The 16 diploid individuals in the population each have two alleles, thus 32 alleles. Solar radiation, temperature, and water are all important in determining the amount of primary production created in terrestrial ecosystems. Therefore, researchers have found that a measure which incorporates all of these variables is a better predictor of primary production than any of these variables on their own. Evapotranspiration is a synthetic variable which incorporates the simultaneous effect of all three variables. This question draws directly from Figure 19.4 in the lecture study guide.
Snakes are poikilotherms whereas foxes are homeotherms.
Respiration costs in homeotherms are much higher than in poikilotherms. Therefore, more of the energy assimilated by snakes than foxes, is turned into net production. Snakes have higher production efficiencies than foxes which means that they can survive on a smaller amount of prey than can foxes. Ecosystems with low EE are ones in which a lot of the primary production is bound up in materials which are not readily available to grazing consumers and, instead, these materials move through the slower, decomposer pathway. In this graph, community A could represent an open-ocean ecosystem while community B could represent a mature forest.