Community ecology Flashcards
An ecological community is composed of:
All populations of all species living close enough for actual or potential interaction, directly or indirectly
What are the building blocks of community ecology?
Species Interactions
Negative interactions for species x and y =
Competition
Interactions positive for species x and negative for species y =
Predation
Classifications of interactions based on outcomes for individual species and joint outcomes for all species involved:
Help / Hinder / No effect
Interspecific competition
- multiple species exploiting same limited resource
- negative impact on all species involved
- competition exclusion
- limiting resources means no 2 species can co-exist in the same space
what is an ecological niche?
The sum of a species’ use of the biotic and abiotic resources in it’s environment
Consequences of competition
- drives species to occupy different niches
- species can co-exist if niches are sufficiently different, if they change or only slightly overlap
How might a species niche change?
- natural selection for a species to access different resources
- this differentiation = Resource partitioning
Competition and resource partitioning can lead to what?
Character displacement
When does character displacement occur?
When related species are more similar in isolation then when they occur together
- Allopatry and sympatry