How Much Acreage of Grain is Needed to Feed a Barn Owl?

Barn owl:  2 kg
Barn owls eat roughly 2/3rd their body weight
2 kg barn owl eats 4/3 kg
barn owl eats 1.333 kg/day
barn owl eats 1333 grams/day
barn owl eats 1333 x 365: equivalent of 486,545 grams/year
486,545 grams per year/32 gram vole: 15,205 voles/year
vole weighs 14-50 grams
average vole weight: 32 grams
vole eats its body weight daily
over one year 1 vole eats 32 x 365 grams: 11,680 grams per year
15,205 voles/year x 11,680 grams per vole: 176,500,000 grams per barn owl per year
176,500 kg per vole per barn owl per year/3000 kg per acre: 58.833 acres of wheat
It takes 58.833 acres of wheat to sustain a 2kg barn owl for one year according to these calculations

Ecosystem Diversity Video

1. Why do tropical rainforests have such immense diversity? How do they maintain their diversity?

They maintain a very diverse population because of the specialization of all of the species which allows there to be a tremendous amount of different species in a small space of land. 2. What role do tropical forests play in stabilizing climate and atmosphere? Can we take advantage of and enhance their ability to store carbon? Why is this important?

Rain forest play an essential role to help stabilize the climate because the vast amounts of plant life consume massive amounts of CO2. This is so important because CO2 is a greenhouse gas the contributes to global warming.

3.How can the data from a tropical rainforest that explains species diversity and abundance be helpful in managing and protecting temperate forests such as those in Yellowstone National Park or any other ecosystem on planet Earth?

You can observe that keystone species are so important to the ecosystems because when all of the wolves were killed off in Yellowstone there was an extremely detrimental effect on the environment because the top consumer was removed which caused a massive influx and decline of other species

Depicting an Energy System

In the Energy system activity, we were asked to depict a energy system or a food chain. To do this we created a producer (tree), a primary consumer (bug), a secondary consumer (mouse), a tertiary consumer (snake), and a top level consumer (eagle).