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Biology > Ecology > Flashcards

Ecology Flashcards

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AP® Biology flashcards Biology 101 flashcards
1
Q

What is a Biome?

A

A biome is a grouping of ecosystems with similar biotic and abiotic conditions

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2
Q

Biotic vs abiotic

A

Biotic: living
Abiotic: non living

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3
Q

Name the world’s major biomes

A
  • Tropical
  • Savanna
  • Desert
  • Temperate Rain Forest
  • Grasslands
  • Boreal Forest (Taiga)
  • Tundra
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4
Q

Tropical Forest (4)

A

Ex: Central America

  • Close to the equator
  • Year-round warm temperatures
  • More rain than any other biome
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5
Q

Savanna (4.5)

A

Ex: Africa, South Amefica, Australia

  • Grasslands with clusters of trees
    -Slight seasonal variation in temperature
    -Significant variation in rainfall
    - Savanna’s have distinct rainy seasons
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6
Q

Desert (3)

A

Ex: Antarctica

  • Driest biome on Earth
  • Depending on rainfall, can vary in biodiversity
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7
Q

Temperate Rain Forest (3)

A

Ex: Pacific NW Coast of US

  • Regions with heavy rainfall
  • Moderate year-round temperatures
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8
Q

Grasslands

A

Ex: Midwest

  • Also known as the prairies
  • Moderate seasonal rainfall (but not enough to support the bigger plants and trees like a forest
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9
Q

Boreal Forest (Taiga) - 3

A

Ex: Canada

  • Develop in long, cold winters, and cool summers
  • Moderate precipitation
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10
Q

Tundra (2)

A
  • Cold and damp
  • Located near pole and on top of high mountains in lower latitudes
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11
Q

Animal Behaviour (2)

A
  • What an animal does & how an animal does it!
    Ex: Think of all the behaviours of your pet (or friend’s): list them and classify them as either being genetically innate or learned
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12
Q

Define Ethology

A

The study of animal behaviour with emphasis on the behavioural patterns that occur in natural environments

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13
Q

What hypothesis does the behavioural ecology emphasizes on?

A

Animal will act in a way that will increase their Darwinian fitness

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14
Q

What is fitness in Darwinian terms?

A

Evolutionary fitness and adaptive behaviour

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15
Q

What is evolutionary fitness?

A

Evolutionary fitness measures how many viable, fertile offspring an individual leaves in the next and subsequent generations relative to others in the population

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16
Q

What is adaptive behaviour?

A
  • An adaptive behaviour increases an individual’s evolutionary fitness relative to other individuals in the population
    (If good, population will start to adapt that method)
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17
Q

What are the adaptive behaviour classification?

A

Innate and learned

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18
Q

What is innate behaviour? (2)

A
  • AUTOMATIC, fixed, genetically programmed (born knowing it), no “learning curve” and consistent
  • Despite different environnements, all individuals exhibit the behaviour
  • done perfectly the first time it occurs (instinct)
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19
Q

What is learned behaviour? (4)

A
  • Variable, changeable
  • Flexible with a complex and changing environment
  • an animal’s experience (learned) results in a change of behaviour and not determined by genes
  • related to the amount of time a developing animal spends with its parents
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20
Q

Protist kingdom (7)

A
  • First animal
  • Eukaryotes (cells that contain a nucleus)
  • Don’t have a cell wall
  • Live in moist environments
  • Uni or multicellular
  • Most can move on their own
  • Are Autotrophic (can make food from inorganic substances ex: light), heterotrophic (uses organic carbon to make energy) or both
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21
Q

Similarities between bacteria and protists (5)

A
  • Can both be unicellular
  • One of the first groups of living things on Earth
  • Microscopic
  • Can cause disease
  • Can be parasites
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22
Q

Differences between bacteria and protists (4)

A
  • Protists: nucleus / Bacteria: no
  • Protists: watery environment/ Bacteria: variety of environment
  • Protists live as individuals generally
  • Protists vary greatly in appearance and function
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23
Q

Origin of eukaryotes (2)

A
  • 1st eukaryotic organism evolved about 1.5 billion years ago
    Prokaryotes possibly evolved from 1st eukaryotes by endosymbiosis
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24
Q

What is endosymbiosis?

A

Endosymbiosis is the process where one prokaryote lives inside another becoming dependent upon each other

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25
Q

What are the 3 categories of protists?

A
  • Animal-like protists
  • Plant-like protists
  • Fungus-like protists
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26
Q

Animal-like Protists (Protozoan) (3)

A
  • Unicellular heterotrophs (nutrition from organic substances)
  • Have vacuoles (stomach like compartments) to digest food
  • Separated into 4 groups based on movement
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27
Q

What are the four groups of Protozoa?

