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224 Cards in this Set
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This is a derived feature that defines the Chordates. It is a flexible rod running length of body, stiffened by hydrostatic pressure, and segmental muscles bend it (and body) side-to-side (undulatory locomotion).
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What is a notocord?
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This derived feature is important because it is one of the four derived features that define the Chordate phylum. It is characterized by being single and dorsal, and it lies just above the notochord.
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What is the importance of a single, dorsal, hoolow nerve cord?
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These are openings in the lateral walls of pharynx that originally were for filter feeding (later adapted for gas exchange). It is present in embryos of terrestrial forms. Its importance is that it is a key feature of the chordate phylum.
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What is paryngeal silts?
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This is a key feature of chordates. It is an aquatic locomotory organ—segmental muscles act on notochord to bend it—fin extensions increase surface area, which aids propulsion.
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What is a postanal tail?
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This clade provides an example of synapomorhies that define a clade being lost. Although the clade has characteristics of Chordates, adult members lack a notochord, nerve cord, tail, and adults are mostly sessile, marine, and filter feeders.
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What is the reason why Tunicates provide an example of synapomorhies that define a clade being lost?
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This clade provides an example of synapomorhies that define a clade being lost. Although the clade has characteristics of Chordates, adult members lack a notochord, nerve cord, tail, and adults are mostly sessile, marine, and filter feeders.
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What is the reason why Tunicates provide an example of synapomorhies that define a clade being lost?
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This clade provides an example of features found in early stages of development being conserved because as larve it still has many of the characteristics that make it a part of the in-group, Chordates. For example, larvae forms of this clade have elongated bodies, pharyngeal silts, notochord, dorsal nerve cord, and propulsive tail.
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What is the reason why Tunicates provide an example of features found in early stages of development being conserved?
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This clade provides an example of synapomorhies developing into new and derived characters because when larvae of this clade metamorphose into sessile adults, they lose defining synapomorhies of Chordates. For instance, they lose characters like a notochord, nerve chord, and tail and instead develop new and derived characters that better suit their ecological niche, like a tough “tunic” sounding their body.
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What is the reason why Tunicates provide an example of synapomorphies developing into new and derived characters?
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This taxon is one of the earliest taxons of Chordates because it has all 4 Chordate features through life and several “vertebrate-like” features. For instance, it has a circulatory system that pumps blood through pharyngeal gills, segmented trunk musculature, and anterior swelling of dorsal nerve chord—probably incipient brain.
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What are the characters that make Lancelets one of the earliest species of Chordates?
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This taxon exhibits the trend that these genes are often conserved because these genes that are expressed in anterior swelling of this taxon’s verve cord are also expressed in same sequence in vertebrate brain.
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What is the reason why Lancelets exhibit the trend that Hox genes are often conserved?
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This taxon of Chordates have a brain, a skull (surrounding the brain, eyes, and other sensory organs at their anterior ends, which all equal a head. Most importantly, they are characterized by having neural crest cells.
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What are the defining characteristics of Craniate Chordates?
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These cells define Craniate Chordates. They arise during development and give rise to many tissues of the head (parts of skull, sensory organs, teeth, etc.).
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What are neural crest cells?
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Having this feature is important to Craniates because it allows them to be active predators and have organ systems that are more specialized for sustaining higher activity levels.
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What is the importance of having a head to Craniates?
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The advantages of having this structure are so advantageous because they allow organisms to more effectively gather resources and more effectively extract nutrients from those resources, increasing the relative fitness of organisms.
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What is the reason why the advantages of having a head are so “advantageous?”
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This is the evolutionary retention of juvenile (larval) features in adults. It is also an example of heterochrony.
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What is paedomorphosis?
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This is the evolutionary retention of juvenile (larval) features in adults. It is also an example of heterochrony.
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What is paedeomorphy?
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This trend in many lineages exemplifies the idea that characters stopping early in their development can cause new evolutionary changes. For instance, the chimpanzee head stopping early in its development may have caused the formation of the head of the human species—and we all know the rest.
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What is the importance of paedomorphosis?
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This taxon of Chordates is characterized by a vertebral column (backbone) and an endoskeleton.
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What are the characteristics of vertebrates?
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This skeletal system is living and dynamic tissue that contains living bone cells and many blood vessels. Bones provide protection for vertebrates. It also does not constrain body size as much as exoskeletons.
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What are characteristics of endoskeletons?
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This skeletal structure’s ability to repair itself is important because it allows the skeletal system to repair micro wear and tear to bones and to adjust the shape of bones to better match functional demands. Both advantages increase relative fitness.
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What are the functional advantages of endoskeletons repairing themselves?
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This skeletal structure’s ability to repair itself is important because it allows the skeletal system to repair micro wear and tear to bones and to adjust the shape of bones to better match functional demands. Both advantages increase relative fitness.
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What are the functional advantages of endoskeletons repairing themselves?
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This skeletal system is selectively more advantageous than exoskeletons because it may only constrain body size to a small degree, is more energy efficient, and constantly protects the body from harm.
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What are the reasons why endoskeletons are selectively more advantageous than exoskeletons?
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This feature of Chordates is a part of the ectoderm and first formed armor plates in Chordates body. Then, it became more derived until it was only a part of the jaw. Selective pressure was on Chordates to develop jaws with this structure in them to allow for stronger bites and better gripping of prey.
