ch53 Flashcards
A particular environmental change causes the deaths of 25 individuals in a herd of 100 wild horses, and it kills 50 individuals in a herd of 200 horses. In this case, the growth of a wild horse population is most likely limited by __________.
a density-independent factor
A newly mated queen ant founds a nest in an unoccupied patch of suitable habitat. Assuming that no disasters strike the nest, which of the following types of equations is likely to best describe the population growth of the new colony?
Logistic
What absolutely essential resource is likely to limit the carrying capacity of Earth for humans?
Water
A graph that plots the numbers of individuals who are alive at particular ages is called _________.
a survivorship curve
A survivorship curve that represents high death rates for the young is a ________ curve.
Type III
Chimpanzees have a relatively low birth rate. They care for their young, and most chimps live a long life. The chimp survivorship curve would look like ___________.
a relatively flat line that drops steeply at the end
An antagonistic social interaction used to defend a bounded physical space is called __________.
territoriality
__________ is reproduction where adults produce offspring over many years.
Iteroparity
Organisms that live in a homogenous abiotic environment and cooperate to avoid being eaten would likely show a(n) __________ pattern of dispersion.
clumped
_________ describes an organism that reproduces once in its lifetime.
Semelparity
The maximum population size that a particular environment can sustain is called the _________.
carrying capacity
The difference between density and dispersion is that __________.
density is the number of individuals of a population in a unit area whereas dispersion is the pattern of spacing of individuals of the population
Herring gulls fiercely defend the areas around their nests in cliff-top breeding colonies. Within the colony they would show a __________ dispersion pattern.
uniform
Life tables typically follow the fate of a cohort, a __________.
group of individuals who are the same age
The concept that summarizes the aggregate land and water area required by each person to produce all resources he or she needs and absorb all waste he or she produces is called the _________.
ecological footprint
Life history traits that are favored at high population densities are known as _________.
K-selection
Although there are organisms whose life histories fall somewhere between iteroparity and semelparity, life history always represents a trade-off. Why is this?
The energy cost of reproduction is high, so there are not enough resources to reproduce often, produce many offspring, and take care of them.
Life history traits that are favored in uncrowded environments are known as _________.
r-selection
The selective pressures of having a large brood of offspring to care for, as in the kestrel experiment, _________.
lower the survival rates of the parents
A population that grows rapidly at first and then levels off at carrying capacity can be modeled __________.
by a logistic equation
Which of the following would most likely be an example of a density-independent factor limiting population growth?
Daily temperature extremes
A population that is growing logistically __________.
grows fastest at an intermediate population density
A group of individuals of a single species living in the same general area is called a _________.
population
Fluctuations in the numbers of individuals in a population from year to year are called _________.
population dynamics
