operations
include contain and scoop in which you collect the oil from the top or you can burn the
oil in-situ or you can disperse the oil using chemical dispersants, such as detergents or
you can let nature act and do nothing, if it is a very small leak or if there is a little
possibility of it impacting the ecosystems.

Or you can make use of biological agents and fertilizers. So, you can spread
microorganisms or you can spread fertilizers. So, that the microorganisms are able to
multiply and they are able to degrade the oil.

1517
(Refer Slide Time: 33:14)

And then there are certain strategies to protect ecosystems, you avoid setting up oil rigs
in especially vulnerable spots, prevent spills with better technologies, develop models to
anticipate spread. maintain a rapid response teams and technologies and utilize studies on
the long-term impacts and mitigation options.

Next, we looked at plastics and biodiversity. So, plastic is a synthetic material that is
made from a wide range of organic polymers, such as polythene, PVC that is polyvinyl
chloride, nylon, etc, that can be moulded into shape while, soft and then set into a rigid
or slightly elastic form. So, plastics around us and we looked at a short history, it is as
old as 1600 BC the plastic production has been increasing with time and a very small
fraction has ever been recovered.

So, all this plastic it can be either reused and recycled, which we know is a very small
fraction or it can be burnt, when it is burnt it releases carbon dioxide and dioxines or it
can be put into landfills, but then we are running short of landfills or it can be released
into the environment, which ultimately does if you do not do anything and it can reach
into the terrestrial and marine environments. If ultimately it reaches the sea is 15 percent
floats on the surface, 15 percent washes ashore and 70 percentage sinks to the bottom.
So, we looked at all these different examples and on the basis of size that is classified as
macro, meso and micro debris.

1518
Then once you have this larger size fragments, they can undergo physical collision with
each other or with the rocks or probably it could be acted upon by light, oxygen,
microbes and worms. And through a variety of reactions, it may become more fragile
and it will start breaking up into smaller portions. So, then you can have different kinds
of decomposing debris. Now, if you have this smaller debri, they can get aggregated as
well to form the micro debri and the macro debri that is also possible.

Now, if it reaches to the marine animals, they may mistake it for food, they may eat it in
which case their intestines will become completely choked with plastics and they will die
and then we are seeing these plastics everywhere, they are even getting into the food
chain because in the form of micro plastics, which are now getting into the zooplanktons
as well. If it reaches into the bottom, then it might get filtered and concentrated or it
might be even incorporated within the seabed, because of the burrowing animals. Then,
if it comes in contact with the animals, it may lead to entanglement or smothering, such
as these ghost nets in which if an animal is trapped, then this animal will have a slow
death or these entanglements in which it cuts through the skin or we can have the
impacts in terms of persistent bio accumulative in toxic substances such a bisphenol-A
which is used as a plasticizer of brominated flame retardants which are again bio
accumulative toxins.

There can also be accumulation and concentration of the hydrophobic toxins on the
surface, because these are hydrophobic surfaces, then there is a potential to alter the
habitat and behaviour. So, this is an example of a hermit crab, which is now using a cap
of a bottle as its shell or the sea horse, that is using this ear bud or these hyenas, which
are now accumatized to the plastics everywhere. Even in the case of Manas tiger reserve,
we found plastics in the dungs of rhinoceros. So, it is reaching even those areas, that we
considered most pristine areas. Then it can aid in the disposal of organisms, which can
even be invisible organisms and basically if you look at any plastic, because it gets
converted into micro plastics through several rules of degradation, we can see that it
impacts everything from sub cellular organelles to the whole of the ecosystem. So, we
can you help by reducing, reusing and recycling these plastics, lifestyle changes
alternative materials like bioplastics. So, in the case of bioplastics, these have all the
good properties of plastics without having the bad properties, because these are
biodegradable and these are made from biological molecules.

1519
These have strengths that are comparable to that of existing plastics and so, they can be
used to replace the number of plastics. Next we had a look at the impacts of climate
change.