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What is the way in which teeth evolved to be only a part of the jaw?
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This structure more than likely co-evolved with jaws because it provides good control and maneuverability, which better allows predators to catch prey.
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What is the reason why fins co-evolved with jaws?
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This is the name for jawed vertebrates.
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What are Gnathostomes?
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The following features characterize this clade of Gnathostomes: cartilaginous skeleton, cartilage often stiffened by calcification, and livers pack with lipids.
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What are the characteristics of Chondrichthyes?
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Chondrichthyes having this type of skeleton is advantageous because it is lighter than bone and less weight means that less energy is needed to propel the fish. Energy budget is a major theme.
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What are the selective advantages of Chondrichthyes having a cartilaginous skeleton?
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It is advantageous for this clade to have their cartilaginous skeleton stiffened by calcification because it allows for the skeleton to transfer force to the water while being light enough to conserve energy. Energy budget is a major theme.
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What are the selective advantages of Chondrichthyes having their cartilaginous skeleton being stiffened by calcification?
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It is advantageous for this clade to have livers packed with lipids because since oil floats, it helps the individuals have natural buoyancy. Being able to float with little to no effort saves them energy, which relates to energy budgets a major theme.
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What are the selective advantages of Chondrichthyes having livers packed with lipids?
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This clade of Gnathostomes performs have high levels of urea in their blood to make body fluids iso-osmotic to seawater because they are mostly marine forms. Doing so is advantageous because there is no net flux in water, which shows why this clade performs this procedure.
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What is the way in which Chondrichthyes perform osmoregulation?
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This clade of Gnathostomes is characterized by having their reproduction taking a long time to make offspring. That is important because killing one female is a significant loss to a population of this clade. In addition, their long reproductive cycle relates to the cons of multicellularity.
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What are the characteristics of the Chondrichthyes’ reproduction?
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This clade of Gnathostomes has the following sensory systems: excellent olfactory abilities, well-developed later line system, and presence of electroreceptors. All features help with predation.
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What are the characteristics of the Chondrichthyes sensory systems?
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This clade of Gnathostomes have the following characteristics: bony skeleton—relates to endoskeleton pros—many have gas-filled swim bladders for natural buoyancy, gills covered by operculum on side of head—last two characteristics relate to energy budget.
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What are the characteristics of Osteichthyes?
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In many organisms from this taxon, their gas exchange system maximizes the rate of passive diffusion of oxygen and carbon dioxide between water or air and blood by 1) having a high surface area in the gills and 2) having the blood flow in a countercurrent to the flow of water through the gills.
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What are the selective advantages of gas exchange systems of Osteichthyes?
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This characteristic of bony fishes’ gas exchange system is advantageous because it allows for passive diffusion to occur across entire gas exchange system, which better maximizes passive diffusion.
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What is the reason why a countercurrent between the flow of water and blood maximizes diffusion of oxygen and carbon dioxide throughout the entire gas exchange system?
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In this group of fishes, body fluids are less concentrated than the water surrounding them, causing water to flow out of body. They fix this problem and achieve homeostasis by drinking the surrounding water and excreting excess ions via gills.
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What is the osmoregulation system in marine fishes?
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In this group of fishes, body fluids are more concentrated with water than the water surrounding them, causing water to flow into body. They fix this problem and achieve homeostasis by excreting large amounts of water through diluted urine while in-taking ions from the surrounding water.
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What is the osmoregulation system in freshwater fishes?
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These jaws that are in the back of the throat of most ray-finned fishes are specialized for food processing, which increases the SA:V of food to gut. By doing so, it maximizes nutrient absorption of gut.
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What is the purpose of pharyngeal jaws?
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This type of specialization is important to ray-finned fishes phylogeny because it may have facilitated to the phylum’s diversification by opening new niches. In addition, it may have aided in the phylum’s success by increasing nutrient absorption.
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What is the importance of feeding specializations in ray-finned fishes?
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It is advantageous for this group of fishes being able to change sexes because it maximizes their relative fitness.
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What is the advantage of ray-finned fishes being able to change their sex?
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This phylum of animals has the following unique features: lack osmoregulatory organs, they have spiny skin, and they use a hydraulic system for locomotion.
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What are the unique features of Echinoderms?
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This example of an evolutionary change in the rate or timing of developmental events adds the notion that stopping early in an individuals development can cause evolutionary changes. This wrinkle helps to balance the idea regarding evolution, which states that new adaptations are only added onto the terminal ends of a lineages developmental history.
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What is the wrinkle that Paedomorphosis adds to the theory of evolution?
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Lungs developed in both of these two phylum because as water becomes hotter its concentration of oxygen decreases. This forces individuals to go the surface to get oxygen because there is a higher concentration of oxygen in the air than in the water.
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What was the selective pressure that selected for the development of lungs in ray-finned fishes and lobe-finned fishes?
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This clade is the common ancestor of tetrapods because they have muscular tissues and internal bone supports at base of fins and some of them mainly use lungs to breathe.
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What are the characteristics of Lobe-finned fishes that indicate that they are close relatives of the earliest forms of tetrapods?
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This evolutionary step in tetrapod’s history may have been favored by high predation in the sea, high competition for resources in sea, low predation on land, new and plentiful resources on land, and less competition for those resources on land.
