Pillbug Case Study Answers

Julia is very excited about her new garden. She has just bought a new house right outside some woods and has built a garden in her yard. She's new to gardening though and is worried about it. She is constantly seeing these little “ roly-polies” bugs around her plants and worries they may be harmful to her garden. So she decides to do some research, and she finds that the “roly-polies” are actually called Pillbug's or Armadillidiidae. In here research she finds that Pillbug's live just about anywhere there is moisture and dead plants to eat, but they are most common in forests and other humid habitats. This explains why there is always so many with a forest near by and great moisture and plants. She also finds that Pillbug's are arthropods,

It is no surprise that you would find them in your garden. Pillbug's enjoy, or cant live without a moist environment. Though maybe someday they will be able to evolve to go without just like they evolved to move from the water to land. First off the pillbug role in an ecosystem is to help break down dead plants and animals and return organic matter to the soil. It is then further digested by fungi, protozoans, and bacteria, hence making nitrates, phosphates, and other vital nutrients available to plants and helping them grow. So without the pillbug there would more dead plants lying around and without it being returned to organic mature in the soil the plants around the given area wouldn't have as much of their vital nutrients needed to grow. And with the plants being hurt by this it would furthermore effect the consumers and throw everything off balance. Though another thing the Pillbug is good for is removing many of the toxic metal ions from the soil. They are able to thrive where other species cannot, and promote the restoration of contaminated sites by accelerating topsoil formation. Pillbug's will not interact a whole lot having very bad eyesight and often come ing out at night. When they are communicating with one another they likely use chemicals. Now some abiotic resources that would exist in your given ecosystem would be humidity, amount of rain, amount of sunlight, and the temperature. Biotic factors would be different types of trees and plants, other bugs, animals, and even humans. One way that we benefit from the pillbug is that they can serve as a form of biological weed control. Now to your final question Pillbug’s are r strategist and have many young, though within the first few days of hatching less than half of them live and only a handful make it to adulthood. Their population growth can be shown with a S-curve. This indicates that there is a limit to how