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141 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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An assemblage of species living close enough together for potential interaction.
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Community
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The diversity of a community has two components:
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1. Species richness, the total number of different species in the community
2. Relative abundance of the different species |
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The prevalent form of vegetation mainly depends on the?
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terrestrial situation
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The types and structural features of plants in a community largely determine by the?
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kinds of animals that live in the community.
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Refers to the community’s ability to resist change and return to its original species combination after being disturbed.
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Community stability
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Depends on both the type of community and the nature of disturbances.
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Community stability
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Concerned with the feeding relationships among the various species making up the community.
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trophic structure
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Interactions between species.
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Interspecific interactions
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May occur when two or more species in a community rely on similar limiting resources.
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Interspecific competition
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May limit population growth of the competing species.
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Interspecific competition
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Who studied the effects of interspecific competition in two closely related species of protists.
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G. F. Gause
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Principle that states two species so similar that they compete for the same limiting resources cannot coexist in the same place.
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competitive exclusion principle.
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Is the sum total of a species’ use of the biotic and abiotic resources in its environment.
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species’ ecological niche
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Is the species’ ecological role.
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species’ ecological niche
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Two species cannot coexist in a community if their niches are identical.
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competitive exclusion principle
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two possible outcomes of competition between species with identical niches:
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1. Extinction of one species
2. Evolution of one species to use a different set of resources |
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the differentiation of niches that enables similar species to coexist in a community.
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Resource partitioning
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Is when organisms eat other organisms and identifies the predator as the consumer and the food species as the prey.
Includes herbivory, the consumption of plants by animals. |
Predation
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Most predators have what kind of senses.
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Acute
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Plants have various types of defenses against herbivores
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Chemical toxins
Spines and thorns |
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Animals can avoid being eaten by doing what?
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By using passive defenses such as hiding.
By using active defenses such as escaping or defending themselves |
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Behavioral defenses include
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Alarm calls.
Mobbing. |
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Direct the attention of the predator away from a vulnerable prey to another prey that is more likely to escape.
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Distraction displays
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Is a passive defense that makes a potential prey difficult to spot against its background.
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Camouflage, or cryptic coloration
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Animals with chemical defenses are often brightly colored
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warning coloration
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Is a “copycat” adaptation in which one species mimics the appearance of another.
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Mimicry
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A palatable or harmless species mimics an unpalatable or harmful model.
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Batesian mimicry
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Two or more unpalatable species resemble each other.
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Müllerian mimicry
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Predator-prey relationships can actually ____ species diversity
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preserve
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Provided evidence of the importance of predation by removing a dominant predator from a community
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experiments of Robert Paine
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Help maintain species diversity by preventing competitive exclusion of weaker competitors.
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Keystone predators
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Is an interaction between two or more species that live together in direct contact.
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symbiotic relationship
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Is a symbiotic relationship in which one organism benefits while the other is harmed.
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Parasitism
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Obtains its nutrients by living in or on its host organism.
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parasite
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Has refined the relationships between parasites and their hosts and
can rapidly temper host-parasite relationships. |
natural selection
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Is a symbiosis that benefits both partners
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Mutualism
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Often have positive effects on a community.
May create new habitats. |
Small-scale disturbances
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Is a biological community and the abiotic factors with which the community interacts.
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ecosystem
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Is the passage of energy through the components of the ecosystem.
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Energy flow
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Is the use and reuse of chemical elements within the ecosystem.
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Chemical cycling
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Flows through an ecosystem when consumers feed on producers and
cannot be recycled within an ecosystem, but must flow through continuously. |
energy
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Depend on the transfer of substances in the feeding relationships, or trophic structure, of an ecosystem.
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Energy flow and chemical cycling
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Determine an ecosystem’s routes of energy flow and chemical cycling.
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Trophic relationships
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Divide the species of an ecosystem based on their main sources of nutrition.
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Trophic levels
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Is the sequence of food transfer from trophic level to trophic level.
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food chain
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Herbivores, which eat plants, algae, or autotrophic bacteria, are the what of an ecosystem?
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Primary consumers
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Derive their energy from the dead material left by all trophic levels and
are often left off of most food chain diagrams |
Detritivores, or decomposers
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Feeding relationships in an ecosystem are usually
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woven into elaborate food webs and not simple
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Is the amount of organic material in an ecosystem.
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biomass
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Is the rate at which plants and other producers build biomass.
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ecosystem’s primary productivity
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Is a diagram that represents the cumulative loss of energy from a food chain.