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What are the selective factors that may have favored the evolution of terrestriality in tetrapods?
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Lineages of aquatic animals attempting to accomplish this task face the following problems: threat of desiccation, need for body support, reproductive adaptations, improve locomotion in new environment, lung breathing, need to modify sensory organs, need to specialize mechanisms like feeding.
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What are the “problems” facing an aquatic lineage of animals colonizing land?
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The major characteristics of this phylum include: moist skin, mucus glands, poison glands in skin, interlocking joints, specialized locomotion for land, a neck to turn the head without turning the body, new feeding strategies for use on land, and new reproductive strategies better suited for land.
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What are the characteristics of amphibians?
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The characteristics of this clade tie into themes of developing new and derived features in response to desiccation, need to have body support, need to maximize energy budget, retention of ancestral character states and those character states being more derived, and specialization of characters that better match this clade to their new environment. All of these themes relate to surface area to volume ratio, energy budget, relative fitness, and natural selection.
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What are the major themes that tie into ways the characteristics of amphibians?
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This clade’s method of reproduction is either characterized by external fertilization in water or laying of direct-developing of eggs on land. These two characteristics show retention of ancestral condition juxtaposed against more derived form of ancestral condition, which is better suited for more terrestrial environment.
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What are the characteristics of amphibian reproduction?
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This clade’s method of locomotion is an ancestral lateral undulation of body retained by earliest forms of this clade. Some members, however, have a more derived form of locomotion. Either way, it shows parsimony of the development in new adaptations for the lineage’s phylogeny.
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What are the characteristics of amphibian locomotion?
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This clade’s feeding strategies include using a sticky tongue because suctioning air is an ineffective way to catch prey, which shows how new features are developed in response to new selective pressures.
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What are the characteristics of amphibian feeding strategies?
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The worldwide decline and extinction in this clade’s population is due to a fungus being spread worldwide by humans. The process exemplifies the dangers of invasion species killing populations due to the populations being formerly isolated from the invasive species and never co-evolving with the species and developing a resistance to it.
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What is the major factor that the decline and extinction of many amphibian populations worldwide, and what is its importance to our study of evolution?
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In this clade and further terrestrial tetrapods, they developed interlocking vertebrae because this form of vertebrae supports the body with less energy than if muscles supported the entire body.
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What are the characteristics of body support development in amphibians?
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This clade has the following important derived features: a shelled, amniotic, egg, dry skin, and internal fertilization.
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What are the important derived features of Amniotes?
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The derived features of this clade are significant because they facilitate full terrestrialization of land.
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What is the significance of the derived features found in Amniotes?
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What is the significance of shelled, amniotic, eggs in Amniotes?
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What is the significance of shelled, amniotic, eggs in Amniotes?
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In this clade, dry skin is a significant derived feature because it allows members to colonize deeper into land environments. By doing so, it opens new niches with many advantages, allowing diversification.
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What is the significance of dry skin in Amniotes?
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In this clade, internal fertilization is important because it represents a derived feature that came about in order to overcome the threat of desiccation on land. By doing so, it opens new and available niches to members, which were previously unavailable. Thus, it helps lead to diversification, adaptive radiation, and etc.
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What is the significance of internal fertilization in Amniotes?
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In terms of this rate between ectotherms and endotherms, endotherms have a much higher rate of this than ectotherms because they must keep up their constant and high body temperature. This information is important because having a higher rate of this is selectively advantageous.
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What is the trend of metabolic rates between ectotherms and endotherms?
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This rate drops with increasing body size in both ectotherms and endotherms. The trend is a result of larger animals generating a lot of heat and having low surface area to dissipate the heat. So, they do need high rates of this to keep a high and stable body temperature. Just for fun: this helps explain why big animals like mammals all lack fur and why big endotherms, like in the case of crocodiles, have little variation in their body temperature.
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What is the trend of metabolic rates as it relates to body size?
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This body temperature mechanism has the following advantages: organisms can survive in more varied environments, this mechanism’s metabolic rate helps extend activity capacity, individuals with this temperature mechanism can recover from fatigue faster, they can grow faster and reach maturity faster, and they have increased enzymatic efficiency.
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What are some selective advantages of endothermy?
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This body temperature has the following advantages: less energy expenditure to support body temperature—so individuals need less energy, allowing them to live longer without energy, which makes them better able to survive long periods of no resources, more energy can be devoted to reproduction, individuals with this body temperature
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What are some selective advantages of ectothermy?
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This body temperature mechanism has the following disadvantages: it requires more resources to be devoted to maintaining a relatively high and constant body temperature, which takes energy away from reproduction, it requires larger body sizes, and it requires a large amount of resources to maintain this body temperature mechanism.
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What are the selective disadvantages of endothermy?
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This body temperature mechanism has the following disadvantages: individuals with this mechanism cannot survive in varied climates, individuals cannot maintain an extended active lifestyle, they cannot recover from fatigue and repair tissue quickly, they usually do not grow very large, and they have a less efficient enzymatic rates because their body temperature is more varied.
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What are the selective disadvantages of ectothermy?
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The advantages and disadvantages of these two types of body temperature mechanisms tie into the major themes of surface area to volume ratio, energy budget, and the trend that higher metabolic rates are selectively more advantageous for species than lower metabolic rates.
