Ecology

Question 1

What is the order of the levels of organization?

Answer 1

Organism –> Population –> Community –> Ecosystem –> Biosphere

Question 2

What are physical factors of environment?

Answer 2

-Water, temperature (latitude/altitude), sunlight, oxygen

Question 3

What factors affect substratum?

Answer 3

-Soil pH, texture (loams contain each soil type), minerals (nitrates, phosphates), humus

Question 4

Who has a longer digestive tract?

Answer 4

-Herbivores required greater surface area/time than Carnivores

Question 5

Niche

Answer 5

-Functional role distinct to each species

Question 6

What happens if two species occupy similar niches?

Answer 6

-Common resource causes extinction, change in distribution, or further divergence in niches.

Question 7

Symbiosis

Answer 7

• Intimate, often permanent association

- Mutualism, Commensalism, Parasitism

Question 8

Sapyphytism

Answer 8

Protists/Fungi decompose dead organisms externally and absorb nutrients
-Mold, mushrooms, bacteria of decay, slime molds

Question 9

Poikilothermic

Answer 9

-Cold-blooded, releases most heat energy to environment

Question 10

Homeothermic

Answer 10

• Warm-blooded, make use of heat produced

- Physical adaptations: hair, fat, feathers

Question 11

Are food webs with more numbers of pathways more or less stable?

Answer 11

-More stable

Question 12

Compare energy, mass, and number in food pyramid.

Answer 12

• Each energy transfer looses energy as well as uses some for metabolism (heat loss)
• All decrease when ascending pyramid

Question 13

Who drives most material cycles?

Answer 13

-Scavengers and decomposers

Question 14

Elemental Nitrogen –> Nitrates

Answer 14

• Nitrogen-fixing bacteria

- Lightening

Question 15

Ammonia –> Nitrates/Nitrites

Answer 15

• Nitrifying bacteria

- Chemosynthesis

Question 16

How are nitrites used and converted to ammonia?

Answer 16

-Plants absorb them (nucleic acids/proteins) –> animals eat plants (animal proteins) –> bacteria of decay (ammonia)

Question 17

What are the fates of ammonia produced from waste/dead tissue?

Answer 17

• Nitrified again

- Denitrified by bacteria to elemental nitrogen

Question 18

What gives off CO2 to atmosphere?

Answer 18

-Respiration by plants/animals

Question 19

What uses up CO2?

Answer 19

-Photosynthesis

Question 20

What returns organic carbon locked in organism?

Answer 20

-Bacteria of decay

Question 21

When is a climax community established?

Answer 21

-Community sere occurs in which population alters environment in way that original conditions giving rise to current community are recreated.

Question 22

What is a sere?

Answer 22

• Community stage in ecological succession

- Defined by dominant species

Question 23

Which is the most stable biome?

Answer 23

-Aquatic biomes

Question 24

Desert

Answer 24

• Less than 10 inches rain

- Small plants/animals

Question 25

Grassland

Answer 25

- 10-30 inches rain | - No shelter for herbivorous mammals --> long legs/hooves

Question 26

Rainforest

Answer 26

- Torrential rains - High temperature in tropical; moderate in temperate - Dense vegetation, not shed leaves - Epiphytes - Floor inhabited by saprophytes

Question 27

Temperate deciduous forest

Answer 27

- Cold winters (shed leaves), warm summers - Moderate rain - NE and Central Eastern US, Central Europe

Question 28

Temperate Coniferous Forest

Answer 28

- Cold, dry, not shed leaves - Water conservation with needle shaped leaves - Redwoods - Northern US/Southern CA

Question 29

Taiga

Answer 29

- Less rain than temperate forests - Long, cold winter - Not shed leaves - Floors inhabited by moss/lichens - CA/Russia

Question 30

Tundra

Answer 30

- Treeless, frozen plain - Permafrost - Very short summer/growing period

Question 31

Polar

Answer 31

-Polar ice caps, no vegetation, few animals

Question 32

Marine

Answer 32

-Intertidal --> Neritic --> Pelagic

Question 33

Freshwater

Answer 33

- Hypotonic (vacuoles/cell walls), swift currents ( root-like holdfasts) - Affected by variations in climate/water