Community Structure

Question 1

food web

Answer 1

series of interconnecting food chains

Question 2

food chain

Answer 2

movement of energy and nutrients from one feeding group to another that starts with plants and ends with trophic level

Question 3

trophic level(basal, intermediate, top)

Answer 3

aggregates of species based on how they obtain energy
basal- photosynthesis or chemosynthesis
intermediate trophic levels-eat basal top trohpic nothing eats it

Question 4

trophic links

Answer 4

arrows from the consumers to the species being consumed

Question 5

species richness

Answer 5

count of the number of species occurring within the community (S)

Question 6

dominance

Answer 6

disproportionately abundant

Question 7

species evenness

Answer 7

how equal are the relative abundance

Question 8

Shannon Index

Answer 8

H=-E(pi)(log2pi) incorporates richness and evenness. lowest constraint=0

Question 9

Simpsons Diversity Index

Answer 9

D=E(niIN)2, higher density closer to 1

Question 10

guilds

Answer 10

groups of species that exploit a common resource in a similar fashion

Question 11

functional type

Answer 11

a group of species defined based on their common response to the environment (plants classified based on photosynthetic pathway)

Question 12

zonation

Answer 12

characteristic distribution of vegetation along an environmental gradient

Question 13

keystone species

Answer 13

species that disproportionately affects community structure(relative to its abundance)

Question 14

latidunal gradient

Answer 14

decreasing richness at higher latitudes

Question 15

relative abundance

Answer 15

proportion of a species relative to all other species

Question 16

relative abundance curves

Answer 16

1. calculate relative abundances
2. order all species by their RA
3. plot RAs by rank of the species