How to win at the ecology game 2

Published on April 28, 2021   38 min

A selection of talks on Plant & Animal Sciences

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This is a continuation of the introduction to ecology 2, how to win the ecology game. This talk was divided into two parts. The first part, I just finished, and now I'm going to begin with the second part. Again, I'm Daniel Botkin, Professor of Biology Emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara. This is the second part of the two-part talk. Thank you. What is better,
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being very small or very large? This next slide shows various small species and bacteria, which is photosynthetic and a set of elephants. Life comes in many sizes. The smallest creatures are bacteria. The smallest of these are about one-millionth of a meter long and half that wide and weighed less than a billionth of a billionth of a kilogram. In this slide, next to them are a group of elephants, which are very large.
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The heaviest land organism is probably the largest of the giant sequoia trees of California, known as the Del Norte Titan sequoia. It stands 94 meters high and is more than seven meters in diameter and weighs more than one million kilograms. So the range of sizes of living things is huge. In terms of weight, the range is from a billionth of a billionth of a kilogram to one million kilograms.