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What are the major themes of evolution that relate to the advantages and disadvantages of ectothermy and endothermy?
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The advantages of having this type of metabolic rate are as follows: extended activity, which allows individual to acquire more resources. Acquiring more resources allows individuals to get bigger, be more fit, and beat out competition for resources and mates. In short, this metabolic rate increases relative fitness.
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What are the advantages of having a higher metabolic rate, which is found in endotherms?
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The advantages and disadvantages of these two body temperature mechanisms tie into the major themes of surface area to volume ratio, energy budget, and the trend that higher metabolic rates are selectively more advantageous for species than lower metabolic rates.
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What are the major themes of evolution that relate to the advantages and disadvantages of ectothermy and endothermy?
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This total sum of using energy developed in response to different selective pressures operating on different lineages, which may have different metabolic rates.
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What is the trend that is found in the development of energy budgets?
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The key innovation in this clade is its ability to swallow large prey. Also, on a side note, its interesting that they feed infrequently on meals and they shut down their digestive system to conserve energy when they are not eating.
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What is the key innovation in snakes?
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This clade exemplifies the selective advantages of being ectothermic because their characteristics exemplify ectotherms advantage of needing less energy to survive and being able to survive long periods between food resources.
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What is the way in which snakes exemplify the selective advantages of being ectothermic?
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This clade has the following major innovations: longer limbs for faster running and more erect (narrow stance with higher center of mass).
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What are the major innovations in the Archosaurs clade?
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In this clade, its major innovations are selectively advantageous because one increases stride length, making members faster, and the other allows for greater agility making them accelerate faster. Both of the advantages help with capturing prey, which would increase fitness.
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What are the selective advantages of having longer limbs and a more erect (narrow) stance with higher center of mass, the major innovations in Archosaurs?
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This major innovation in Archosaurs opened the door for the evolution of grasping forehands because it freed up the forehands to do other things (lol).
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What is the development that bipedality facilitated?
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The major theme of this derived character is that it opened the door to new niches, making alliopatric speciation occurring more easily.
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What is the major theme of flight as it relates to phylogenetics?
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This is a highly specialized characteristic of flight, which exemplifies the evidence that that birds came from dinosaurs because such derived features are not likely to develop independently, like in convergent evolution.
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What is the major theme of feathers?
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These are features that evolve in response to selection for one purpose and then are co-opted for another function, like in the case of feathers in dinosaurs.
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What are exaptations?
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This ventilatory system has the following selective advantages: it is more effectively at displacing stale air while in-taking fresh air—allowing for higher rates of diffusion to occur in the gas exchange system—and it may require less energy because it is facilitated by movements during aerobic activity, which also delivers oxygen when the individual needs it the most.
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What are some functional advantages of the avian ventilatory system compare to the mammalian system?
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This clade performs lung ventilation by inspiration, where air goes into the lungs due to an increased volume, and expiration, where air leaves the lung due to a decreased volume. The process is an important example the pressure gradient.
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What is the characteristic of tetrapod lung vitalization and what is its importance?
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This behavior of birds is selectively advantageous because it allows the birds to reach new food resources that are not being utilized, so less competition for them, and more resources can increase fitness—enhancing the successfulness of the clade.
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What are the selective advantages of bird migrations?
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Early organisms from this lineage were small due to Dinosaurs filling many ecological niches. This fact ties into the evolutionary theme of animal diversity (large/small body sizes, predators/prey, etc.) and also animal development (adaptive evolution) being related to the availability of ecological niches.
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What is the overarching evolutionary theme that ties into the small size of early mammals?
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The three synapomorphies of this lineage are their glands, hair, and 3 middle ear ossicles.
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What are the three synapomorphies of mammals?
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The three synapomorphies of this lineage are their glands, hair, and 3 middle ear ossicles.
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What are the three synapomorphies of mammals?
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The function of this mammalian characteristic are to protect body from dessication, to insulate body by keeping it dry and warm, to keep warm air near body, and to detect any movement near body so that the individual can scratch little bugs off or to detect things at night.
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What is the function of hair?
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The function of this mammalian characteristic are to protect body from dessication, to insulate body by keeping it dry and warm, to keep warm air near body, and to detect any movement near body so that the individual can scratch little bugs off or to detect things at night.
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What is the function of hair?
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The major themes of evolution and development that encompass this mammalian characteristic are surface area to volume ratio, water conservation, and thermoregulation.
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What are the major themes of evolution and development that encompass the mammalian characteristic of hair?
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The major themes of evolution and development that encompass this mammalian characteristic are surface area to volume ratio, water conservation, and thermoregulation.
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What are the major themes of evolution and development that encompass the mammalian characteristic of hair?
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The most important function of this mammalian characteristic is that it increases the surface area to volume ratio between food and digestive system.
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What is the important function of teeth for endotherms?
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The most important function of this mammalian characteristic is that it increases the surface area to volume ratio between food and digestive system.
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What is the important function of teeth for endotherms?
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The function of this characteristic, which is found in mammals, is vitally important for endotherms to absorb the most nutrients from food as quickly as possible (efficiency) in order to maintain their high metabolic rate.
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What is the significance of the function of teeth for endotherms like mammals?
