Ecology Flashcards
Community
Populations of various species close enough to interact with each other
Ecological niche
Where an organism lives and their role in the eco system (producer ex) and how they interact
Interactions influences:
Distribution of organisms
Abundance of organisms
Can be beneficial, detrimental or neutral
Species interactions
Direct (compétition for a limited ressource, prédation, herbivory, symbiosis) or indirect (facilitation: one organism makes it easier for another to survive)
Compition
Can be intraspecific (same species) or inter specific (different)
Can lead to competitive exclusion: one drives the other out
Or niche differentiation: they start using the environment differently to coexist
Fundamental niche: full range of resources and climate conditions that permits individuals to lie (all the are one can live in)
Realized niche: actual habitat, usually smallest
Prédation
Herbivory: plant is the prey
Often both co-evolve if inter specific relationships
How to catch prey:
Pursuit
Ambush
How to avoir predators:
Escape
Mechanical défense
Cryptic coloration
Warning coloration
Mimicry (batesian mimicry: to mimic another species that is poisonous although you aren’t, or mullerian mimicry: to mimic another poisonous species when you are also poisonous)
Chemical
Herbivory
To eat autotrophs
Plants or protists or fungus
Pathogens: fungi’s or bacterial that eat a living plant. When the plant is dead, they are instead decomposers
Parasitic plants:obtain nutrition of other living plant, but give nothing in return
Symbiosis
Long the relationships
Mutualism
Commensalism
Parasitic
Facilitation
Indirect
Facilitates living for another species, either for one’s own gain or not
Abiotic impact
huge impact
Limits environmental conditions that species can endure
pH
Sunlight
Temperature
Evaluation species diversity
Species Richness: number of species
Species Relative abundance: how evenly spread are the species
Good diversity benefits the ecosystem, as it is more likely to survive a challlenging envient
Ecosystem
All the communities of organisms in an area and the abiotic factors
Open system: constantly release and absorb energy and mass
Energy flow and chemical cycle
Producers
Consumers
Décomposers
And again
Primary producers: organisms that produce biomass from inorganic compounds (co2, nh3, po4), almost all phototrauphs
Primary production: amount of light energy converted to chemical energy (bounds in glucose)
Biomass:mass of living and dead organisms
Secondary production: biomass generated by heterotrophs (get energy by consuming other organisms)
Primary consumers: consumes primary producers
Secondary consumer: consumers primary consumer
Etc
Eat to build biomass by consumer other organisms
Decomposers
Consumes detritus (dead particulate organic material), converts it into inorganic form (co2, po4, etc) returns nutrients to the environment
Heterotrophs
Digest then ingest
Recyclers
Food chain vs food web
Food chain is linear (producer, consumer, décomposer)
Food web:interconnected food chains in an ecosystem, each chain impacts the others
Can be either trophic cascades (top to bottom, when a trophic level is suppressed allows all the lower level to grow more)
Or bottom up (usually is)