A

Flagellates - those with flagella
Ciliates - those with cilia
Sarcodines - those with pseudopods
Sporozoans - form spore like cells and capable of gliding movements

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28
Q

Flagellates (3) and example

A
  • Protozoa with flagella (a long whip-like structure)
  • smallest of protozoa
  • usually live in other organisms: symbiosis or mutualism

Ex: trypanosoma (causes African sleeping sickness)

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29
Q

What is symbiosis? (Flagellates)

A

Having a close relationship where at least one of the organisms benefits

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30
Q

What is mutualism? (Flagellates)

A

When both partners benefits

Ex: the flagellate in the intestine of termites allows them to be able to eat wood. Both organisms benefit.

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31
Q

Ciliates (4) and example

A
  • Protozoa with cilia (hair-like structures)
  • Largest protozoa
  • Multicellular
  • Reproduce by binary fission or conjugation

Ex: paramecium

32
Q

What is cilia?

A

Hair-like structures that help ciliates to move, get food, and sense their environment

33
Q

The structure of ciliate (4)

A
  • Oral grooves, lined with cilia; helps move water containing food into food vacuole at the end of the oral groove
  • Food vacuole; breaks down food and sends it through the cell
  • Have 2 nuclei; 1 nuclei controls everyday functions and 1 nuclei is for reproduction
34
Q

Sarcodines (5) and example

A
  • Protozoa with pseudopods
  • have thin membrane
  • no definite shape
  • reproduce through binary fission
  • have contractile vacuole that collects extra water and expels it from cell

Ex: amoeba

35
Q

What are pseudopods? (2)

A
  • also known as “false feet”
  • allow protozoa to move with their cell membrane by pushing it in one direction and then the cytoplasm flows into the bulge dragging the rest of the cell behind it
36
Q

Pseudopods and feeding

A

Pseudopods surround and trap food. Then a food vacuole will be formed to break down the food into cytoplasm = phagocytosis

37
Q

Sporozoans (2) and example

A
  • parasites
  • feed on cells and body fluids of hosts

ex: plasmodium (causes malaria) which have more than 1 host - mosquitoes then humans

38
Q

Plant-like Protists (4)

A
  • autotrophs (make their own food via photosynthesis0 and are better known as algae
  • unicellular or multicellular
  • can move on their own
  • contain different pigments (different colour)

Ex: euglena (special algae) - when there’s no sunlight they become heterotrophic

39
Q

The types of plant-like algae

A

Uni:
- Euglenoids
- Diatoms
- Dinoflagellates

Multi: (classified by colour)
- Red algae
- Green algae
- Brown algae

40
Q

Euglenoids (7)

A
  • Green & Unicellular
  • Live in fresh water
  • Photoautotrophs but can be heterotrophs (certain conditions by digesting food from the surrounding water)
  • have a flagella
  • have an eyespot which is sensitive to light (aka stigma)
  • have chloroplasts
  • both animal and plant-like
41
Q

Diatoms (4)

A
  • Unicellular and aquatic
  • Have a glass like cell wall made of silica
  • Photoautotrophs
  • Diatoms made of phytoplankton which are a source of Earth’s oxygen
42
Q

Dinoflagellates (7)

A
  • Unicellular
  • Cell walls like plates of armour
  • two flagella
  • spin when moving
  • are colourful (variety of pigments)
  • Can glow in dark
  • cause of red tide
43
Q

What is red tide?

A

Phenomenon that occurs when harmful algae blooms cause algae to become so numerous that it discolours water. It is harmful because they can lower oxygen in the water and release toxin that can cause illness in both humans or animals

44
Q

What is ECOLOGY?

A

Ecology is the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings

45
Q

What’s behavioural ecology?

A

Behavioural ecology uses the observations of animal behaviour and studies how behaviours are controlled and how it develops, evolves, and contributes to the organism’s survival and reproductive success

46
Q

What is behaviour? (2)

A
  • Behaviour is what and animals does and how it does it.
  • Behaviour includes muscular and non-muscular activities

Ex: learning is considered a behavioural process

47
Q

Proximate questions about behaviour

A

Proximate questions address the MECHANISMS that PRODUCE a behaviour: the environmental stimuli (something in the nature changes causing the animal to change) that trigger a behaviour and the genetic and physiological mechanisms (system in the body) that make it possible

Ex: how does an animal carry out a particular behaviour

48
Q

Ultimate questions about behaviour

A

Ultimate questions address the EVOLUTIONARY SIGNIFICANCE of a behaviour: how a behaviour increases the evolutionary fitness of the animals demonstrations it, helping it to survie and reproduce in its environment.