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The function of this characteristic, which is found in mammals, is vitally important for endotherms to absorb the most nutrients from food as quickly as possible (efficiency) in order to maintain their high metabolic rate.
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What is the significance of the function of teeth for endotherms like mammals?
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The specialization of this characteristic in mammals is important because it allows for mammals to fill new ecological niches, which represents natural selection and adaptive evolution best matching species to their environment.
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What is the importance of teeth specialization in mammals?
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This characteristic of mammals increases the body temperature, if cold, or decreases body temperature, if overheated.
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What is thermoregulation in mammals?
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This characteristic of mammals is important because it makes it so that mammals are better able to survive harsh conditions and it maintains a constant body temperature in order to make sure that body functions can carry out properly and enzymatic activity is efficient as possible.
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What is the importance of thermoregulation in mammals?
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This characteristic is when small mammals and even small birds allow their body temperature to drop on a daily cycle when they are inactive, which probably conserves energy due to animals small size and high SA:V.
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What is torpor?
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The major evolutionary theme that encompasses this characteristic of small mammals and even small birds is the relationship between the need to maintain their endothermy even with a high SA:V, and the need to conserve energy
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What is the major evolutionary theme that encompasses torpor?
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This characteristic is mostly found in small mammals and occurs when they have prolonged torpor during winter.
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What is hibernation?
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The reason why these animals do not show true torpor or hibernate is because they have a low SA:V and so they do not have to develop these characters to conserve both energy and heat—their low SA:V ratio is adequate enough.
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What is the reason why large mammals do not show true torpor or hibernate?
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This characteristic of mammals, which includes taste, smell, and hearing, is important because it points to the ancestral characteristic of mammals as being nocturnal. It also relates to natural and sexual selection.
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What is the importance of mammalian sensory abilities, which include taste, smell, and hearing, in regards to mammalian phylogeny?
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In this lineage of animals, a novel example of heterochrony is marsupial forelimbs developing much earlier and being used to climb into the mother’s pouch.
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What is a novel example of heterochrony in mammals?
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The two reproductive strategies of oviparity and viviparity are apparent in this lineage of animals
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What are the two reproductive strategies of mammals?
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The selective advantages of this strategy of reproduction include the following: less energy devoted to offspring, and less locomotory energy needed to carry offspring. Both of these pros relate to the mother rather than offspring.
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What are the selective pros of oviparity?
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The selective disadvantages of this strategy of reproduction include the following: embryos are exposed to harsh environment, and mothers cannot keep constant supply of nutrients to embryos (so if something is wrong from the start, that would be a major problem).
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What are the selective cons of oviparity?
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The selective advantages of this strategy of reproduction include the following: constant supply of nutrients to embryos, stable environment for embryos, and mobility for embryos (double edge sword though). All of these pros really relate to the offspring rather than the mother.
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What are the selective pros of viviparity?
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The selective disadvantages of this strategy of reproduction include the following: high energy cost to mother who has to both carry the embryos and give nutrients to them constantly—high risk of predation.
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What are the selective cons of viviparity?
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These two mammalian characteristics have the following functions in common: to maintain a stable environment with the proper amount of water in order to allow mammals to reproduce on land and to increase chances of offspring survival and development.
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What are the characteristics, in terms of their functions, that both oviparity and viviparity have in common?
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The overarching theme of evolution that relates to the different reproductive strategies of this lineage is the relationship between deciding where to allocate funds from the energy budget to maximize relative fitness.
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What is the overarching theme of evolution that relates to the different reproductive strategies in mammals?
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This type of vision has the following advantage of allowing you to see a lot in front of you and allowing you to judge depth perception, which are both advantageous to predators who want to know when to pounce on prey.
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What are the advantages and disadvantages of binocular vision?
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This type of vision has the following disadvantage of limiting your field of view, your peripheral vision. That is a disadvantage mainly to prey because it limits how well they can see predators around them.
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What are the disadvantages of binocular vision?
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This sub-phylum of the mammalian group of animals has developed the following characters to better fill their niche as this type of species: long limbs with grasping hands and feet—most have opposable thumb, skin ridges for friction to grasp trees, binocular vision to better judge depth perception.
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What are the selective advantages that primates developed in order to fill their ecological niche as being arboreal species?
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The earliest forms of humans should not be compared to these two species of animals because the other two species of animals have been evolving for the past millions of years, right along with humans too. So it is fundamentally inappropriate to compare earliest forms of humans through the context of modern species.
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What is the reason why the earliest forms of humans should not be compared to modern chimpanzees and bonoboos?
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The characteristics of this genus are as follows: short jaw, larger brain, shorter arms and fingers, smaller teeth. These characteristics are important because they represent new and derived features that came about due to natural selection adapting the genus to fill their ecological niche, which is..from trees to land.
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What are the characteristics of the genus Homo and their importance?
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This is the study of the relationships of organisms with one another and with their environment.
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What is ecology?
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These are individuals of the same species that occur together.
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What is population?
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These are groups of populations of different species living together.
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What is community?
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This is a community and the abiotic environment with which it interacts.
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What is ecosystem?
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This size of this biological term can grow by either following a linear or exponential growth curve.
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What are the two ways that a population can grow?
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The size of this biological term increases at a constant rate per unit time if it is following a linear growth curve.
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What is the way in which the population size increases if it is following a linear growth curve?
