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23 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
What are the key elements that determine where an organism lives?
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Temperature, Water, Sunlight, and Soil.
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What are the two methods of coping with variable environments?
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Homeostasis (maintain constant internal conditions) and Conforming (internal conditions vary with environment).
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What are the three specific aspects that an organism may change to cope with its environment?
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Physiology, Morphology, and Behavior.
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What is a population?
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A group of individuals that occur together at the same place and time.
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What are three particularly important characteristics of population ecology?
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Population range (area that it occurs), Pattern of spacing, and Population size.
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What are the three types of patterns of spacing in a population? What does each suggest?
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Random Spacing (independent of each other and resources, rare), Uniform Spacing (competition for resources), Clumped Spacing (uneven distribution of resources).
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What are metapopulations? In what sort of areas do they tend to occur?
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Networks of distinct populations that interact by exchanging individuals. Areas with islands or bubbles of suitable habitat separated by unsuitable habitat.
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What is a source-sink metapopulation?
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A metapopulation with a good habitat with positive growth that sends individuals to cancel negative growth in neighboring bad habitats.
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What is demography?
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The statistical study of populations.
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What are some factors that affect growth rate in a population?
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Sex ratio (males to females) and Generation time (time from one's birth to its children's birth).
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Define age structure. What are cohorts?
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The relative number of individuals in a population's cohorts. Groups of individuals of the same age, each with its own fecundity (birth rate) and mortality (death rate).
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How do ecologists assess how populations in nature are changing?
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By making life tables.
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What is survivorship and a survivorship curve? What are the types of survivorship curves?
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The percentage of a population that survives to a given age. A way to express aspects of age distribution on a graph. Type I (die late), Type II (die any time), and Type III (die early).
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What is an organism's life history? What is cost of reproduction?
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Its complete life cycle. Reduction in future reproductive potential by current reproductive efforts.
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What is semelparity? Iteroparity?
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The adaptation of focusing all resources on a single reproductive event. The adaptation of spreading resources out and having multiple reproductive events.
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What is biotic potential? What is carrying capacity? What is a sigmoidal growth curve?
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The rate at which a population grows when no limits are placed on its growth. The amount at which a population stabilizes. The 'S' shaped plot of a population's size rising from a low number to its carrying capacity.
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What are density-dependent effects? What is it called when density-dependent effects have positive feedback?
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The effects of natural processes that depend on population size (i.e. mortality and birth rate). The Allee effect.
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What are density-independent effects?
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Situations that affect populations that do not depend on population size (i.e. flood, drought).
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What are population cycles? What factors appear to cause them?
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Cyclic patterns of increase and decrease in population size over time. Food plants and Predators.
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What are K-selected populations? What are r-selected populations?
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Populations adapted to reproduce at carrying capacity (effective use of resources). Populations adapted to reproduce below carrying capacity (lots of offspring).
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How can a population pyramid project future growth?
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A rectangular population pyramid suggests stability, a triangle suggests growth, and an inverted triangle suggests shrinking.
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What is the biosphere?
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The world's interacting community of living things.
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What is an ecological footprint?
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The amount of productive land needed to support a typical member of a population.
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