Competition and Predator-Prey Relationships 24.2+3 Flashcards
What types of competition are there?
Interspecific and intraspecific competition
What is interspecific competition?
This is the competition between different species for the same resource.
What disadvantage can interspecific competition result in?
Because two species are competing for the same resource, that resource will end up decreasing in abundance and eventually it will affect both competing species. They will not get enough energy and not enough biomass will be transferred so both populations will decrease in size as they won’t have enough energy to reproduce.
What is competition exclusion principle?
This is when one of the species is more adapted to the environment and so the species that are less adapted will be outcompeted and its species will decline in number until it can no longer exist in the habitat. It has essentially been eliminated as competition so the adapted species can now thrive and grow.
What is an example of interspecific competition?
Grey squirrels were introduced into the UK from America. They started reproducing and increased in number. They were more adapted to the environment because they could eat a wider range of foods and also store more fat because they were bigger so they reduced the food availability for the red squirrels and became the thriving population.
What is intraspecific competition?
This is competition between individuals of the same species for the same resource. The smaller the availability of the resource, the smaller the population gets.
How can you represent intraspecific competition?
On a graph with three stages. it increases gradually and then decreases gradually before starting to increase again.
What is stage one of the intraspecific competition?
When the resource is plentiful, all organisms have enough to reproduce and survive which means population increases steadily
What is stage two of the intraspecific competition?
Now that the population size has increased, the demand for the resources also increased which means they became limited, now the population size will decrease again as there is not enough for all of them to survive
What is stage three of the intraspecific competition?
Now that there are fewer individuals, there are more resources so they can reproduce more again and the cycle will continue.
What is predation?
Where an organism (predator) kills and eats another organism ( prey)
What type of competition is predation?
Interspecific competition
Is there a link between predator and prey population?
Yes, they are interlinked because they depend on one another
Describe the stages in a predator-prey population graph.
They have two separate lines that will fluctuate. The predator line will be behind the prey.
Stage 1 - An increase in prey pop means more resources for predators so their pop will increase too
Stage 2 - This increase in predator pop means more prey will die, so decreases prey pop
Stage 3 - Decreased prey pop means less food for predators so their pop decreases because of intraspecific competition
Stage 4 - Decrease in the pop of predators means less prey being killed so increase in prey pop. The cycle will then begin again.
What other factors could influence the predator-prey relationship?
The availabilty of plants for the prey to eat, other predators present that could eat the predators also other changes in abiotic factors like extreme weather
