Ecology Test 1 Chapter 1 Flashcards

1
Q

What is Ecology?

A

the study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their environment.

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2
Q

Biotic meaning

A

Interactions among living organisms

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3
Q

Abiotic meaning

A

Interactions between organisms and their physical environment

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4
Q

What is environmental Science?

A

the application of ecology to real world problems

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5
Q

What is Organismal Ecology?

A

Can be divided into 3 main subdisciplines: evolutionary ecology, behavioral ecology, and physiological ecology

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6
Q

What is evolutionary ecology?

A

Considers how organisms have evolved to adapt to their environment through interactions with individuals, populations, and other species

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7
Q

What is behavioral ecology?

A

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

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8
Q

What is physiological ecology?

A

investigates how organisms are physiologically adapted to their environment and how the environment impacts the distribution of species

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9
Q

What is population ecology?

A

focuses on population groups of interbreeding individuals that occur in the same place at the same time

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10
Q

What is the primary goal of population ecology?

A

to understand factors that affect a population’s growth and determine its size and denisty

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11
Q

What does physiological ecology examine?

A

the effects of temperature, water, nutrients availability, and other physical factors on the distribution and abundance of species

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12
Q

What is a community and some examples of it?

A

the assemblage of many populations that live in the same place at the same time ; small pond communities, tropical rain forests.

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13
Q

What are biomes and some examples?

A

the largest scales of communities ; terrestrial, coastal, aquatic biomes

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14
Q

What is a process succession?

A

Species composition changes in a predictable way over time and in particular after a disturbance such as fire or a flood

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15
Q

What is an ecosystem and what does it deal with?

A

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

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16
Q

What is extinction?

A

the process by which species die out, has been a natural phenomenon

17
Q

What is the biodiversity crisis?

A

often used to describe this elevated loss of species

18
Q

What is Conservation biology?

A

studies how to protect the biological diversity of life at all levels

19
Q

What are some examples for habitat destruction?

A

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

20
Q

What is deforestation?

A

the conversion of forested areas to nonforested land, is the prime cause of the extinction of species

21
Q

What are invasive species?

A

transported, some introduced species spreading naturally and outcompeting native species for space and resources

22
Q

What has direct exploitation caused?

A

particularly the hunting of animals has been the cause of many extinctions in the past

23
Q

Five stage process of the scientific method in biology?

A

Observation, hypothesis formation, hypothesis testing, data analysis, acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis

24
Q

Elaborate on hypothesis?

A

Hypothesis is never really proven, we conduct testing and fail to disprove a hypothesis

25
Interactions among organisms are called ?
Biotic interactions
26
The organisms most threatened with extinction are believed to be? Birds, amphibians, mammals, fish, and reptiles
amphibians
27
Community ecology focuses on?
The factors that influence the number of species in a given area
28
The small vertical bars around graphical means are usually called?
Standard deviations or standard errors
29
Which is not an example of habitat loss? Deforestation, agriculture, urbanization, draining of wetlands, overharvesting
Overharvesting
30
The main elements of global change are
habitat destruction, introduced species, direct exploitation, pollution
31
The passenger pigeon once the most common bird in North America was driven to extinction by?
Overharvesting
32
E.O Wilson has referred to the threats to life on Earth with the acronym:
HIPPO
33
Many frogs in Central America are threatened by extinction from?
a fungus
34
Studies of the flow of energy and nutrients among organisms is the realm of which branch of ecology?
Ecosystems