Questions:
- Relate the concept of ecological efficiency, as measured in this exercise, with the trophic pyramid illustrated in Figure 17.3. What would the trophic pyramid look like for leaves and leaf miners?
- Leaves would be the producers, and the miners would be the primary consumers.
- What kind of measurements would you need to base your efficiency calculation on kcal of energy in the insect vs. kcal of energy in the leaf tissue it ate?
- You would need to know the amount of energy it takes a miner to eat a defined area of leaf, and you would need to know the amount of kcals in a specified area of the leaf.
- How would you expect ecological efficiency of a leaf miner to compare with the efficiency of an adult leaf-eating beetle flying from branch to branch and chewing on the same kinds of leaves? Explain.
- I would expect the efficiency of the adult to be higher because they consume the entire portion of the leaf whereas miners consume the interior of the leaf only. Adults likely eat more leaves than miners, too.
- Explain how the second law of thermodynamics applies to the ecological efficiency of leaf miners.
- The second law of thermodynamics states that “the entropy of the universe increases during any spontaneous process” (http://entropysite.oxy.edu/students_approach.html). Entropy measures the dispersal of energy. It is not possible to consume energy without expending some amount of energy. The ecological efficiency of leaf miners works to portray the amount of energy consumed by a miner versus the amount it expends, related to the area in which it directly receives and expends its energy.
- Do you think a leaf miner qualifies as an herbivore or a parasite? On what basis would you make a distinction between these categories?
- I think a leaf miner is and herbivore and a endoparasite in that parasites consume the interior of their habitat, the leaf, yet leaf miners eat leaves, which is an herbivorous characteristic.
**Aidan Bailey and I worked together on this lab.
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