(Refer Slide Time: 37:53)

So, climate is defined as a broad composite of the average conditions in a region

measured in terms of things like, temperature, amount of rainfall, snowfall, snow and ice
cover and winds. So, this is a long-term average and the classical period of taking the
average is 30 years. It has 5 components, the hydrosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere,
cryosphere and the vegetation, which is the biosphere and all these components interact
with each other.

1520
(Refer Slide Time: 38:23)

And then they interact they form the climate system and climate change is defined as a
statistically significant variation in either the mean state of the climate or in its
variabilities. So, when you say mean state if it is getting warmer, we say that it is a
climate change and in variability, if we say that we are getting more frequent cyclones or
more frequent extreme events, more frequent droughts, then we say that it is climate
change.

And it should persist for an extended period typically decades or longer. Climate change
may be due to natural internal processes or because of external forcings or to
anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use. So, when
you have the climatic system, you give it certain stimuli, it produces a certain response.

So, these stimuli are known as forcings and they produce the responses forcings include
changes in the plate tectonics changes in the earth’s orbit or changes in the sun strength
or changes in the anthropogenic forcing and anthropogenic forcing is the most prominent
forcing, that is occurring today. In the case of responses, we can have changes in all the 5
components and these responses can be in terms of physical responses, biological
responses, mineralogical responses, habitat changes, bleaching of coral or large scale
destruction of habitats, in terms of coral reefs or kelp forest or mangroves or the ice
sheets that are there for the polar bears.

1521
And we had seen a number of these examples these days such as rise in the level… of
rise in the invasion of exotic species or we are also looking at different ecological
responses, how we can make use of model to predict, what are responses will be there,
We are seeing responses in health, we are seeing changes in the comfort levels. So, if
you are increasing the temperature, so, there will be an expansion in the cold edge and
there will be an extension in the warm edge. And this is something that we have seen
these days, we are the number of extinctions is also predicted to rise with time and there
will be a change in the spatial distribution. So, for instance organisms that preferred
warmer climates and are till now there on the bottoms of the mountains, they will be able
to reach to the tops.

If you have more amount of rainfall, then it may lead to an increase in the number of
insects that are born on these water pools, we are seeing an increase in vectorial capacity
of different vectors, such as mosquitoes and then we are also seeing changes in the allele
frequency.

So, in the case of tawny owl a few decades back most of the owls were green in colour,
there were very few that were brown in colour, but then because of climate change, now
there is less amount of snow on the trees and so now, we are seeing most of the owls that
are brown in colour and very few number of owls, that are green in colors. So, there are
changes in allele frequencies that we are seeing today.

(Refer Slide Time: 41:31)

1522
So, it is not theoretical. Now to overcome climate change, we can go for mitigation or
adaptation. Now, mitigation is a human intervention to reduce the sources or enhances
the sinks of greenhouse gases. So, essentially, we try we want to limit the amount of
greenhouse gases, we are putting into the atmosphere and we want to increase the
amount of greenhouse gases that we are taking out of the atmosphere.

And the second option is adaptation, which says that climate change is going to happen,
what can we do to make our systems more resilient to the impacts of climate change. So,
it is an adjustment in the natural or human systems in response to actual or expected
climate stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits the beneficial
opportunities, that is adaptation. Both have to be carried on and together at the same
time.

Mitigation options including reducing emissions and creating sinks, such as green energy
REDD or REDD plus or afforestation and in the case of adaptation, we can have
anticipatory or proactive versus reactive adaptation or autonomous versus planned
adaptation or private versus public adaptation. And then we talked about the adaptive
capacity, which is the ability of a system to adjust or the ability of the system to adapt to
climate change to moderate the potential damages to take advantage of opportunities or
to cope with the consequences. We looked at the elements of adaptation you observe and
access and then you go with the deming cycle and use it to give you more inputs
regarding observation.

Now, adaptation options are creating resistance to change creating resilience to change
and permitting responses to change. And whenever we are going with an adaptation
option, you also have to keep in mind the maladaptation which is a negative adaptation
or inadaptation that is not working. Any change in natural or human systems that
inadvertently increase the vulnerability to climatic stimuli and adaptation that does not
succeed in reducing vulnerability, but increases it instead that is a maladaptation.