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The size of this biological term increases at a constant proportional rate per unity time if it is following an exponential growth curve.
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What is the way in which the population growth rate is increasing if it is following an exponential growth curve?
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This equation explains the growth of a population.
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What is it that you would use the change in population size (growth) per unit time to explain (∆N/∆t)?
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Another way to write this equation, (∆N/∆t), is to write it as (B-D+I-E).
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What is another way to write the change in population size (growth) per unit time ((∆N/∆t)?
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This is the per capita rate of increase because it is (b-m).
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What is r?
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If this variable in the exponential growth equation is high it means that there is a high number of births relative to a low population. For example, 10 individuals could produce 1,000 offspring and this variable would be 100. If, however, the variable is small it means that there is a low number of births relative to a high population. For example, if a population size of 1,000 individuals produces 10 offspring, then this variable is 0.01.
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What is the significance of a high or low b?
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If this variable is high then it means that there is a high number of deaths relative to a population. And if this variable is a low number of deaths relative to a population.
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What is the significance of a high or low m?
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For this to always be increasing, r must be positive. It cannot equal 0 or be negative because when r=o, no growth, and when r=-, decrease.
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What is it that r must be in order for the growth rate to always be increasing?
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This is the intrinsic rate of increase. It is the per capita rate of increase under ideal conditions. It is also different for different species and is related to the life history of a species.
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What is r(max)?
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This way to examine growth models is not very applicable to natural populations because it does not take into account real world conditions like limited number of resources, competition, and etc.
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What is the degree to which we can apply exponential growth models to natural populations?
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The relationship between population size and this variable of the exponential growth equation is that as population increases, this variable increases as well, because there will be more competition for fewer resources so more individuals will die.
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What is the relationship between population size and m?
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The relationship between population size and this variable of the exponential growth equation is that as population increases, this variable decreases because there will be more competition for fewer resources, dense population may spread disease quickly, less opportunities to mate, more competition, etc.
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What is the relationship between population size and b?
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This is the combination of the exponential growth model with density-dependent parameters.
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What is a logistic growth model?
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This is the carrying capacity of a population, which is the population level that can be supported by a particular environment.
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What is K?
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This is r(max)[(K-N)/K]N. It importantly moves N towards K. If N>K, population decreases. If N<K, population increases. And if N=K, population stays the same.
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What is the logistic growth equation?
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These occur in natural populations because a logistic model assumes that population growth adjusts instantaneously as it approaches K, but in the real world, there is often a lag time between negative or positive factors and their impact on population size.
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What is the reason why there are oscillations in natural populations?
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These are spatially discrete populations, which are often linked by immigration or emigration of individuals.
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What are metapopulations?
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This type of population impacts conservation biology because small populations are easily wiped out and since humans often fragment landscapes and habitats, it blocks immigration of new species into the areas where mass extinction have occurred.
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What is the impact of metapopulations on conservation biology?
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Because this type of populations are a problem to conservation, humans can make it so patchy landscapes are interconnected so as to allow the colonization of habitats that underwent a relative mass extinction of species.
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What is the way in which humans can make it so metapopulations can be function so as to repopulate a landscape?
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Because humans have created this type of populations, overtime, biological diversity dwindles. So, to conserve biological diversity, it is not enough to just have natural preservations; there must also be interconnectivity between preservations.
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What is the take away message of metapopulaions as they relate to conservation biology?
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In the logistic model of population growth, this variable is not absolute. It can change. For example, it can increase with new resources or decrease with the loss of major resources to a population. In short, any environmental change can affect this variable.
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What is a characteristic of K that we should remember?
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This type of population size does not always rapidly grow, as according to the logistical growth model, because it may be hard to find a mate, the population size may not be big enough to defend a territory, etc. This problem relates to conservation biology.
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What is it that makes it so small populations do not rapidly grow?
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This variable in the logistic growth equation is set by density-dependent factors because these factors affect b and m, which in turn, affect this variable.
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What is it that sets K?
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Some examples of these factors include the following: spread of disease, increase competition, fewer resources, etc.
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What are some density-dependent factors?
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Some examples of these factors include the following: spread of disease, increase competition, fewer resources, etc.
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What are some density-dependent factors?
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Some examples of these factors include the following: a cycle of natural catastrophes that just keeps the population down (like a flood every 4 years, a really harsh winter ever 12 years, a volcano, etc.)
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What are some examples of density-independent factors?
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In reality, populations are often kept below K by these factors.
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What is the importance of density-independent factors?
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This is the study of factors affecting birth and death rates in a population, which is important because it sets the r(max).
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What is demography?
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This characteristic of a population affects b and m because the more elderly organisms there are in a population, the higher b is, and the more middle age organisms there are in a population, the higher m is.
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What is the way in which the age structure of a population affects b and m?
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This is lower in males than females because males often perform risky behavior as a part of sexual selection.
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What is the reason why male survivorship is lower than females?
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These curves show the relationship between the number of survivors and their age. The curves are important because they impact the reproductive capacity of a population since age structure affects b and m.
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What is the importance of survivorship curves?
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This is the average number of offspring per female.
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What is the population’s fertility rate?
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This is the fertility rate that is required to keep the population size stable.
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What is the replacement rate?
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The main cause of population growth in this species is due to the maintenance of a relatively high b and the decrease in m.
