Why do you think wolf and moose populations are represented on the same graph?
How are wolf and moose abundances related to one another? Each symbol on this graph represents the density of moose (read from the horizontal axis) and the density of wolves (read from the vertical axis) for a particular year. The open circles represent years prior to 1980, and the black circles are years after 1980.
What is the goal of the wolf-moose project?
For 50 years, the focused purpose of the Isle Royale wolf-moose project has been to predict and understand a relatively simple natural system. But the more we studied, the more we came to realize how poor our previous explanations had been.
What is the relationship between a wolf and a moose?
An ongoing study of the wolf-moose relationship has confirmed that the two large animals are uniquely interdependent. Wolves are the only natural predator for the moose, and moose make up some 90 percent of the wolves’ diets (the rest is beavers and snowshoe hares).
In what years did the wolf and moose population peak?
The time lag between the wolf peak of 1980 and the moose peak of 1995 is about a 15 year time lag.
How did the moose population change between 1965 and 1972 what happened to the wolf population from 1973 through 1976?
population change between 1965 and 1972? What happened to the wolf population from 1973 through 1976? moose population have led to the change in the wolf population? increased, more food was available to the wolf population and it increased.
What do you think would have happened to the moose on the island had wolves not been introduced?
Had the wolves not been introduced to the island, there is a good change that the deer population would have ultimately died out because there would not have been enough food to support all of the deer present on the island.
What influences the moose population?
Predation, habitat, hunting, and environmental conditions have all been implicated as regulatory mechanisms in ungulate populations.
Is inbreeding a problem for moose?
As discussed above, inbreeding has been shown to have only a small impact on the moose population studied. Another factor that may be potentially important is that of the age structure.
Why is this interaction between the moose and wolves called a cycle?
Why is the interaction between predator and prey called a cycle? it is called a cycle because the interactions happen continuously and never end.
Why is the wolf population likely decreasing?
Why is the wolf population likely decreasing? As a population reaches its carrying capacity, resources become more scarce.
What happens to the wolf population when the moose population decreases?
What would happen to the wolf population if the moose population decreases? If moose decrease, wolves will decrease since moose is major food source. Moose increase; wolves have more food and increase; moose decrease and then wolves decrease.
Why does the wolf population on Isle Royale decline following a decline in the moose population?
The prey are moose, and the predators are wolves. 10. Why does the wolf population on Isle Royale decline following a decline in the moose population? The wolf population declines because there is less for the wolves to feed upon.
How are Wolf and moose populations interconnected?
This graph tells a great deal about how wolf and moose populations are interconnected. If, for example, wolf abundance was determined primarily by food availability and if total moose abundance indicated food availability, then wolf and moose abundances would be positively related.
Why do moose have a higher kill rate than wolves?
One reason is that when predators are more abundant, they might spend more time on activities like defending their territories from other predators. These two ideas can be combined by supposing that kill rate should be greatest during years when the ratio of moose per wolf in the population is greatest.
What’s the relationship between wolves and Moose on Isle Royale?
A graph showing the relationship between the number of wolves and moose on Isle Royale since 1980. The prey to predator relationship of Isle Royale’s moose and wolves has a direct effect on both species’ populations.
What should the R2 value be for moose per wolf?
A value of zero would indicate that moose per wolf explains none of that fluctuation. In this case, with R2=0.53, we can say that fluctuations from one year to the next in the number of moose per wolf (i.e., the horizontal axis) explains about half (53%) of all the fluctuations that we observe in kill rate.