Study Guide 4

Front 1

State the competitive exclusion principle

Back 1

The concept that when populations of two similar species compete for the same limited resources, one population will use the resources more efficiently and have a reproductive advantage that will eventually lead to the elimination of the other population.

Front 2

Define an ecological niche and restate it in the competitive exclusion

Back 2

an ecological niche is he sum total of a species’ use of the biotic and abiotic resources in its environment.
Two species cannot coexist in a community if there are one or more significant differences in their niches.

Front 3

Distinguish between fundamental and realized niche

Back 3

A fundamental niche is a niche potentially occupied by that species.

Realized niche is the portion of its fundamental niche that it actually occupies in a particular environment.

Front 4

Explain how interspecific competition may lead to resource partitioning

Back 4

One specie may result to another resource

Front 5

Define: predation

Back 5

An interaction between species in which one species, the predator, eats the other, the prey.

Front 6

Define: herbivory

Back 6

An interaction in which an herbivore eats parts of a plant or alga.

Front 7

Define: parasitism

Back 7

A symbiotic relationship in which the symbiont (parasite) benefits at the expense of the host by living either within the host (as an en-doparasite) or outside the host (as an ectoparasite).

Front 8

Give specific examples of adaptations of predators and prey

Back 8

Predators have claws teeth fangers stingers or poisons

Prey camoflauge or mimic harmfull species

Front 9

Explain how cryptic coloration and warning coloration may aid an animal in avoiding predators

Back 9

Cryptic coloration makes prey difficult to spot or makes the prey look dangerous.

Front 10

Distinguish between batesian mimicry and mullerian mimicry

Back 10

Batesian mimicry is A type of mimicry in which a harmless species looks like a species that is poisonous or otherwise harmful to predators.
Müllerian mimicry is A mutual mimicry by two unpalatable species.

Front 11

Describe how predators may use mimicry to obtain prey

Back 11

Snapping turtles have tongues that resemble a wriggling worm. thus luring small fish

Front 12

Distinguish among parasitism mutualism and commensalism

Back 12

Parasitism +/ -
Mutualism +/+
Commensalism +/ 0

Front 13

Explain the relationship between species richness and relative abundance and explain how both contribute to species diversity

Back 13

A species richness is the number of different species in the community. The other is the relative abundance of the different species, the proportion each species represents of all individuals in the comminity.

Front 14

distinguish between a food web and a food chain

Back 14

food web the elaborate, interconnected feeding relationships in an ecosystem

food chain The pathway along which food is transferred from trophic level to trophic level, beginning with producers.

Front 15

Explain why food chains are relatively short

Back 15

Enegergetic hypothesis suggest that the length of a food chain is limited by the inefficiency of enger transfer along the chain.

A second hypothesis in the dynamic stability hypothesis which proposes that long food chains are less stable than short chains.

Front 16

Explain how dominant and keystone species exert strong control on community structure. Describe an example of each

Back 16

Dominate species are the most abundant or have the highest biomass. Sugar maples have a major ibiotic factor such as shading soil which in turn affect which other species live there.

Keystone are not abundant, They exert stronge control on community structure by their pivotal ecological roles. Sea otters that fed on sea urchins were eaten by occas and sea urchins are now dominate resulting in loss of kelp forests

Front 17

Distinguish between primary and secondary succession

Back 17

primary succession -A type of ecological succession that occurs in a virtually lifeless area, where there were originally no organisms and where soil has not yet formed.

secondary succession -A type of succession that occurs where an existing community has been cleared by some disturbance that leaves the soil intact.

Front 18

Describe how species that arrive early in succession may faciliate, inhibit, or tolerate later arrivals.

Back 18

The early arrivals may faciliate the appearance of the later species by making the environment more favorable.

Species may inhibit establishment of the later species, so that successful colonization by later species occures in spite of, rather than because of, the activites of the early species

Early species may be completely independent of the later species, which tolerate conditions created early in succession but are neither helped nor hindered by early species