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energy pyramid
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What depends on a recycling of chemical elements
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ecosystems
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Are chemical cycles in an ecosystem that involve both biotic and abiotic components.
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Biogeochemical cycles
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Three key points to biogeochemical cycles
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1. Each circuit has an abiotic reservoir.
2. A portion of chemical cycling can rely completely on geological processes. 3. Some chemicals require processing before they are available as inorganic nutrients. |
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A chemical’s specific route through an ecosystem varies with the what?
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particular element and the trophic structure of the ecosystem.
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Are the major types of ecosystems that cover large geographic regions of the Earth.
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Biomes
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Because of its curvature, Earth receives an ? distribution of solar energy.
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uneven
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The distribution of terrestrial biomes depends largely on
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climate
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Most biomes are named for their what?
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major physical or climatic features and for their predominant vegetation.
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Occupy the largest part of the biosphere.
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Aquatic biomes
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Includes the shallow water near shore and the upper stratum of water away from shore and is named because light is available for photosynthesis.
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photic zone
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Is deeper, where light levels are too low to support photosynthesis.
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aphotic zone
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Is the bottom of all aquatic biomes.
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benthic zone
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Are areas where a freshwater stream or river merges with the ocean.
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Estuaries
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Are one of the most biologically productive environments on Earth.
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Estuaries
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Marine life is distributed according to
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Depth of the water.
Degree of light penetration. Distance from shore. Open water versus bottom |
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Is the area where land meets water that
includes organisms adapted to attach to rocks or vegetation or to burrow. |
intertidal zone
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Is the open ocean that contains phytoplankton and zooplankton
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pelagic zone
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Is the ocean bottom or seafloor that
may include hydrothermal vent communities |
benthic zone
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Describes adaptations of two species that are closely connected.
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Coevolution
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Poses the single greatest threat to biodiversity throughout the biosphere.
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Habitat Destruction
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Ranks second behind habitat loss and can cause rapid extinctions
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invasive species
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Is the third major threat to biodiversity
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Overexploitation of wildlife
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Will change the amount of water vapor in the air and may alter local and global weather patterns.
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Destruction of tropical rain forest
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Add large amounts of nitrogen to aquatic systems, causing heavy growth of algae and also add large amounts of phosphates to aquatic systems, causing eutrophication of lakes.
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Sewage treatment facilities and fertilizers
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Is steadily raising the level of CO2 in the atmosphere and is leading to significant environmental problems, such as global warming.
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The increased burning of fossil fuels
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Impact on the carbon cycle
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The increased burning of fossil fuels
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Impact on the Nitrogen Cycle
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Sewage treatment facilities and fertilizers
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Impact on the Phosphorous Cycle
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Sewage treatment facilities and fertilizers
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Impact on the Water Cycle
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Destruction of tropical rain forest
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Deforestation and extensive removal of ground water change
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the water cycle
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is a study site for chemical cycling in a forest ecosystem.
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Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest
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Is a process in which toxins become more concentrated in successive trophic levels of a food web.
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Biological magnification
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Retains solar heat in the atmosphere and is produced by CO2 and water vapor in the atmosphere.
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greenhouse effect
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Absorbs UV radiation, preventing much of it from contacting organisms in the biosphere.
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ozone layer
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Has been thinning since 1975 because of the accumulation of chlorofluorocarbons.
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protective ozone layer
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Biodiversity has three main components
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The first is the diversity of ecosystems.
The second is the variety of species that make up the biological community of any ecosystem. The third is the genetic variation within each species. |
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Is a goal-oriented science that seeks to counter the loss of biodiversity.
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Conservation biology
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Is a relatively small area with an exceptional concentration of species
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biodiversity hot spot
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Defines an endangered species as one that is “in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range.”
Defines a threatened species as one likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future. |
The U.S. Endangered Species Act
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Is the splitting and consequent isolation of portions of populations by habitat degradation and is one of the most harmful effects of habitat loss due to human activities.
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Population fragmentation
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Usually results in a decrease in the overall size of populations and a reduction in gene flow among subpopulations
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fragmentation
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Often highlights the relationships between biology and society.
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Conservation biology
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Increasingly aims at sustaining the biodiversity of entire communities and ecosystems.
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Conservation biology
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Is the application of ecological principles to the study of land-use patterns.
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Landscape ecology
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Are prominent features of landscapes that can be natural.
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edges between ecosystems
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Can promote dispersal and help sustain populations and are especially important to species that migrate between different habitats seasonally.
