A farmer’s land includes a wilderness area that is home to an endangered species of bird. He wants to sell the land to a developer, and you have been hired to evaluate the environmental concerns. “This little patch of land is not crucial for the bird species!” the farmer says, “In fact, my land is surrounded by several other wilderness patches that also have that bird.” You reply: “It is possible that your land acts as the ____________ and the other areas are ___________ . If that's the case, development would be devastating to the population."

Question

A.  sink; sources
B.  source; sinks
C.  population; metapopulation
D.  metapopulation; population


Clarify question:
What type of thinking is required?

Gather Content:
What do you already know about metapopulations? What other information is related to the question? 

Choose Answer:
  Given what you now know, what information is most likely to produce the correct answer?


Reflection on Process:
  Did your problem-solving process lead you to the correct answer? If not, where did the process break down or lead you astray? How can you revise your approach to produce a more desirable result?

Answer 1

B.  source; sinks


Clarify question:
What is the key concept addressed by the question? The key concept is to identify how the different wilderness patches relate to each other in affecting this endangered species of birds.

What type of thinking is required?
This is an evaluate question, you will need to make a judgment between all of the possible answers choices. There are two terms that you must select to make the statement correct.


Gather Content:
What do you already know about metapopulations? What other information is related to the question? 
A metapopulation is a series of small populations that on their own would not be large enough to form a stable single population. The series of populations are intermittently connected to each other and the whole group of sub-populations forms a metapopulation. In a metapopulation the sources are the larger more stable populations and the sinks are the small populations that are not sustainable. The sink areas are constantly being replenished by the source areas.


Choose Answer:
  Given what you now know, what information is most likely to produce the correct answer?
If the farmer’s land were the source area for the metapopulation and the other areas were the sinks then if the farmer sold his land to the developer the source population would be destroyed. If that happened it would only be a matter of time before the smaller sink populations became depleted.


Reflection on Process:
  Did your problem-solving process lead you to the correct answer? If not, where did the process break down or lead you astray? How can you revise your approach to produce a more desirable result?
Were you able to make the correct choice? You needed to weigh each of the choices and decide which one made the statement about the farmer’s land correct. Metapopulations are dynamic and changing populations but without the source sub-populations the meta population cannot persist.