everybody its mistress Meads and today we're talking about topic 3.1 specialists and generalists pcs so what we have here are two closely related species the raccoon and the red panda and although they're very closely related and they look very similar they have very different habitat and food needs so the red panda is a specialist species or sometimes referred to as a niche specialist and this is because it has a very narrow range of Tolerance it needs very specific habitat and food source that's bamboo red pandas don't digest cellulose very well so they may be huge quantities of bamboo in order to survive raccoons on the other hand have an extremely varied diet so they're able to eat all sorts of foods they can eat things like plants and mushrooms they can eat the eggs of birds and reptiles they can even eat small insects and amphibians so they're far more adaptable or far more generalized so we refer to them as a generalist species here are our learning objectives essential knowledge and the skills we'll be practicing today so our objective today is to be able to identify the difference between generalist and specialist species and our essential knowledge is to know that specialist species are advantaged in habitats that remain constant whereas generalist species are advantaged in habitats that are constantly changing and the skill that we'll practice with this essential knowledge at the end of the video will be explaining an environmental concept so here we can look at the ecological tolerance of specialists and generalists species specialist species like the Panda are going to have a really narrow range of ecological tolerance they don't tolerate changing ecosystems very well because they have a really specific food requirement that's bamboo so if an environmental disturbance disrupts the ability of that force to produce bamboo those conditions are no longer really hospitable to the Panda so it's less able to adapt to new conditions the generalist species on the other hand have a very large range of tolerance so they've got a broad niche this is going to make them less prone to extinction and more likely to be invasive that's because they have a really really broad food availability and so they can easily switch their diet to it food source if one of their sources becomes less available they're very adaptable but this also makes them very likely to be invasive if they come to an ecosystem they are very competitive and they can utilize a broad range of resources which means they compete with a broad range of organisms and so generalists are far more likely to be invasive whereas specialists are far more likely to be disturbed by invasive species next we have a table here or a sort of graphic that shows the different characteristics of each we have the koala bear and the panda bear in the specialist category remember this means they have really specific and specialized needs this makes them less adaptable another way to think about specialists is they're very picky they can't really easily change or shift to a new resource because they have such narrow tolerance this again means that they are at a disadvantage when conditions are changing so the generalists are an advantage when conditions change because they can simply shift to a new food or habitat resource they use a variety of resources so this gives them a high range of tolerance the specialists on the other hand they're easily disturbed or easily disrupted so they're far more likely to be endangered as is the case with a koala and the panda bear and they're far more likely to go extinct unfortunately because when their ecosystems are threatened or disturbed they just don't possess that adaptability and so we'll wrap up today by practicing an frq here that will involve concept explanation that's our skill and so you want to identify so just say it one simple characteristic of specialist species but then explain how does that characteristic make them more likely to become extinct than generalist species alright everybody thanks for watching today don't forget to like this video if it was helpful and subscribe for future video notes and as always think like a mountain write like a scholar