The island of Guam traditionally has not had any snakes that prey on birds; however, brown tree snakes that prey upon birds were introduced. Use your knowledge of wolf-moose population dynamics to determine what happened to the population dynamics of birds and the new snakes on Guam. Which statement is probably one of the results of the snake introduction?

Question

Biology

Jerome Anthony

3 March, 02:21

The island of Guam traditionally has not had any snakes that prey on birds; however, brown tree snakes that prey upon birds were introduced. Use your knowledge of wolf-moose population dynamics to determine what happened to the population dynamics of birds and the new snakes on Guam. Which statement is probably one of the results of the snake introduction?

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Answers (1)

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Timothy Sullivan · Answer 1

Since, the options have not been given the question is incomplete. The complete question is as follows:

The island of Guam traditionally has not had any snakes that prey on birds; however, brown tree snakes that prey upon birds were introduced. Use your knowledge of wolf-moose population dynamics to determine what happened to the population dynamics of birds and the new snakes on Guam. Which statement is probably one of the results of the snake introduction?

Because prey was abundant and few predators existed, snakes spread throughout the island.; Snake populations increased exponentially as they preyed upon birds that had no defenses against the predators.; As snake populations became very large, they reached the carrying capacity of Guam and caused bird populations to crash.; Because bird populations crashed, one of the birds' main prey items, spiders, increased their population size.

Answer: Because bird populations crashed, one of the birds' main prey items, spiders, increased their population size.

Explanation:

The wolf-moose population dynamics suggests that if the population of the moose increases the wolves will get more food and will increase in number whereas if the population of moose decrease the wolves will also decrease. This describes the predator-prey relationship.

According to the given situation, all the statements describes the predator prey relationship between birds and snake. The snake population will increase in the Island due to the availability of birds as food. But the statement, Because bird populations crashed, one of the birds' main prey items, spiders, increased their population size. is not directly related to the predator prey relationship between bird and snake. This is one of the consequences of the decline or crash of the bird population after the introduction of the snake population.