Now, in the final module, we looked at applied ecology, optimum yield problem,
biological control and ecotoxicology and pollution management along with restoration
ecology.

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(Refer Slide Time: 43:47)

Now, optimum yield problems we began with looking at different megafaunal large sized
animals, that whose populations are collapsing one after the other, because once we are
done with one particular species, once we have brought its population down, we then
change our taste and go with another species and begin putting the second species.

(Refer Slide Time: 44:07)

And we are saying that not only in certain oceans, but also even in certain groups of
species, such as the whales. So, in the case of whales, we have crossed the maximum

1524
sustainable yield for such a long period, that now the population is so low, that we are
not able to get any more whales specially in the case of species such as a blue whale.

So, what do we do next? Ones we are done with the blue whale, we shift to fin whale,
once we are done with the fin whale, we shift to sea whale, once we are done with that,
we shift to minke whale, then we shift to humpback whale. So, essentially, we are using
all the species one after the other and we are leading to sequential megafaunal collapses
in a number of different ecosystems. Now we want to know what is the sustainable size
to which we can go for the poaching of these animals or removal of these animals; so, we
began with the population size.

So, population size in n plus 1 generation is the population size in the nth generation plus
number of births minus number of deaths plus number of animals, that came in from
outside minus number of animals that move to some other areas.

(Refer Slide Time: 45:10)

Now, in the case of weight, we have this equation S 2, which is the weight of stock at the
end of the years is equal to S 1, which is the weight of the stock at the beginning of the
years plus weight of the new recruits that is the number of organisms that were born plus
the growth and the weight of the fish that are remaining alive in the system or the
animals that are remaining alive in the system minus the weight that is removed because
of natural mortality minus the weight that is removed because of fishery or the poaching
operation. Now, in the case of sustainable yield, we want to have the S 2 = S 1. So, we

1525
get this equation R + G = M + F and then we can make use of the logistic growth
equation to predict the best yield. Now in the case of logistic growth equation, we can go
for those areas, where we have a maximum growth rate and that maximum growth rate
occurs in the midpoint of the log phase. So, that is where we want to maintain the
population.

And that will also give us the number of or the weight of individuals that we can take out
at all times. And so, the maximum yield is near the midpoint of the sigmoidal curve, but
then this does not take into account the environmental variability. So, in the case of
Peruvian anchovies, we saw that there was an El Nino event, which drastically drop the
population and then it took roughly 25 years to recover. So, in the case of such events
you have low nutrients that are available, low nutrients leads to a low growth of
planktons, which lowers the availability of food for the fish larvae because they had less
amount of food available for them. So, there is large amount of mortality in these larvae
and at the same time, they are not able to grow properly. So, in that case the population is
not able to cope up. So, even in nature, there is a need to match timings. So, we have the
match mismatch hypothesis, that the if the larvae; if they are coming out of larvae the
timing matches with the time of an abundance of foods. So, in that case the population
will increase. If there is a mismatch, then the population will collapse.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:21)

1526
Then in our equation of taking the midpoint of this the sigmoidal curve, it also does not
take into account a number of other factors, such as human factors. So, we looked at
tragedy of the commons. So, in the case of a common resource, such as ocean it is a
rationistal strategy for every fisherman to take fish out as much amount of fishes as
possible. So, that is rational strategy at the individual level. But then at the overall level
or at the community level, that will lead to a depletion or an unsustainable use of the
resources.

(Refer Slide Time: 47:56)

So, that brought us to the Ludwig’s ratchet, in which case at all times there are
phenomena that are trying to increase the harvesting rate. So, we need to maintain this
harvesting rate at the sustainable rate, but in the case of a good year, people will tend to
increase the harvesting rate above what is the sustainable rate and even in the case of a
bad year people would ask for subsidies to maintain their investments and still go on
fishing at a higher rate, than the sustainable rate. So, essentially the Lotka Volterra
dynamics do not operate, when the human beings are in the picture.

