Community Ecology & Structure Flashcards
Define ecology
The study of relationships between organisms and their environment, both abiotic and biotic
Who coined the term ecology?
Ernest Haeckel in 1866
What are the scales of ecological interaction?
Individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere approaches
What does the individual approach focus on?
survival and reproduction (unit of natural selection)
Define population
A group of individuals of the same species living together in the same area
What is studied in the community approach?
Interactions among species and their competition for resources
Define ecosystems approach
Incudes the community and its physical environment, focusing on energy flow, food webs, and topic levels
How are communities organized?
By physical characteristics (grassland, desert, etc) or biological characteristics (dominant species of plants)
What is community structure?
The types and numbers of species in a community
What is community change
Fluctuations in community composition over time
What is taxanomic affinity?
Grouping species by taxonomy (e.g. all bird species in a community)
Define guild
A group of species using the same resources
What is a functional group
Species functioning in similar ways, though not necessarily using the same resources
What is a keystone species?
Controls distribution or abundance of other species, but not necessarily most abundant
Define foundation species
A species that causes environmental changes affecting other species
What is a dominant species?
The most abundant species in terms of number of biomass
What is species richness?
The total number of species in a community
Define species evenness
The relative abundance of species compared to one another
How is species diversity measured?
Using indices like the Shannon Index, combing species richness and evenness
What do species accumulation curves show?
When most of enough species in a community have been observed
Where is species richness typically the highest?
In equatorial regions
Name five factors influencing community structure
Climate patterns, geography, resource heterogeneity, disturbances, and species interactions
How does climate change affect community structure?
It can alter survival rate, shift species distributions, destabilize food webs, and cause temporal/spatial mismatches
What are examples of disturbances affecting community structure?
Fires, storms, and landslides
