Chapter 9 - Ecology Flashcards
What is ecology’s aim?
To explain why organisms live where they do. Hence why ecologists study ecosystems.
What is ecology?
The study of inter-relationships between organisms and their environments.
What are ecosystems?
Is the ecological system based in the relationship between all the living organisms and the non living component of the environment within which they occur naturally.
What is a population?
The number of individuals of a particular species that inhabit a particular region at the same time and which can interbreed.
What is a habitat?
The physical or abiotic part of an ecosystem. A defined area with specific characteristics where the organism live. Eg oak forest, deep sea, sand dunes, rocky shores, garden pond.
What is a microhabitat?
The climate which immediately affects an organism. This may be different from the general climate. Eg underneath a rotting log is the microclimate of wood louse.
What is a niche?
The sum of the characteristics that determine the position of an organism in its ecosystem, this includes the chemical, physical, spatial and temporal factors required for the survival of a species and which limits it’s distribution and growth.
How many species can occupy the same niche?
A niche is characteristic of a species and no 2 species occupy the same niche in the same environment in the same time.
However, a different species may occupy the same niche in the absence of the normal occupant.
What is a biosphere?
The part of the earth, including volume of air, land and water that is capable of supporting life.
Life on the biosphere depends on the suns energy, on the circulation of heat and on essential nutrients.
What is a biome?
A large ecosystem characterised by similar vegetation, animals and climate. It is characterised by a dominant type of plant that will then affect the type of fauna living in the habitat.
The biomes abiotic (non-living) factors, such as light intensity, wind, soil quality, amount of rainfall, temperature and nutrients, determine what koans and animals inhabit the zone.
What are biotic factors?
Any living or biological factor.
What are abiotic factors?
Any non-living or physical factors.
What does one find in an ecosystem?
Numerous interaction populations. Living in communities and inhabiting particular niches of the habitat.
What is a species?
A group of organisms that can successfully interbreed.
What is a population?
Members of the same species living in one habitat.
What is a community?
The living or biotic part of an ecosystem. All the organisms of all the different species living in one habitat.
How can ecosystems be classified?
According to their vegetation.
What are the major ecosystems in Malta?
Woodland (big trees - Oak, Pine) Buskett.
Maquis (small trees, large shrubs, climbers, olive tree, ivy)
Garigue develops in limestone areas. (Tough, low shrubs- thyme)
Steppe (herbaceous plants - grasses, leguminous plants)
Sand dunes (Ramla l-hamra) some distance inland from beach.
What are food chains or food webs?
The many relationships between the members of a community in an ecosystem.
What is each stage in a food chain referred to as?
Trophic level.
What do the arrows represent in a food chain/web?
The flow of energy and matter through it.
How are food chains organised usually?
Producers -> Primary Consumers (herbivores) -> Secondary Consumers (carnivores) -> Tertiary Consumers (top carnivores)
The food chain begins with producers. What are they usually?
Plants, algae, plankton, and photosynthetic bacteria.
Why are producers important and also usually found in the bottom of a food chain?
This is because uniquely producers are able to extract both energy and matter from the abiotic environment (energy from the sun and 98% if their matter from carbon dioxide in the air, with the remaining 2% from water and minerals in soil).
All other living organisms get both their energy and matter by eating other organism.
Give an example of a food chain.
Cabbage plant -> caterpillar -> sparrow -> hawk.
Algae -> water snail -> fish -> bear.
What is a consumer?
An animal that eats other organisms.
What are herbivores?
A consumer that feeds exclusively on plants. Primary consumers.
Eg: rabbits and sheep.
What are carnivores?
A consumer that feeds exclusively on other animals. Secondary consumer.
Eg: Hedgehog and Geckos.
What is the top carnivore?
A consumer at the too of a food chain, with no predators.
What are omnivores?
A consumer that eats both plants and animals.
What is a vegetarian?
A human that chooses not to eat animals (since humans are omnivores)
What are autotrophs?
An organism that manufactures it’s own food through photosynthesis. Producers.
What are heterotrophs?
An organism that obtains it’s energy and mass from other organisms. (Consumers and decomposers)
What are plankton?
Microscopic marine organisms.
What are phytoplankton?
Plant plankton. Microscopic marine producers.
What are zooplankton?
Animal plankton. Microscopic marine consumers.
What is a predator?
An animal that hunts and kills animals for food.
What is prey?
An animal that is hunted and killed for food.
What are scavengers?
An animal that eats dead animals, but doesn’t kill them.
What is detritus?
Dead and waste matter that is not eaten by consumers.
What are decomposers?
An organism that consumes detritus. (Detrivores and saprophytes)
What are detrivores?
An organism that eats detritus.
What are saprophytes?
A microbe (bacterium or fungus) that lives on detritus.
What is symbiosis?
Organisms living together in a close relationship. (Parasitism, mutualism and pathogen)
What is mutualism?
Two organism living together for mutual benefit. One of them usually gets food from the other.
What is commensalism?
Relationship in which only one organism benefits, while the other gains nothing but is not harmed.
Eg: Fish living in close vicinity of sharks, to get scraps of food which may fall while the shark is eating.
What is a parasite?
An organism that feeds on a larger living host organism, harming it.
Eg: Tapeworm.
What is a pathogen?
A microbe that causes a disease.