Another hypothesis for snowshoe hare population cycles proposes that they are caused by sunspot activity. According to this hypothesis, sunspot activity affects the chemicals present in the plants eaten by hares, which in turn affects the quality of the food.
What testable predictions are generated by this hypothesis?

Question

Another hypothesis for snowshoe hare population cycles proposes that they are caused by sunspot activity. According to this hypothesis, sunspot activity affects the chemicals present in the plants eaten by hares, which in turn affects the quality of the food.
What testable predictions are generated by this hypothesis?

What testable predictions are generated by this hypothesis?

Accepted Answer

Hi everyone welcome back. Here's our next problem. two populations experience regular fluctuations or population cycles because of and then we have different kinds of relationships between the two groups. So we need to imagine what would cause the relationships between two populations to have these fluctuations or cyclical relationship. And the answer is that that's when we look at a predator prey dynamic, even someone who's called predator prey cycle. Um And if we think about it, that's because imagine we have our predator and prey and suddenly the prey population increases. And then as a result we have the predators are like tons of food. And at that point the predator population increases because food is so abundant. Well when the predator population increases their eating up all the prey. So as a result, we now see a decrease in the prey population. Well, of course now predators don't have enough food and their population begins to drop with the result that as there's less predators around, we go back to the beginning of cycle and prey population increases so we can cycle around and around and around and the alternating um increase in one increasing the other decrease in one decreasing the other. Making a cycle these cyclical fluctuations. So let's just look at the other answer choices to understand why they're not correct choice A is a mutual relationship and mutual realistic relationship both benefit. So you wouldn't see a cyclical relationship as both will be doing well together based on their relationship, they're not going to alternate one doing well and one doing poorly. So that's why Choice A is incorrect. Choice C. Is a commence a relationship. And this um commence realism. You have one benefits one member of the relationship, one is neither harmed nor benefits. And you won't see cyclical fluctuations because no matter what's happening to the population of say. Um So you would see um some relationship and how they're doing if the one that that neither is harmed nor benefits, if something happens to that population, the population that benefits from it will be harmed, it will drop because it depended on that, you know? So we imagine um tree frogs who shelter under leaves from the rain and the plant they shelter under has no benefit, no harm from that relationship. Well, if suddenly the trees are cut down, the frogs might be harmed, but there's not a back and forth between them. If something happened to the frogs, nothing would happen to the trees. So it's not that interplay the way there is between predator and prey. So that's why Choice C. Is under correct answer. And finally, Choice D. Competition. Um And competition essentially both are harmed, that sort of dramatic term. But I think about it, you have a certain resource and two populations are competing for the same resource. So you won't have the back and forth if their resource drops, both populations will be harmed at the same time, you won't have that cyclical relationship. So that's why choice D. Is not correct. So again, two populations experienced regular fluctuations or population cycles. Because of choice be predator prey dynamics. See you in the next video.

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Key Concepts

Hypothesis Testing

Ecological Interactions

Population Dynamics