Chapter 1 - Web of Life

Question 1

Occur when humans take actions without giving much thought to how our actions might affect the environment

Answer 1

Global Changes

Question 2

Driven by the ways on how organisms interact with their physical environment

Answer 2

Natural Systems

Question 3

The scientific study of how organisms affect and are affected by other organisms and their environment

“Events in the natural world are interconnected”

Answer 3

Ecology

Question 4

Events that are linked or connected to one another

Sometimes, they only have little influence to each other

Can be a result of sharing features of the environment
E.g. food

Answer 4

Connections in Nature

Question 5

Early observations suggest that parasites cause amphibian deformities

Answer 5

Presence of Ribeiroia ondatrae in deformed frogs

Question 6

Why is decline in amphibian species occurring more often now than in the past?

Answer 6

Connections in nature can lead to unanticipated side effects
Ex. Nutrient addition - results to algae increase, which is the food of snails, so abundance of algae = more snails = more 1st intermediate host for the parasite = more deformed amphibians

Indirect and unanticipated effects of human actions - population size, extent of land development, etc.
Resulted to the bloom of many infectious diseases

Question 7

Scientific study of interactions between organisms and their environment

Scientific study of interactions that determine distribution and abundance of organisms

Scientific endeavor

≠ environmental activist

Answer 7

Ecology

Question 8

Discipline related to ecology that incorporates concepts from the natural sciences and social sciences focused on how people affect the environment and how these can be addressed.

Answer 8

Environmental Science

Question 9

Realizations of Ecologists (3)

Answer 9

Natural system do not necessarily return to their original state after a disturbance

Random perturbations often play an important role in nature

Different communities can form in the same area under similar environmental conditions

Question 10

Levels of Biological Organization involved in Ecology

Answer 10

Population
Community
Ecosystem
Landscapes
Biosphere

Question 11

Universal feature of living systems

Change in the genetic characteristics of a population over time

Answer 11

Evolution

Question 12

Process by which organisms gradually accumulate differences from their ancestors

Answer 12

Descent with modification

Question 13

Characteristic that enables organisms to improve their ability to survive or reproduce within its environment

Answer 13

Adaptation

Question 14

Individuals with particular traits tend to survive and reproduce at a higher than those that do not possess it
`

Answer 14

Natural Selection

Question 15

cyclic movement of a nutrient between organisms and the physical environment

Answer 15

Nutrient Cycle

Question 16

How do ecologists answer ecological questions

Answer 16

Ecologists evaluate competing hypotheses about natural systems with observations, experiments, and models

Question 17

Includes altering one or more features of the environment and observes the effect of that change

Cause-and-effect relationship

Control group and experimental groups present

Answer 17

Ecological Experiment

Question 18

Directional change in climate that occurs over 3 decades or longer

Answer 18

Climate change

Question 19

What is replication and what is its advantage

Answer 19

Each treatment, including the control, is performed more than once

Advantage: the higher the replicates, the less likely the results are due to variable that was not measured or controlled in the study

Question 20

Steps of the Scientific Method

Answer 20

Observe nature and ask a well-framed question about those observations

Use previous knowledge or intuition to develop possible answers to that question. In science, such possible explanations of a well-framed question are called hypotheses

Evaluate competing hypotheses by performing experiments, gathering carefully selected observations, or analyzing results of quantitative models

Use the results of those experiments, observations, or models to modify one or more of the hypotheses, to pose new questions, or to draw conclusions about the natural world
New observations = new questions = new ideas being tested

Question 21

“Oekologie” -> Oikos (household) + Logos
(study/knowledge)
- Coined the term ecology
- “the comprehensive science of the relationship of the
organism to the environment”

Answer 21

Ernst Haeckel

Question 22

Having concern, for, or acting in favor of, the environment

Answer 22

Environmentalism

Question 23

• Includes subdisciplines of physiological, evolutionary, and behavioral ecology
• Concerned with how an organism’s structure, physiology, and behavior (for animals) meet the challenges posed by environment

Answer 23

Organismal Ecology

Question 24

• Analyzes factors that affect population size and how and why it changes over time.
• Note: Both population and community ecology also study abiotic factors
• What environmental factors affect the reproductive rate of deers?

Answer 24

Population Ecology

Question 25

Examines how interactions between species, e.g. predation and competition, affect community structure and organization
- What factors influence the diversity of species that make up a forest?

Answer 25

Community Ecology

Question 26

• Emphasizes energy flow and chemical cycling between organisms and the environment
• What factors control photosynthetic productivity in a grassland ecosystem

Answer 26

Ecosystem Ecology

Question 27

• An area that is spatially heterogeneous in one or more features of the environment, such as the number or arrangement of different habitat types;
• typically includes multiple ecosystems.

Answer 27

Landscape

Question 28

• Focuses on the factors controlling exchanges of energy, materials, and organisms across multiple ecosystems
• To what extent do the trees living near a river serve as corridors of dispersal of animals?

Answer 28

Landscape Ecology

Question 29

• the global ecosystem; sum of all ecosystems and landscapes

Answer 29

Biosphere

Question 30

Examines how regional exchange of energy and materials influences the functioning and distribution of organisms across the biosphere

Answer 30

Global Ecology

Question 31

Two types of questions in ecology

Answer 31

Pattern-based
- Where and how
Mechanistic
- Why

Question 32

• Shallow question
• Mechanistic
• Nearer or more proximal

Answer 32

Proximal Explanations

Question 33

• More encompassing
• Evolutionary

Answer 33

Ultimate Explanations