definitions for unit 2 Flashcards
What is risk?
The likelihood of harm arising from exposure to a hazard.
What is a risk assessment?
Identifying control measures to minimise risk.
What is point count?
The observer recording all individuals seen from a fixed point count location.
What is taxonomy?
The identification and naming of organisms and their classification into groups based on shared characteristics.
What is phylogenetics?
The study of the evolutionary history and relationships among individuals or groups of organisms.
What is a phylogeny?
A diagrammatic hypothesis of its relationships to other organisms
What are model organisms?
Those that are either easily studied or have been well studied.
What is latency?
The time between the stimulus occurring and the response behaviour.
What is frequency?
The number of times a behaviour occurs within the observation period.
What is duration?
The length of time each behaviour occurs during the observation period.
What is an ethogram?
List of species-specific behaviours to be observed and recorded in the study.
What is evolution?
The change over time in the proportion of individuals in a population differing in one or more inheritable traits.
What is sexual selection?
The non-random process involving the selection of alleles that increase the individual’s chance of mating and producing offspring.
What is male-male rivalry?
Large size or weaponry increases access to females through conflict.
What is female choice?
Females assessing the fitness of males.
What is genetic drift?
When chance events cause unpredictable fluctuations in allele frequencies from one generation to the next.
What are population bottlenecks?
When a population size is reduced for at least one generation.
What are selection pressures?
The environmental factors that influence which individuals in a population pass on their alleles.
What does the Hardy-Weinberg (HW) principle state?
That, in the absence of evolutionary influences, allele and genotype frequencies in a population will remain constant over the generations.
What is fitness?
A measure of the tendency of some organisms to produce more surviving
offspring than competing members of the same species.
What is absolute fitness?
The ratio between the
frequency of individuals of a particular genotype after selection, to those before
selection.
What is relative fitness?
The ratio of the number of
surviving offspring per individual of a particular genotype to the number of
surviving offspring per individual of the most
successful genotype.
What is co-evolution?
The process by which two or
more species evolve in response to selection
pressures imposed by each other.
What is symbiosis?
Co-evolved intimate relationships between members of two different species.
What is mutualism?
Both organisms in the interaction are interdependent on each other for resources or other services. As both organisms gain from the relationship, the interaction is (+/+).
Parasitism: the parasite benefits in terms of
energy or nutrients and the host is harmed as
the result of the loss of these resources (+/-).
What is commensalism?
Only one of the organisms benefits (+/0).
What is parasitism?
The parasite benefits in terms of energy or nutrients and the host is harmed as
the result of the loss of these resources (+/-).
What does the Red Queen Hypothesis state?
That, in a co-evolutionary relationship, change in the traits of one species can act as a selection pressure on the other species.
What is parthenogenesis?
Reproduction from a female gamete without fertilisation.
What is meiosis?
The division of the nucleus that results in the formation of haploid gametes from a diploid gametocyte.
What are homologous chromosomes?
Chromosomes of the same size, same centromere position and with the same sequence of genes at the same loci.
What are linked genes?
Those on the same chromosome.
What is independent assortment?
Each pair of homologous chromosomes is positioned independently of the other pairs, irrespective of their maternal and paternal origin.
What are hermaphrodites?
Species that have functioning male and female reproductive organs in each individual.
What is monogamy?
The mating of a pair of animals to the exclusion of all others.
What is polygamy?
Individuals of one sex have more than one mate.
What is polygyny?
One male mates exclusively with a group of females.
What is polyandry?
One female mates with a number of males in the same breeding season.
What is an ecological niche?
A multi-dimensional summary of tolerances and requirements of a species.
What is competitive exclusion?
Where the niches of two species are so similar that one declines to local extinction.
What is the definitive host?
The organism on or in which the parasite reaches sexual maturity.
What are viruses?
Parasites that can only replicate inside a host cell.
What is transmission?
The spread of a parasite to a host.
What is virulence?
The harm caused to a host species by a parasite.
What is epidemiology?
The study of the outbreak and spread of infectious disease.
What is the herd immunity threshold?
The density of resistant hosts in the population required to prevent an epidemic.