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What is the main cause of human population growth?
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This is lower in males than females because males often perform risky behavior as a part of sexual selection.
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What is the reason why male survivorship is lower than females?
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These curves show the relationship between the number of survivors and their age. The curves are important because they impact the reproductive capacity of a population since age structure affects b and m.
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What is the importance of survivorship curves?
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This is the average number of offspring per female.
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What is the population’s fertility rate?
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This is the fertility rate that is required to keep the population size stable.
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What is the replacement rate?
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The main cause of population growth in this species is due to the maintenance of a relatively high b and the decrease in m.
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What is the main cause of human population growth?
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This variable can change for humans by climate change increasing or decreasing the available land used for farming or food growth and other variables too, and human behavior too.
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What is the way in which K can change for humans?
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The growth of this species is bad for biology because it causes habitat destruction leading to mass extinctions, it makes environmental catastrophes like food/water shortage, diseases, environmental contamination, etc. more likely to occur.
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What are the reasons why population growth is bad for biology?
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Humans may be performing this activity because evolution has geared us to out-compete and out-produce neighboring clans, which is interesting because it relates to evolution having no foresight.
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What is a possible explanation for why humans over exploit resources?
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When humans commit to performing this activity they destroy biological diversity and cause a lot of problems in the wild life.
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What is the problem with over exploiting resources?
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This is the pattern of births and deaths in a species.
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What are life histories?
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Life histories never have all of “these features” because species are always going to evolve life histories that are compromises of their energy budget due to different selective pressures acting on the species.
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What is the reason why the patterns in life history that should be favored by natural selection are in fact never observed?
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These reproductive strategists produce many “cheap” offspring very quickly.
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What are r-strategists?
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This type of offspring have little energy requirement in order to produce them and almost no parental rearing is involved in raising them.
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What are “cheap” offspring?
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This reproductive strategy is advantageous because it allows the parents to make a huge amount of offspring with little cost to themselves.
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What are the advantages of r-strategy?
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This reproductive strategy is disadvantageous because it has a lot of offspring dying before they reach maturity.
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What are the disadvantages of r-strategy?
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This reproductive strategy is advantageous because it allows the parents to make a huge amount of offspring with little cost to themselves.
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What are the advantages of r-strategy?
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This reproductive strategy is disadvantageous because it has a lot of offspring dying before they reach maturity.
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What are the disadvantages of r-strategy?
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This type of reproductive strategy is advantageous in variable environments.
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What are the kinds of environments that may favor r-strategists?
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This type of reproductive strategy is advantageous in variable environments because it can fill a huge area very quickly if new ecological niches are available.
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What is the reason why variable environments favor r-strategists?
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This reproductive strategy involves the parents making few yet high-quality offspring, which are produced infrequently
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What are K-strategists?
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This type of offspring have more energy and care into developing and raising them in order to ensure their survival.
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What is mean by “high quality” offspring?
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The advantages of this type of reproductive strategy include the following: a higher amount of offspring survives because of big embryos producing big babies and lots of energy and care being put into them.
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What are the advantages of K-strategists?
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The disadvantages of this reproductive strategy include the following: since this strategy puts a ton of energy into producing only a few offspring, if those offspring die before or even after they reach maturity, it is a huge loss to a population.
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What are the disadvantages of K-strategists?
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This reproductive strategy is favored in stable environments because predictable climates and conditions make it so ecological niches are going to be the same for a long time. So, parents can support themselves and the development of high-quality offspring and high-quality offspring will have higher chances of living longer and reaching maturity in environments that the parents can protect them.
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What are the kinds of environments that would favor K-strategists?
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R-strategists are really dangerous types of this species because they can colonize a land a reproduce at explosive numbers.
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What is the type of reproductive strategists that are really dangerous invasive species?
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R-strategists are really dangerous types of this species because they can colonize a land a reproduce at explosive numbers.
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What is the type of reproductive strategists that are really dangerous invasive species?
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These are collections of species living in the same area.
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What are communities?
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This is the full range of environmental conditions (biotic and abiotic) under which a species can survive.
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What is a fundamental niche?
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This is the more limited range of conditions under which a species often exists because of interactions with other species.
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What is the realized niche?
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Other species restrict this aspect of species because of competition.
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What is the way in which other species restrict the niche of species?
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There is a possibility that the same species can live in different realized niches because different realized niches can have comparable resources that the same species adapt to take advantage of them.
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What is the chance of the same species living in different realized niches?
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These two interspecific interactions are obviously beneficial for one species and harmful to the others in the interaction.
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What is the classification of predation and herbivory?
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This type of interspecific interaction is negative for both the winner and loser because even if you win, you are spending time and energy to win that could otherwise be spent towards surviving and reproducing (and so there are some selective pressures to minimize competition).
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What is the classification of competition?
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This is when two or more species live together in direct and “intimate” contact.
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What is symbiosis?
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This is a symbiotic relationship where it benefits one organism while negatively affecting the other organism.
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What is parasitism?
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This is a symbiotic relationship where it benefits both organisms.
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What is mutualism?
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This is a symbiotic relationship where it benefits both organisms.
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What is mutualism?
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This is a symbiotic relationship where it benefits one organism while having no affect on the other organism.
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What is commensalism?