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corridors
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Is an extensive region of land that includes one or more areas undisturbed by humans.
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zoned reserve
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Balances human needs with the health of the biosphere
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Sustainable development
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Is the long-term prosperity of human societies and the ecosystems that support them.
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goal of sustainable development
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What is an introduced species?
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a species that is not native but that has been brought to an area by humans
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The single greatest current cause of population decline is
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habitat destruction
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In a population that is following a logistic growth pattern, what shape does the population's growth curve most closely resemble?
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S
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In an equilibrium population (at its carrying capacity), thousands of eggs and hundreds of tadpoles are produced by a single pair of frogs. On average, about how many offspring per pair will live to reproduce the next year?
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2
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A population is defined as
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a group of individuals of a single species that occupies the same general area
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Which of the following is the most accurate statement about the Earth's carrying capacity for humans?
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Our technology has allowed us to keep increasing carrying capacity.
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An ideal habitat with unlimited resources is associated with
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Exponential growth.
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The maximum population a habitat can support is its
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Carrying capacity.
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Involves Population growth slowing down as the population approaches carrying capacity.
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Logistic growth
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Population size grows faster and faster as the population gets bigger.
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Exponential growth.
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Which of the following would NOT cause population size to decrease?
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increased birth rate
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A non-native species that has spread far beyond the original point of introduction and causes environmental or economic damage is called a(n)
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invasive species
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Age structures are helpful for predicting
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a population's future growth
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To figure out the human population density of your community, you would need to know the number of people living there and
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the size of the area in which they live
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An example of population density is
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the number of Paramecium caudatum in a 250-milliliter solution within a glass flask
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The species most at risk of extinction due to habitat destruction are those
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with small, limited geographic ranges
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The virus introduced to the island in 1982 that reduced the wolf population is an example of a(n)
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density-dependent factor
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The harsh winter that led to the death of many moose in 1996 is an example of a(n)
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density-independent factor
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During a one-year study, a graduate student attempted to count the wolves and moose on the island. He estimated that there were 950 moose and 120 wolves. How many organisms, populations, and species were included in this study?
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organisms = 1,070; populations = 2; species = 2
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The Endangered Species Act aims to help protect species that
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are in danger of extinction
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Throughout most of human history, human population size
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grew very slowly
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The bee fly resembles a honeybee, but the bee fly has no stinger. This is an example of
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mimicry
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Consider this segment of a food web: Snails and grasshoppers eat pepper plants; spiders eat grasshoppers; shrews eat snails and spiders; owls eat shrews. The snail occupies the trophic level(s) of
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a primary consumer
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According to the principle of interspecific competition, two species cannot continue to occupy the same
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ecological niche
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A lichen is actually composed of two organisms: a fungus and an alga. They depend on each other for survival. The most specific term that describes their relationship is
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mutualism
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A close association between two organisms
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Symbiosis
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Herbivores are
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primary consumers
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Why does biological magnification occur?
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Although the amount of organic material decreases with increasing trophic level, the amount of toxin remains the same.
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focuses on the long-term prosperity of humans and the biosphere
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Sustainable development
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Why do toxins accumulate at such high levels in carnivores?
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The biomass at any given trophic level is accumulated from a much larger toxin-containing biomass ingested from the level below.
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The biggest difference between the flow of energy and the flow of chemical nutrients in an ecosystem is that
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nutrients are recycled, but energy is not
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What type of population interaction benefits neither population?
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competition
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Maintaining biodiversity on Earth is important because
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changes that underlie a loss of biodiversity may also threaten the human population
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Consider this segment of a food web: Snails and grasshoppers eat pepper plants; spiders eat grasshoppers; shrews eat snails and spiders; owls eat shrews. The shrew occupies the trophic level(s) of
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secondary and tertiary consumers
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Which of the following describes the number of different species in the community?
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species richness
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An organism gets carbon by using carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to make sugar molecules. This organism is a
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producer
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Which organisms play a role in returning carbon to the atmosphere?
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Producers, consumers, and decomposers.
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Every carbon atom in the organic molecules that make up your body MUST recently have been part of
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producer
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Imagine following a single carbon atom through the carbon cycle. Which of the following is a possible path for the carbon atom to take?
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The atmosphere, a plant, a herbivore, a decomposer, then back to the atmosphere
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Which process or processes return carbon to the atmosphere?
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Cellular respiration only
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Flounder look like the sea floor. This is an example of
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cryptic coloration
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