Environment - Basics

Question 1

What is ecology?

Answer 1

The study of the interactions between organisms and their environments

Question 2

What is it focussed on?

Answer 2

Discovering how organisms affect and are affected by their environment and how this determines the kinds and number of organisms found in the environment

Question 3

What does an understanding of ecology allow us to do?

Answer 3

Provides the ability to manage the earths limited resources and address enviro problems from industrial and engineering activities

Question 4

What does the environment consist of?

Answer 4

Abiotic (non-living) and biotic (living) factors

Question 5

What is the environment an organisms lives in called?

Answer 5

habitat

Question 6

What enables organisms to survive in their habitat? What can they be classified as?

Answer 6

Adaptations: physiological, anatomical and behavioural

Question 7

What are the three types of adaptations? Explain them briefly

Answer 7

Physiological - adaptation stoa tallow an organism to perform particular function that enable it to survive
Anatomical - structural features of an organism
Behavioural - inherited or learned behaviours of action

Question 8

What is a population?

Answer 8

A group of individuals of the same species living in a given area at a given time

Question 9

What are ecologist interested in about populations? Explain them

Answer 9

Pop size: total number of individuals in populations
Pop density: number of individuals in given area
Pop growth rate: rate of change of pop

Question 10

What kind of factor has a greater impact on populations living in a high density pop vs low density pop?

Answer 10

Food supply

Question 11

What is the carrying capacity?

Answer 11

The environmental limits to population increase

Question 12

What is growth rate proportional to?

Answer 12

Negatively proportional to pop size (e.g. when pop smallest growth rate is max)

Question 13

If the population is larger than the carrying capacity, what happens to the rate of growth?

Answer 13

It decreases so that the population declines

Question 14

If the growth rate is higher than the carrying capacity, what must the population be?

Answer 14

Small

Question 15

Is the carrying capacity constant? Why?

Answer 15

No, there are lots of variables in the carrying capacity (e.g. resource availability…) so it constantly changes

Question 16

What is the logistic regression of the rate of population growth?

Answer 16

r = r(max) * N * (1-N/K)

• r = actual rate of increase (diff between births and deaths)
• r(max) = max rate of growth
• N = population
• K = carrying capacity

Question 17

What is a community?

Answer 17

All the populations of the organisms inhabiting a common environment interacting with each other

Question 18

What are the three community interactions?

Answer 18

• Competition: limite resource force interspecific (between species) and intraspecific (within species) competition
• Predation: Predators eat prey, predator adapted to catch and eat prey, prey adapted to avoid predators
• Symbiosis: Organisms living very closely together for either mutual benefit (mutualism/commensalism) or for the advantage of one species (parasitism)

Question 19

What are two key processes within the ecosystem? Describe them

Answer 19

Energy flow: passage of energy between organisms

Chemical cycling: use and reuse of chemical elements

Question 20

How are feeding relationships categorised in an ecosystem?

Answer 20

Trophic levels

Question 21

How can food being transferred from one trophic level to the next be shown as?

Answer 21

A food chain

Question 22

how do all food chains start? What do they do?

Answer 22

With a producer that does photosynthesis

Question 23

What are the other non-producer member of the food chain called?

Answer 23

Consumers

Question 24

As ecosystems become more complicated, how do food chains get linked together?

Answer 24

Into food webs

Question 25

What is the efficiency of energy transfer between tropic level? What is this rule called? What is the maximum number of tropic levels possible? Why?

Answer 25

10% - described by 10% rule

Max of 6 tropics as anymore would require more energy produced that what the lower tropic levels can produce

Question 26

What percent of the suns energy is converted into plant energy?

Answer 26

1-3%

Question 27

How does a food web differ from a food chain in terms of feeding relationships?

Answer 27

Food web show the complete interaction of the trophic, food chains linear/simplified

Question 28

What needs to be done to the chemical elements of life in order for ecosystems to function?

Answer 28

They need to be recycled

Question 29

What are some examples of biogeochemical cycles?

Answer 29

Carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous and water cycle

Question 30

How does energy flow differ from chemical cycling?

Answer 30

Energy flow in unidirectional (only goes in one direction), chemical cycling involves the recycling of resources