Ecology Test 1 Chapter 1 Flashcards
What is Ecology?
the study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their environment.
Biotic meaning
Interactions among living organisms
Abiotic meaning
Interactions between organisms and their physical environment
What is environmental Science?
the application of ecology to real world problems
What is Organismal Ecology?
Can be divided into 3 main subdisciplines: evolutionary ecology, behavioral ecology, and physiological ecology
What is evolutionary ecology?
Considers how organisms have evolved to adapt to their environment through interactions with individuals, populations, and other species
What is behavioral ecology?
Focuses on how the behavior of an individual organism contributes to its survival and reproductive success, which in turn affects the abundance of a population
What is physiological ecology?
investigates how organisms are physiologically adapted to their environment and how the environment impacts the distribution of species
What is population ecology?
focuses on population groups of interbreeding individuals that occur in the same place at the same time
What is the primary goal of population ecology?
to understand factors that affect a population’s growth and determine its size and denisty
What does physiological ecology examine?
the effects of temperature, water, nutrients availability, and other physical factors on the distribution and abundance of species
What is a community and some examples of it?
the assemblage of many populations that live in the same place at the same time ; small pond communities, tropical rain forests.
What are biomes and some examples?
the largest scales of communities ; terrestrial, coastal, aquatic biomes
What is a process succession?
Species composition changes in a predictable way over time and in particular after a disturbance such as fire or a flood
What is an ecosystem and what does it deal with?
living biotic community and its nonliving abiotic environment; deals with the flow of energy and the cycling of nutrients among organisms within a community and between organisms and the environment
What is extinction?
the process by which species die out, has been a natural phenomenon
What is the biodiversity crisis?
often used to describe this elevated loss of species
What is Conservation biology?
studies how to protect the biological diversity of life at all levels
What are some examples for habitat destruction?
deforestation, conversion of habitat to agricultural land, urbanization, the draining of swamps, strip mining, quarrying dam construction, river channelization, and many other forms of land modification
What is deforestation?
the conversion of forested areas to nonforested land, is the prime cause of the extinction of species
What are invasive species?
transported, some introduced species spreading naturally and outcompeting native species for space and resources
What has direct exploitation caused?
particularly the hunting of animals has been the cause of many extinctions in the past
Five stage process of the scientific method in biology?
Observation, hypothesis formation, hypothesis testing, data analysis, acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis
Elaborate on hypothesis?
Hypothesis is never really proven, we conduct testing and fail to disprove a hypothesis
Interactions among organisms are called ?
Biotic interactions
The organisms most threatened with extinction are believed to be?
Birds, amphibians, mammals, fish, and reptiles
amphibians
Community ecology focuses on?
The factors that influence the number of species in a given area
The small vertical bars around graphical means are usually called?
Standard deviations or standard errors
Which is not an example of habitat loss?
Deforestation, agriculture, urbanization, draining of wetlands, overharvesting
Overharvesting
The main elements of global change are
habitat destruction, introduced species, direct exploitation, pollution
The passenger pigeon once the most common bird in North America was driven to extinction by?
Overharvesting
E.O Wilson has referred to the threats to life on Earth with the acronym:
HIPPO
Many frogs in Central America are threatened by extinction from?
a fungus
Studies of the flow of energy and nutrients among organisms is the realm of which branch of ecology?
Ecosystems
