Ecology Flashcards
Define Ecology
Study of interactions between organisms and environment
How is ecological change and evolutionary change correlated
Needs change as the environment changes.
Define Environment
A collection of biotic and abiotic factors.
What are Abiotic factors
Non living factors
Temperature
Rainfall
Etc.
What are biotic factors
Living factors
Bacterial
Food web
Etc.
Define organismal ecology
How and organism interacts with its biotic and abiotic factors.
Example of organismal ecology
Pill bugs and environment
Weather and fungi communities
Hybernation and changes in weather
How is coral bleaching related to related to organismal ecology
Raising temperatures make protists leave.
Define Keystone species
A species that identifies the health of an ecosystem.
Define Population Ecology
Factors that affect changes in population size, fitness, allele frequencies, distribution etc.
How does a population grow
Births and immigration
How does a population shrink
Deaths and emigration
What is a defining characteristic of a population
One species that shares genes.
Define Carrying capacity
How many individuals an environment can hold.
Define Community ecology
Interactions between different species and factors that shape community formation and fate
How does community ecology affect health
Gut microbiomes are important especially in maintaining weight.
Obese mice were treated with gut microbiome of healthy mice.
Define ecosystem Ecology
Flow of energy and elements between populations and communities and environment at ecosystem scale
How are nutrients tracked in an ecosystem
Stable isotope tracing. Heavy carbon can be planted in an environment and followed using radiation.
Define Landscape ecology
Flow of energy and elements between populations and communities and environment at landscape scale.(between ecosystems.)
Define global ecology
Flow of energy and elements between populations and communities and environments at biosphere scale. (the whole earth)
Why is global ecology so hard to measure
Each factor influences the whole earth.
What is biogeochemistry
Understanding how genomes affect ecology at a global scale.
Why would sequencing genomes help you with ecology
If all variables are accounted for. Then we would be able to predict future of an environment based off of species present.
What are the annual climate reports
Predictions of where the climate will be based on known variables and past data.
Why are the annual climate reports becoming more accurate
More factors are being accounted for.
Satellite data is becoming more accurate. (greater resolution)
Define Ecological modeling
Use known correlations between biotic and abiotic variables to predict population, community, or ecosystem level responses to projected changes of factors.
What is climate?
Temperature and precipitation
Not weather.
How are predictions made of climate change
Individual researches ( with no correspondance) make their forecast and those are averaged and run through simulations.
Tropical forrest
warm and wet
Savanna
warm and not wet enough for forest
Desert
Dry and hot or cold
Chaparral
Costal, hot and dry. Lots of fires. California and cost of dead sea.
Temperate grassland
erratic precipitation (dry-ish) less rain than savanna. Lots of fires.
Taiga
Cold forest
Deciduous forest
Wet and seasonal
Tundra
Dry and cold. Low nutrients, no trees
High Mountains (Alpine)
Cold, high elevation, High uv. Low diversity
Polar Ice
Frozen, no plants
What are important factors of location in relation to Climate
Elevation and latitude.
How are elevation and latitude related
The further from the equator is similar to being higher in elevation.
Is it easier to change a biome or reverse a change in biome
Change a biome
What is significant about a lake as an aquatic biome
Nutrients will rotate when the lake freezes.
What is significant about a river as a biome
Different species located up and down stream
What is the condition of a coral reef
Going extinct
Define Marine Pelagic
Deep ocean
What limits a species distribution
Locomotion
Climate (skylarks in great Britain)
(Plant sporophytes in upper atmosphere vs Elephants limited range of motion)
How do we know a population has traveled
Gene signaling can be monitored.
What factors limit a species range
Dispersal adaptations/ barriers
Niche availability
Humans (sometimes unintentional)
Climate
Define niche availibility
organism perfectly suited for an environment.
How does niche availability influence dispersal
Niche needs to be available in a different area for the species to thrive
How was house hold bacteria microbiomes found in antartica
Researchers boots.
What happens to diversity with elevation, Latitude and rainfall?
There is an inverse relation between elevation and latitude. The is a direct relation with rainfall.
As elevation and latitude increase, Richness drops.
As rainfall drops, richness drops.
What are the three types ways species organize themselves within an area?
Clumped
uniform
random
What is species dispersal
Same species in same area.
How is a species dispersal represented in their genomes
Behavior influences fitness which influences genome
How do we see different human migration patterns in genes
As tribes left Africa and mixed with neanderthals we see that represented in their genome.
Define survivorship curve
How many species are represented relative to their age.
What is observed in a species with high survivor ship rates
They tend to have less offspring
What is observed in a species with low survivorship
They tend to have lots of offspring.
Define carrying capacity
The amount of a species that a habitat can hold.
How is a projected carrying capacity different from actual population numbers
A population will go over and dip under the carrying capacity.
Why don’t we see accurate carrying capacity in the wild.
Carrying capacity does not account for abnormal event like disease, severe weather, human interaction.
How is carrying capacity measured
Amount of resources available.
Is disease accounted for with carrying capacity
No, Disease is similarly density dependent.