1527
(Refer Slide Time: 48:37)

Then there have been calls to remove the top predator so that we can have access to more
number of fishes, because there are competitors so to speak, but then if the food web is
complex and if you have a middle predator, so, in that case removal of the top predator
will increase the number of middle predators and in that case your fish stock will be
depleted very fast and food webs are so, complicated that we should not be making any
such assumptions.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:06)

1528
Next, we looked at the impact of sizing, if you go for fishing of the last highest
individuals in that case, your population will very quickly become full of individuals that
are small in size and so, any heuristic equation will not be useful in this case.

(Refer Slide Time: 49:22)

So, for effective management, human motivation responses grid short sightedness
everything has to be accommodated into the system you have to add before a scientific
consensus is achieved. You have to act even as soon as the scientists are able to
recognize the problems, you cannot wait for them to give the remedies, because they will
probably not give you the remedies because in the case of giving a remedy it requires a
number of disciplines, you need to know the science, you need to know the economics,
you need to know the behavior of people. You need to know the politics of the area and
so on and then if there is any claim of sustainability, that has to be distrusted, because a
number of past plans of sustainability have not actually worked. And if there is
uncertainty that will always be a part of the system and that has to be confronted.

Next, we will look at biological control. So, we started with pest, a pest is a plant or
animal, that is detrimental to humans or human concerns including crops livestock in
forestry and this is also used for organisms, that are a nuisance looked at examples of
pest, then there are controlled and uncontrolled pest, a pest is uncontrolled if it is leading
to an excessive economic damage, otherwise we call it a controlled pest.

1529
And there are several methods to control these pests, you can go for natural control in
which case you let the system act or nature act itself or you could go with application of
pesticides, which is wrong these days or you could go for cultural control, such as crop
rotation, strip cropping or burning crop, residues or you could go for biological control
using the natural predators or pest or parasites of the pest or you could go for any
integrated pest management. Now, we looked at pesticide their substances that are made
to control the pest including the weeds their use has been increasing with time and they
have different kinds of impacts.

And especially in the case of complex food webs, they may even lead to an increase in
the number of secondary pests, because we are removing the top predators in that area.
Then in the case of biological control, it is reduction of pest by biological introduction of
predators, parasites or diseases by genetic manipulation of crop or pest by sterilizing pest
or by meeting destruction by the use of pheromones or sex attractants. So, in this case, if
you are going for a predator approach in the case of biological control, you start by
selecting a pest that is causing a heavy damage, give a preference to the invasive alien
species, find this specialized predator or parasite or pathogen, that is harming the pest in
its home country and when you introduce the agent into your own country and then you
monitor and if it is successful the pest population will go to a level, where there will be
no significant economic damage anymore.

Then we looked at the prickly pear infestation case study, where the prickly pear was an
introduced species, but then it became an invasive species and it spread to large areas
and then as early as the 1920s, people started thinking about biological control, went to
the Americas, got the predators in this case, the predator was a moth and then brought
those moths into Australia, which led to a rapid decline in the population. So, earlier the
areas that were completely infested with prickly pears, now those areas were freed of the
prickly pears. Now, rather these updating resistance in your crops are genetic
engineering, immunocontraception, pheromones and integrated pest management. Now,
if you want to eradicate your pest completely you need these 6 factors, you require to
have sufficient amount of resources both time, money and manpower.

There has to be a clean line of authority for decision making, the target species should be
easy to find and kill there should be effective means to prevent reintroduction easy
detection of the species, when it is scarce and plants for restoration management, if the

1530
species becomes dominant. And in this case, we have been able to eradicate a few islands
on a few areas from say rodents because we were able to bring in all these concepts.

Then we looked at this story of the foolish crane and the mongoose. So, the crane wants
to get rid of a snake through biological control and it brings in a mongoose and the
mongoose is able to kill the cranes. So, whenever we are doing any biological control,
we need to ensure that the controlling agent that we are bringing into our system does not
harm our native vegetation or other crops.

We saw this interesting example where the Indian mongoose itself is becoming a pest in
areas, where it was introduced as a biological control, which brought us to integrated
pest management, which says that biological controls, cultural controls, mechanical
controls, genetic controls, sterile male techniques, pesticides, everything has to be
integrated in the pest management system so that we are able to get the maximum yield
with the minimum cost and minimum environmental impacts.

