Fill in the blanks for lecture 1 Flashcards
In the past, there was no concept of harvesting. Everyone assumed there were plentiful __________. No issues with excess harvesting, as can be seen with the ___________ of _______.
1) Resources
2) Harvesting of seals
Even as Darwin was coming up with natural selection, still saw no issue with ___________ harvesting.
excessive
Peak seal hunting:
1911: Treaty to stop pelagic sealing and terrestrial catches…but, _____ _______ didn’t ______ ______.
Seal populations didn’t bounce back.
Historically, ecology was a descriptive science of ______ _____.
This led to some questions about species. What were they?
1) Species lists.
Questions:
1) Why are some species more abundant than others?
2) Why do we have latitudinal gradients in species numbers?
3) Why do communities with many species function differently than those with few species?
Shelford’s Law of Tolerance:
Organisms ability to _______, _____ and ________ within the envrionmental limitations.
reproduce, grow and survive
What is seen in the zone of intolerance?
Species are absent.
What is seen near the lower/upper limit of tolerance?
Organisms can survive but not reproduce.
Draw the graphical representation of Sheford’s law of tolerance. Clearly mark the zone of intolerance, limits of tolerance, areas of survival, growth and highest fitness as well as mark the axes.
Refer to notes (13)
What are poikilotherms?
organisms that cannot control their internal body temperature and thus experience the temperature around them. Generally insects.
What trends are seen in poikilotherms in terms of growth, reproduction.
Increase in temperature generally results in increase in growth and reproduction. Too cold or too hot however, results in death.
A stream is more likely to push a species to extinction during _______ ______.
climate change
Species change along ________ gradients. An example of this is ______ _______.
1) environmental gradients
2) stream order
When looking at the distribution of angiosperms, close to the north pole we have _____ species; close to the tropics we have _____ species.
less;more
What area is an exception to an increase in species abundance near the tropics?
The Sahara desert
The latitudinal gradient pattern is seen for different _______ and at different _______.
species; scales
The latitudinal gradient pattern is true for all _______ regardless of ______. It is true for both _____ and ______ blooded individuals.
1) organisms
2) habitat
3) warm;cold
As one moves away from the equator, the number of shallow marine gastropods __________.
decreases
Ecologists try to understand why some _____ are more _______ than others.
diverse
others
When species diversity is high (tropical rainforest) it is difficult to predict the _______ of a randomly ______ _______.
species of a randomly chosen species.
What is ecology?
- science of ___________.
- study of a single species __ ___ _________ without ________ __ ___________ is not properly included in the field of ecology.
1) communities
2) to the environment;
reference to communities
Victor E. Shelford founded:
- __________ and;
- ______ which became ______.
Note: _____ = more than one word
The ecological society of America
The Ecologists union, later become the nature conservancy
Victor E. Shelford made a point that we can’t study _______ without mentioning the ___________.
- species
- environment
Ecosystem _____ when ______ are harvested.
- shifts
- seals
What were Frederick Clements’ views?
- plant community (superorganism)
- plant communities underwent succession to climax community
What were Henry Gleason’s views?
-Species have distinct traits
Response of individuals to environmental gradients
Animal communities:
In contrast to plant field studies (i.e. Clements and Gleason). Did lab and field studies of ___________.
populations
Charles S. Elton came up with the functional role of _______ and that communities had limited ___________.
- species
- membership
What is Gause’s competitive exclusion principle?
- Two species cannot coexist on the same, limiting resource
- One species always heavily excludes the other when competing for the same resource
1940-1950’s debate:
Are populations regulated by _______-________ or ________-_________ factors.
density-dependent or density-independent factors
According to G. Evelyn Hutchinson:
A niche includes all of the ___________ ________ in multidimensional space that affect the ______ of a _______.
A niche includes all of the
1) environmental factors
in multidimensional space that affect the
2) fitness of a species.
Quantification of ecological niche with n-dimensional hypervolume: fundamental (before _____ _______) and realized (after ______ _________) niche.
- Hutchinson 1957
species interactions (bis)
There are 6 theoretic types of species interactions. These are what? Please also note whether the interaction is beneficial for the species or harmful. It may be easier to plot it graphically.
1 l 2 l Term (-) l (-) l competition (0) l (-) l amensalism (+) l (-) l parasitism (+) l (+) l mutualism (0) l (0) l neutralism (+) l (0) l comensalism
What is a fundamental niche?
Species living in the absence of negative interactions.
A realized niche is commonly viewed as a restricted space due to competitive exclusion by ________ and other _________.
competitors and other enemies
The niche concept assumes that neighbouring species have _______ impacts - niche shrinking.
negative
To remedy this, __________ was incorporated into the niche concept.
facilitation
Facilitation will make the _______ niche larger than the __________ niche.
realized niche > fundamental niche
If competitive exclusion is ______, why are there so many _______?
- true
- species
How dissimilar must ______ be for them to ________.
- species
- coexist
What are the trends for granivorous desert mice?
In terms of size of animal vs size of seed.
In terms of overlap, what happens?
Smaller mice eat smaller seeds, larger mice eat larger seeds.
Where there is overlap, the two species are able to use both of the resources.
Ecologists could predict the _______ and ______ of _-________ species.
number and size of co-existing species.
The delineation of communities - ________’s ______
Whittaker’s biomes
Species may be absent due to? (4)
1) dispersal
2) Behaviour
3) Other species
4) Physical and chemical factors
Thus far, what is the conceptual view of the functioning of community ecology?
Processes go into the black box of community ecology (i.e. we don’t know what happens here) and come out as patterns.
What are some of the processes of community ecology?
Dispersal, selection, drift, speciation.
According to Robert E. Ricklefs, the definition of community ecology is:
associations of plants and animals that are ________ ________ and dominated by 1 or more _______ ________ or by a _________ __________.
This definition however, does not stress _________.
- spatially delimited
- prominent species
- physical characteristic
- interactions
Peter Price defined community ecology as:
Organism that ______ in a given area.
interact
Community ecology:
- Patterns and processes involving at least __ species at a particular ______.
- different individuals occupy the landscape at ______ ______.
_____ scale is very important
- 2
- different scales
- spatial
Questions in community ecology generally deal with either ______ or ______.
structure or dynamic
Structure questions are?
What species are present and at what trophic level?
Dynamic questions deal with what?
interactions with each other and environment over time.
Ultimately, how we define a community depends on what?
our perspective and what questions we want to ask/what questions we want answered.
