If you applied a fungicide to a cornfield, what would you expect to happen to the rate of decomposition and net ecosystem production (NEP)? a. Both decomposition rate and NEP would decrease. b. Neither would change. c. Decomposition rate would increase and NEP would decrease. d. Decomposition rate would decrease and NEP would increase.

Video transcript

Hello everyone. And into this video we have the following problem when fungicide is applied in a forum that the composition rate blank and the ecosystem the net ecosystem production any p blank. And so before we jump into the problem, let me quickly remind you of a few pointers are going to help us go through it. First of all, fungi are what we call primary D composers or the main D composers in ecosystems. They metabolize carbon that is accumulated in it rotting. And finally we have the NMP is going to be carbon produced that is not metabolized in the ecosystem. And so using this information, let us go over the statements so we can use these pointers to help us solve the problem. First of all, when fungicide is applied in a form that the composition rate blank. Well, funk aside what is going to do is that it's going to kill this fungi. So the number of fungi in the ecosystem is going to go down since they are the primary D composers that the composition rate will also go down there wouldn't be as many fungi to decompose carbon. And when there is not that many fun guy to decompose carbon, the net ecosystem production goes up because it is as we said carbon produced that is not metabolized. This fun guy won't be metabolizing this carbon and it would just accumulate in the ecosystem causing it to go up and so looking at the answer choices, the answer choice that reflects where we are stating in the problem is going to be answer choice C and that will be our final answer for this question. And so thank you very much for sticking around until the end of the problem, and I hope to see you on the next one.