Population Growth
SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTER 5: VEGETARIAN LIFESTYLES, GENERAL GUIDELINESAs specified in the syllabus, you are expected to provide synopses of two chapters of the textbook. These are the general guidelines for the first synopsis, which is on chapter 5: Vegetarian Lifestyles. The purpose of the synopses is to ensure that you are properly engaging with the material covered in the textbook, and are properly integrating the basic biology of the insects that we discussed in lectures on the ways in which insects impact humans. To this end, her I provide you with a series of questions to guide your reading and facilitate your synopses. Your synopses should be concise, but complete, answers to these questions.ALL questions specify the maximum number of words required for your answer, and you must observe those word limits. Type your answers into this worksheet and upload them to the link provided on Moodle as a MS word document. DO NOT upload PDF files as I cannot process (grade) pdf files. Your synopsis 1 is due at 11:55 pm, on Sunday January 31, 2021.THE QUESTIONS:1. Phytophagous insects are the most successful animals on the planet because there are many ways to eat any particular plant. Please explain at least three different ways that insects exploit plants and plant products. (60 words, maximum)2. What basic physiological attributes do plant eating insects require? (30 words, maximum).3. Although plants are the most abundant type of food on earth, the vast majority of plant material goes uneaten; this is why the earth is green. Why is it that insects do not eat the vast majority of plant material? (40 words maximum).4. How did the domestication and cultivation of plants affect and change insect lifestyles? (40 words maximum).5. What aspects of insect reproduction determine how fast their populations can increase in size and how large the populations can get? (30 words, maximum).6. What two kinds of factors limit population growth in insects? (20 words, maximum)7. How come prayers, spells, incantations and denunciations were, for a long time, regarded as effective anti insect control devices? (30 words, maximum).8. Discuss two ways in which insects of the order Homoptera[footnoteRef:1] cause significant economic losses to human society (30 words, maximum). [1: This order is now called Hemiptera, as seen on your phylogeny.]9. Scale insects, also within the order Homoptera, are an economic boon to human society. What is the economic importance of scale insects? (60 words maximum).10. Are galls produced by plants to protect themselves from insect damage or do insects stimulate plants to produce the galls? (25 words, maximum).11. In what ways have gall associated insects influenced the wine industry in California and France? (35 words maximum).12. Describe two ways that gall insects are beneficial to human society. (20 words, maximum).13. How was silk discovered according to your textbook? (25 words, maximum).14. Why is silk a pain in the neck to produce? (60 words, maximum).15. Explain how one example of how the search for a better method of silk production is not without its own [harmful] pitfalls. (20 words, maximum).16. What are some military uses of silk from spiders? (30 words).
