1. What is the difference between population distribution and population structure?

2. Why is the realized niche considered a subset of the fundamental niche?

3. The American bullfrog is native to eastern North America, but it has been moved by humans and now thrives in western North America. What does this suggest about the cause of the bullfrog’s historical range limit?

4. How can ecological niche modeling be used to predict the spread of introduced species?

5. What mechanisms could cause evenly spaced versus clustered distributions of individuals within populations?

6. Suppose that 100 cattle were allowed to graze in either one of two pastures. If the grass was three times more productive in pasture A than in pasture B, how many cattle would be in each pasture if they followed an ideal free distribution? What might prevent this distribution of cattle from happening?

7. What realities of nature do source–sink models and landscape models include that basic metapopulation models do not include?

8. How would lifetime dispersal distance and neighborhood size differ for a plant whose seeds are carried by the wind and a plant whose seeds drop near the parent plant?

9. Why do most species have their highest densities near the center of their geographic range?

10. Explain why researchers commonly find a relationship between adult body size and population density.