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This is a symbiotic relationship where it benefits one organism while having no affect on the other organism.
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What is commensalism?
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The chances that this form of evolution will continue forever is unlikely because developed features may become too costly for survivability or if one organisms becomes dominant
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What is co-evolution?
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The chances that this form of evolution will continue forever is unlikely because developed features may become too costly for survivability or if one organism becomes dominant
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What is co-evolution?
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The outcomes from this type of interspecific interaction are as follows: one species drives the other species to extinction or the two species may coexist with each other.
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What are the two outcomes from competition?
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The outcomes from this type of interspecific interaction are as follows: one species drives the other species to extinction or the two species may coexist with each other.
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What are the two outcomes from competition?
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This principle states that no two species can occupy the same niche.
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What is the competitive exclusion principle?
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This principle states that no two species can occupy the same niche.
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What is the competitive exclusion principle?
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This is when similar species that occur together usually use different resources, which lower competition and eliminates competitive exclusion.
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What is resource partitioning?
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This is observed when species living sympatrically are more different from each other than when they are living allopatrically, which minimizes competition (i.e. Galapagos finches).
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What is character displacement?
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This aspect of biology has two components: species richness and relative abundance.
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What are the two components of biological diversity?
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This is a component of biological diversity. It is the number of species in a community
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What is species richness?
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This is a component of biological diversity. It is the pattern of the distribution of species.
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What is relative abundance?
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A community is considered more diverse if this component of biological diversity is more equally distributed across the available species.
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What is the pattern of relative abundance that would make a community more diverse?
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If a habitat has an increased amount of this, it increases the habitats biological diversity because there are more niches and more ways to sustain life for different species.
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What is the reason why an increased habitat complexity should increase diversity?
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Habitats that have a decreased amount of this interspecific interaction should increase diversity because the habitat will have fewer negative impacts, so more species can exist.
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What is the reason why decreased competition among species should increase diversity?
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These are species that play pivotal ecological roles in communities and maintain high diversity, which is a way to conserve biological diversity. An example of one of them is generalist predators that concentrate on the most common (i.e. most successful) species, reducing their number and their negative effect on other species (i.e. minimizing competition).
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What are keystone species?
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This increases with area of community because the more area there is, the more amount of resources there are, and niches available.
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What is the reason why species richness typically increases with area of a community?
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Some examples of these things, the ones that frequently impact, disturb, and change community structures, are natural disasters like wild fires, flooding, drought, etc.
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What are some examples of “disturbances” that frequently impact, disturb, and change community structures?
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This hypothesis states that moderate levels of disturbances fosters greater species diversity because high levels negatively impact species diversity too much, and low levels may allow competitive exclusion to occur too easily.
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What is the intermediate disturbance hypothesis?
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r-strategists are favored in habitats with this type of disturbances.
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What is the reproductive strategy that would be favored in high levels of disturbance?
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K-strategists are favored in habitats with this type of disturbances.
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What is the reproductive strategy that would be favored in low levels of disturbance?
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This component of the ecosystems represents the community of species occurring together.
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What is the biotic component of ecosystems?
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This component of ecosystems represents the climate, soil, etc.
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What is the abiotic component of ecosystems?
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This is a way to categorize animals based on their main source of energy.
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What are trophic levels?
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This is a hierarchical ordering of energy flow through trophic levels in the ecosystem.
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What is the food chain?
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This way of ordering the energy flow through tropic levels in the ecosystem is too much of a generalization. It does not include decomposers or omnivores.
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What is the problem with food chains?
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Two concepts of this type of system are chemical cycling and energy flow.
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What are two important ecosystem concepts?
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In ecosystems, this when chemicals cycle back and forth between the biota (living organisms) and abiotic reservoirs.
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What is chemical cycling?
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In ecosystems, this is the flow of energy from the sun through the ecosystem until all the energy is eventually lost as heat to space.
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What is energy flow?
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Bacteria fix Nitrogen for plants and for returning nitrogen to the atmosphere, which makes bacteria important to this cycle.
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What is the important relationship between bacteria and cycling of Nitrogen?
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This is the buildup of chemical nutrients caused by human pollution (often nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer runoff), which cause hypoxic areas that have no biological diversity. It also shows the importance of having a balance between nitrogen and phosphorous cycles and the environment.
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What is eutrophication?
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This is all of the energy that is available to every other organism above the primary producers. It is important because it is the sole source of energy for all higher trophic levels.
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What is net primary productivity?
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This is all of the energy that is available to every other organism above the primary producers. It is important because it is the sole source of energy for all higher trophic levels.
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What is net primary productivity?
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This is the fraction of energy transferred from one trophic level to the next. It is important because it explains why as you go up in the trophic levels the populations get smaller (i.e. you have more plants than mice and more mice than hawks, etc.)
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What is trophic efficiency?
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These two trophic levels are more prone to extinction because they have small populations and they are affected by anything that affects the trophic levels below them (i.e. more things can go wrong).
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What is the reason why tertiary and quaternary consumers are more prone to extinction?
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Humans can do this with the earth’s resources by eating more primary producers rather than higher up on the trophic scale because it costs less of the earth’s resources to support primary producers than higher up organisms (and impacts the earth’s ecosystem to a smaller degree).
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What is the way in which humans can minimize our impact on the earth’s resources (and the ecosystem)?
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