Ex: Why does the animal show this behaviour?

49
Q

Fixed actions patterns

A
  • A sequence of unlearned, innate behaviour that are unchangeable
  • Usually must be carried out to completion
  • Triggered by external sensory stimulus known as a sign of stimulus: carried out as a reflex
50
Q

Types of Learning behaviours

A
  • Imprinting
  • Habituation
  • Insight learning
  • Spatial learning
51
Q

Imprinting (4)

A
  • Form of learning where an animal forms a social attachment to an organism soon after hatching or birth. This has both an innate and learning component
  • can occur with visual (first thing you see) and chemical stimuli (hormones)
  • a rapid behaviour that includes learning and innate components and is generally irreversible
  • sensitive or critical period is a limited developmental phase that is only time when certain behaviour can be learned
52
Q

Habituation

A
  • a form of learning where an animal learns not to respond to a respond to a repeated stimulus
53
Q

Insight learning

A

Insight learning is the ability to solve an unfamiliar problem without the benefit of trial and error; an ability to reason

54
Q

Spatial learning

A

Spatial learning is a more complex modification of behaviour based on experience with the spatial structure of the environment

55
Q

Patterns of animal behaviour

A
  • Orientation
  • Courtship
  • Territoriality and aggression
  • Social behaviour
  • Communication
56
Q

Orientation

A
  • To find food, shelter, protection from predators or mates, animals must position or orient themselves in their environment
  • they use kinesiology or taxis
57
Q

What is kinesis? (2)

A
  • The simplest type of orientation and is moving without direction (non-directional response)
  • Change in speed of animal’s movement in response to stimulus. (Speeds up in unfavourable or vice versa)
58
Q

What is taxis? (2)

A
  • A directional movement (organism responds to something like door or something they see)
  • Movement towards or away from the stimulus
59
Q

Courtship***

A

Specialized behaviour pattern that allows the male and female of a species to recognize each other and close enough for mating to occur

60
Q

Terriotoriality (3)

A
  • The defence of a certain amount of space. Territorial animals can use threatening postures or noises to warn other animal away.
  • Ensures enough food for their offspring and space to breed
  • Lowers predation and disease in an area and keeps mating pairs
61
Q

Aggression

A

A fighting behaviour. Function can be to defend young or a territory. It is meant to deliver a message

62
Q

Social behaviour

A
  • Social behaviour: any interaction between two or more animals, usually of the same species
  • Evolve when animals are better able to survive and reproduce in a group than when they are alone
  • must be social for sexually reproducing species
  • forming groups helps avoid predation since being in a group is safer than being a lone animal
63
Q

Social behaviour selfishness

A

Natural selection favours behaviours that maximizes an individual’s survival and reproduction

64
Q

Social behaviour - dominance vs coordination

A
  • many animals have a dominance hierarchy which is a social ranking within a group
  • others work together in coordination to accomplish a task
65
Q

Altruism (2)

A
  • reduction of one’s individual fitness but increase the fitness of others
  • selflessness - rare
66
Q

Animal signals and communication (3)

A

Signal = behaviour that causes a change in another animal’s behaviour
Communication = reception and response to signals

Happens through visual, auditory, chemical tactile (touch) and electrical signals; related to lifestyle and environment

67
Q

Chemical communication

A

Communicate through odors that emit chemical substances (pheromones-skin)

68
Q

Auditory communication

A

When animals communicate using sound

Can be both learned and innate but usually a genetic innate component (usually birds)

69
Q

Mating behaviour and mate choice

A

Mating behaviour is the product of a form of natural selection called sexual selection

Females are usually more choosy because they are investing more time and resource to produce the offspring; hence the competition between men

70
Q

Monogamous relationships

A

Relationship where one male mates with one female

Note that males and females are harder to distinguish using external characteristics only

71
Q

Polygyny

A

One male mates with many females = male more showy/ornamented

72
Q

Polyandrous

A

One female mates with many males = female more showy than the males

73
Q

Intersexual selection

A

Members of one sex choose mates on the basis of certain traits. One makes themselves attractive to the opposite sex - usually brighter = attracts predators

74
Q

Intrasexual selection

A

Involves competition between members of one sec for mates by intimidating, deterring or defeating same-sex rivals

75
Q

Mate choice by females

A

Usually intersexual selection where the male species are more ornate than females, a trait that may affect mate choice by females

76
Q

Male competition for mates

A

Male competition for mates is a source of intrasexual selection that can reduce variation among males

77
Q

Dichotomous keys

A

A series of paired statements or questions that lead to identification of an organism used to identify an unfamiliar organism though characteristics or traits

Biology (5 decks)

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