Ecology Flashcards
What are the three cells and their intermediate points in order from the north pole to the equator?
Polar Cell
- polar front
Ferrel Cell
- subtropical high
Hadley Cell
- equatorial low
- Pressure ____ at high altitudes
- Warm air holds ____ water than cold air
decreased
more
What is the coriolis effect?
The Earth’s rotation causes moving bodies at its surface to be deflected, means that wind-driven ocean currents turn right in the Northern Hemisphere, and left in the Southern Hemisphere.
How do rain shadows occur?
Humid damp air rises from the ocean and begins ascending a mountain. The higher the air rises, the colder and less pressured it becomes and it begins to dispel it’s water. By the time passes the apex of the mountain and begins falling as it warms itself it draws up the moisture from the ground. Thus the ocean-facing side is very wet and the opposite side will be dried
Describe the continental effect
- a phenomenon that causes temperatures in inland areas to fluctuate more than temperatures near to large bodies of water.
- landmasses cool air faster than coastal areas, the costal areas see cooler summers and warmer winters,
- the more inland you get the more oppositely the effect self imposes
What are the characteristics of a tropical rainforest?
- High heat
- High precip.
- High biological diversity
What are the characteristics of a temperate forest?
- Medium heat
- Medium precip.
- High biological diversity
What are the characteristics of a boreal forest?
- Colder heat
- Medium precip.
- Medium biological diversity
What are the characteristics of a temperate grassland?
- Medium heat
- Low precip.
- Medium biological diversity
What are the characteristics of a tundra?
- Dry
- Cold
- Somewhat biologically diverse
What are the marine zones?
- Photic (100-200m depth)
- Aphotic (depth where light doesn’t reach)
- Benthic (along the bottom)
- Neritic (shallows)
- Intertidal zone (shore)
- Oceanic (length past the shallows)
Describe the Hutchinsonian niche
- Describes fundamental characteristics of any species: the global maximum population growth rate (rmax); the niche optimum (the environment for which rmax is reached); and the niche width (the environmental range for which intrinsic population growth rates are positive
Difference between fundamental and realised niche
- Realised niche: set of environmental conditions where the species occurs
- Fundamental niche: set of environmental conditions that the species can tolerate
What is the optimal foraging theory and it’s equation?
- Animals choose the most energy-efficient prey
- P = E / (S+C)
where P = net energy gained, E = energy gained from consuming prey, S = energy required to search for prey, C = energy required to digest the prey
What are the assumptions of the mark-recapture method and the equation?
- No immigration or emigration
- All members mix randomly
- Marks remain between samples (don’t fall or rub off)
- IC / Pop. size = RM / CR
What are the assumptions of the geometric growth model and what is the equation?
- Basic form of future population estimation
- Nt = (λ^t)(N0)
If λ > 1, population _____
If λ < 1, population _____
increases
decreases
What are the assumptions of the logistic growth model and it’s equation?
- Closed population
- Changes in abundance are concentrated around a discrete time (breeding season)
- Per capita birth and death rates are independent of the environment or pop. size
- All individuals are treated equally (age, sex ignored)
- ΔN/Δt = rN(1 - (N/K))
Where N = pop density
r = intrinsic per capita rate of increase (=ln(λ))
K = carrying capacity
Describe the exponential continuous-time population growth model?
- Species produce offspring randomly
- Closed population
- Per capita birth and death rates are independent of the environment or pop. size
- All individuals are treated equally (age, sex ignored)
- The continuous-time model is Nt = N0 e^rt , where Nt is the population abundance in the future, N0 is the population abundance in the first year, e is the natural logarithm, r is the instantaneous per capita rate of population growth (r = (B - D)/N0), and t is time. Produces exponential growth
Describe the logistic continuous time model for population growth?
- includes a carrying capacity term
- dN/dT = N(rmax)((K-N)/K)
dN/dt is the change in population density over time, N is the population density, rmax is the intrinsic rate of increase, and K is the carrying capacity. - The (K − N)/K slows population growth as the population density approaches K.
- The population density levels off at the carrying capacity, produces a stable equilibrium.
Describe discrete time population growth?
- Assumes the population can overshoot the carrying capacity and then quickly return to that value.
- Nt+1 = Nt + Nt(rdis)((K-Nt)/K)
where Nt+t is the population density at the next time step, Nt is the current population density, rdis is the maximum per capita rate of population change, and K is the carrying capacity.
- If rdis < 1, the equation leads to _____ _____
- if 1 < r < 2, it leads to ____ _____
- if 2 < rdis < 2.57, it leads to ___ ___ ___
- if rdis > 2.57, it leads to ____ ____
- monotonic damping
- damped oscillations
- stable limit cycles
- chaotic dynamics
Describe negative-density dependent
- Intraspecific resource competition
- Pops have higher per capita growth rate when small
- Is known the be wrong because the less individuals in a population, the less fit it is
Describe the allele effect
- Contrast to negative-density dependence
- Populations at low numbers are affected by a positive relationship between population growth rate and density
- Low density makes it harder to find mates, fend off predators, environmental conditioning
Difference between Environmental and demographic stochasticity?