Lastly, we had a look at ecotoxicology and pollution management with the restoration
ecology. So, ecotoxicology is the study of the effects of toxic chemicals on biological
organisms at the levels of population, community, ecosystem and biosphere. And some
common toxic elements, they are toxic chemicals, that are considered are pesticides, their
residues, heavy metals, plasticizers, volatile organic compounds like, formaldehyde and
mycotoxins, which are the fungus derived toxins like, aflatoxin. Toxins have different
toxicity levels, they have different lethal doses and the impacts can be lethal, sublethal
genetic, teratogenic, developmental or an impact on reduce fecundity or there can be
addition to the existing stressors.

1531
(Refer Slide Time: 55:15)

Then we looked at this bald eagle shell thickness problem; because of the presence of
DDT, because of the spraying of the DDT it reached to the top level in the food web and
so, it reached the bald eagles, disrupted the calcium metabolism in their bodies and lead
to the creation of shells that were extremely thin and broke before the chicks got a
chance to come out. So, because of that the productivity of the bald eagle declined
considerably, but then once you brought up DDT banned it came back to the normal
levels, because the population was resilient enough.

(Refer Slide Time: 55:51)

1532
So, a number of communities a number of populations resilient and if we want to help in
that recovery, we can bring in restoration. So, restoration is there to aid the recovery and
restoration ecology is the scientific study supporting the practice of ecological
restoration, which is the practice of renewing and restoring degraded, damaged or
destroyed ecosystems and habitats in the environment by active human intervention and
action.

So, there are 4 principles you need to maintain ecological integrity, it has to be an
informed choice informed by the past and future, it has to benefit an engage with the
society, especially the local community and it has to maintain long term sustainability.
So, if all these 4 things are met, then we say that it is a good example of an ecological
restoration. Then we looked at certain degrading and restoration actions and whenever
we are talking about restoration of natural communities it is the function of the local
constraints and it is the function of the regional constraints especially the connectivity.

(Refer Slide Time: 56:53)

And then we saw that, if there are communities that are not yet it equilibrium and they
are very highly connected to the surroundings. So, in that case, if we aim to restore
community function, that will be good enough, because the organisms will be able to
move from the surroundings and maintain the structure of the community by themselves.
But if you are talking about climates communities and they do not have good amount of

1533
exchange with your locality, in that case we will have to aim to restore the community
structure itself.

Because in that case, you will have to bring in all the organisms that will be a part of the
community structure, because they will not be able to come by themselves, because there
is less amount of exchange that is possible in the regions.

Then we looked at examples of mine restoration. So, the causes of degradation here are
deforestation soil erosion, water pollution and heavy metal release and the images of
restoration includes flattening of the waste dumps and landfills to prevent erosion. You
fill up the dug pits, you cover it with a layer of clay to prevent access to rain and oxygen,
then cover it with a layer of topsoil and then grow plants there and in the case of the
tailings dams, you go for evaporation of those tailing dams so, that the heavy metal to get
concentrated and then they can be removed from the area.

(Refer Slide Time: 58:16)

Similarly, in the case of riparian zone, you also have the restoration measures.

Next, we looked at bioremediation, which is the process that is used to treat

contaminated media including water soil and subsurface material by altering the
environmental conditions to stimulate the growth of microorganisms and degrade the
target pollutants.

1534
So, in this case, you are trying to increase the number of microorganisms and those
microorganism field can act on the contaminants and degrade them to a level that it is no
longer toxic. And we could even go for phytoremediation as in the case of this plant that
is phragmites. So, you make your sewage water go through a sedimentation tank,
whatever remains it is passed with the root zones, where redox reactions occur there is a
huge quantity of microbes that are available and they are able to treat the waste, they are
able to reduce the biological oxygen demand, they are able to reduce the total suspended
solids that are there in the water. But then whenever we are talking about restoration, we
have to be prudent it should not be taken to the extreme situations.

So, that is all we wanted to discuss in this particular course. So, I hope you enjoyed the
course. Do well in the examinations. Do well in life. Good luck and Jai hind.

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