Ecology related to Population/Miscellaneous Flashcards
What is a Resource?
In ecology, a resource is any substance or object in the environment that an organism uses for growth, maintenance, and reproduction, and which can be consumed by one organism, potentially making it unavailable to others. A resource in ecology is anything an organism needs to survive and reproduce, such as food, water, shelter, or territory.
What is Distribution?
In ecology, “distribution” refers to the spatial arrangement or pattern of how individuals of a population or species are spread out across a habitat, which can be clumped, uniform, or random. Distribution patterns, also known as dispersion patterns, describe how individuals within a population are arranged in space at a given time.
What is Abundance?
In ecology, abundance refers to the total number of individuals of a species within a given area or habitat. It’s a measure of how many individuals of a particular species are present in a specific location, community, or ecosystem. Abundance can be used to assess the health and diversity of ecosystems, and to understand how species interact with each other and their environment. It’s typically measured by counting the number of individuals of a species within a defined area.
What is Density?
In ecology, population density refers to the number of individuals of a species per unit area or volume, indicating how crowded a population is within a specific habitat. Higher density means that there are more of that species in an area.
What is Carrying capacity?
In ecology, carrying capacity refers to the maximum number of individuals of a particular species that an environment can sustainably support over time, given the availability of resources like food, water, and space. It is often symbolized as “K” and represents the limit to population growth within a specific environment.