- Environmental stochasticity is the change in the average birth and death rates from one time period to the next because of random changes in environmental conditions
- Demographic stochasticity is when no change happens in the average birth and deaths from one period to the next, but individuals don’t follow averages. Just by chance, we could have a lower or higher number of survivors, births etc than the expected base average
When and why would you use age-stage pop. dynamics?
When a species has distinct life stages which each have unique rates of survival and fecundity.
What are the three types of survivorship curves?
- Type I: high early survival until a certain age, and then survival declines rapidly (e.g., humans, elephants, whales)
- Type II: constant survival throughout its lifetime (e.g., some seabirds and reptiles)
- Type III: very low initial survival during early stages until a certain age is reached, and then high survival till death (e.g., trees, amphibians, insects, marine invertebrates)
What are the assumptions of a metapopulation?
- all patches are equally accessible to dispersers, regardless of habitat barriers or distances between patches
- each habitat patch may either be unoccupied or occupied and at carrying capacity
- if a disperser arrives in an empty patch, it may found a new population, which then grows to carrying capacity;
- if it arrives in an occupied patch it has a negligible impact on the population dynamics of that patch
Describe the “flickering light” phenomenon seen in Levins metapopulation model
- All patches have an equal chance of being populated, as well as extinction and colonisation rates being constant
- Because of this the patches, from moment to moment will show newly colonised, newly extinct and declining populations
What is the equation for metapopulation prediction?
Δp/Δt = cp(1-p) - ep
where p = patches occupied
c = colonisation rate
e = extinction rate
Note:
- when c>e the metapopulation reaches an equilibrium where a constant proportion of patches are occupied
- when e>c eventually metapopulation goes extinct
Describe C3 photosynthesis
Activated electrons from sunlight provide energy to build sugars that contain energy-rich bonds. The sugars then head off to the rest of the plant to power the plants respiration, reproduction and assimilation. Water is used at the beginning when carbon dioxide is combined with RuBP to create two molecules of PGA which is the basic building block for glucose and other sugars. The essential enzyme for this conversion is not very good at its job. Sometimes CO2 gets too low or when temps are high RuBP tends to grab O2 instead of CO2 because it’s retarded, and that wastes time. This leads to photorespiration where O2 gets combined with sugars and slows down the energy capture rate as well as reduces photosynthetic efficiency
Describe C4 photosynthesis
Done when water levels are low, thus the emphasis is limiting the amount of water loss experienced from leaving the stomata open. In this process CO2 combines with a three-carbon compound called phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP). This combination ends with a four-carbon compound which heads off to the bundle sheath cells away from the stomata. Then within the sheaths the compounds break down again to feed CO2 through the Calvin Benson cycle to create the sugars. The CO2-rich environment in the interior bundle sheath cells reduces photorespiration, and the low concentration of CO2 in the mesophyll cells speeds up CO2 acquisition and leads to less time with open stomata (because gradient is stronger, so efficiency increases). There is a little loss of energy in the extra step, but water efficiency is much greater
Describe Crassulacean Acid Metabolism photosynthesis
Involves a temporal separation rather than a spatial separation between getting CO2 and making sugars. In this case the plants only open their stomata at night. CAM photosynthesizers combine CO2 and three-carbon compounds into four-carbon acids. During the day when the stomata are closed the acids are broken down into CO2 for the carbon-benson cycle and three-carbon compounds are recycled for tomorrow night’s CO2 collection.
What is the difference between interference and exploitation competition
- Interference competition occurs when one species directly interferes with the ability of its competitors to access a limited resource
- Exploitation competition occurs when one species reduces the availability of limiting resources to another species, simply by using it. Species compete indirectly through their mutual effects on the availability of a shared resource
Describe the principle of competitive exclusion
- When two species overlap substantially in their resource use,
even a slight advantage in acquiring the resource by individuals of one species will impose fitness costs
on individuals of other species that drive them to extinction.
When isoclines do not cross, it implies ____ _____results. Depending on which isocline is _____ the other, either species 1 or species 2, always drives the other to extinction
competitive exclusion
above
When isoclines cross it implies that competitive exclusion occurs, but which species wins depends on ____ ___ ____. Or if all arrows point to the point of intersection, where stable equilibrium occurs, then coexistence occurs but each species is ____ ____ ____ ____
where you start
below their carrying capacity
Describe the Ghost of Competition Past
Past competition may explain many current ecological patterns, but in most cases we will never know
Describe Resource Partitioning
Species use a limiting resource in a different way (e.g one uses the tree trunk for shelter, one uses the branches for a nest and one eats the insects living in the tree)
Describe Character Displacement
An adaptive shift in a population-level mean trait of a phenotype for a trait that is critical to resource acquisition and other competitive interactions
Faster resource consumption ____ carrying capacity
lowers