Fill in the blanks for lecture 1

Question 1

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 _______.

Answer 1

1) Resources

2) Harvesting of seals

Question 2

Even as Darwin was coming up with natural selection, still saw no issue with ___________ harvesting.

Answer 2

excessive

Question 3

Peak seal hunting:

1911: Treaty to stop pelagic sealing and terrestrial catches…but, _____ _______ didn’t ______ ______.

Answer 3

Seal populations didn’t bounce back.

Question 4

Historically, ecology was a descriptive science of ______ _____.
This led to some questions about species. What were they?

Answer 4

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?

Question 5

Shelford’s Law of Tolerance:

Organisms ability to _______, _____ and ________ within the envrionmental limitations.

Answer 5

reproduce, grow and survive

Question 6

What is seen in the zone of intolerance?

Answer 6

Species are absent.

Question 7

What is seen near the lower/upper limit of tolerance?

Answer 7

Organisms can survive but not reproduce.

Question 8

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.

Answer 8

Refer to notes (13)

Question 9

What are poikilotherms?

Answer 9

organisms that cannot control their internal body temperature and thus experience the temperature around them. Generally insects.

Question 10

What trends are seen in poikilotherms in terms of growth, reproduction.

Answer 10

Increase in temperature generally results in increase in growth and reproduction. Too cold or too hot however, results in death.

Question 11

A stream is more likely to push a species to extinction during _______ ______.

Answer 11

climate change

Question 12

Species change along ________ gradients. An example of this is ______ _______.

Answer 12

1) environmental gradients

2) stream order

Question 13

When looking at the distribution of angiosperms, close to the north pole we have _____ species; close to the tropics we have _____ species.

Answer 13

less;more

Question 14

What area is an exception to an increase in species abundance near the tropics?

Answer 14

The Sahara desert

Question 15

The latitudinal gradient pattern is seen for different _______ and at different _______.

Answer 15

species; scales

Question 16

The latitudinal gradient pattern is true for all _______ regardless of ______. It is true for both _____ and ______ blooded individuals.

Answer 16

1) organisms
2) habitat
3) warm;cold

Question 17

As one moves away from the equator, the number of shallow marine gastropods __________.

Answer 17

decreases

Question 18

Ecologists try to understand why some _____ are more _______ than others.

Answer 18

diverse

others

Question 19

When species diversity is high (tropical rainforest) it is difficult to predict the _______ of a randomly ______ _______.

Answer 19

species of a randomly chosen species.

Question 20

What is ecology?

• science of ___________.
• study of a single species __ ___ _________ without ________ __ ___________ is not properly included in the field of ecology.

Answer 20

1) communities
2) to the environment;
reference to communities

Question 21

Victor E. Shelford founded:

• __________ and;
• ______ which became ______.

Note: _____ = more than one word

Answer 21

The ecological society of America

The Ecologists union, later become the nature conservancy

Question 22

Victor E. Shelford made a point that we can’t study _______ without mentioning the ___________.

Answer 22

• species

- environment

Question 23

Ecosystem _____ when ______ are harvested.

Answer 23

• shifts

- seals

Question 24

What were Frederick Clements’ views?

Answer 24

• plant community (superorganism)

- plant communities underwent succession to climax community

Question 25

What were Henry Gleason’s views?

Answer 25

-Species have distinct traits

Response of individuals to environmental gradients

Question 26

Animal communities:

In contrast to plant field studies (i.e. Clements and Gleason). Did lab and field studies of ___________.

Answer 26

populations

Question 27

Charles S. Elton came up with the functional role of _______ and that communities had limited ___________.

Answer 27

• species

- membership

Question 28

What is Gause’s competitive exclusion principle?

Answer 28

• Two species cannot coexist on the same, limiting resource

- One species always heavily excludes the other when competing for the same resource

Question 29

1940-1950’s debate:

Are populations regulated by _______-________ or ________-_________ factors.

Answer 29

density-dependent or density-independent factors

Question 30

According to G. Evelyn Hutchinson:

A niche includes all of the ___________ ________ in multidimensional space that affect the ______ of a _______.

Answer 30

A niche includes all of the
1) environmental factors
in multidimensional space that affect the
2) fitness of a species.

Question 31

Quantification of ecological niche with n-dimensional hypervolume: fundamental (before _____ _______) and realized (after ______ _________) niche.
- Hutchinson 1957

Answer 31

species interactions (bis)

Question 32

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.

Answer 32

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

Question 33

What is a fundamental niche?

Answer 33

Species living in the absence of negative interactions.

Question 34

A realized niche is commonly viewed as a restricted space due to competitive exclusion by ________ and other _________.

Answer 34

competitors and other enemies

Question 35

The niche concept assumes that neighbouring species have _______ impacts - niche shrinking.

Answer 35

negative

Question 36

To remedy this, __________ was incorporated into the niche concept.

Answer 36

facilitation

Question 37

Facilitation will make the _______ niche larger than the __________ niche.

Answer 37

realized niche > fundamental niche

Question 38

If competitive exclusion is ______, why are there so many _______?

Answer 38

• true

- species

Question 39

How dissimilar must ______ be for them to ________.

Answer 39

• species

- coexist

Question 40

What are the trends for granivorous desert mice?
In terms of size of animal vs size of seed.
In terms of overlap, what happens?

Answer 40

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.

Question 41

Ecologists could predict the _______ and ______ of _-________ species.

Answer 41

number and size of co-existing species.

Question 42

The delineation of communities - ________’s ______

Answer 42

Whittaker’s biomes

Question 43

Species may be absent due to? (4)

Answer 43

1) dispersal
2) Behaviour
3) Other species
4) Physical and chemical factors

Question 44

Thus far, what is the conceptual view of the functioning of community ecology?

Answer 44

Processes go into the black box of community ecology (i.e. we don’t know what happens here) and come out as patterns.

Question 45

What are some of the processes of community ecology?

Answer 45

Dispersal, selection, drift, speciation.

Question 46

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 _________.

Answer 46

• spatially delimited
• prominent species
• physical characteristic
• interactions

Question 47

Peter Price defined community ecology as:

Organism that ______ in a given area.

Answer 47

interact

Question 48

Community ecology:
- Patterns and processes involving at least __ species at a particular ______.
- different individuals occupy the landscape at ______ ______.
_____ scale is very important

Answer 48

• 2
• different scales
• spatial

Question 49

Questions in community ecology generally deal with either ______ or ______.

Answer 49

structure or dynamic

Question 50

Structure questions are?

Answer 50

What species are present and at what trophic level?

Question 51

Dynamic questions deal with what?

Answer 51

interactions with each other and environment over time.

Question 52

Ultimately, how we define a community depends on what?

Answer 52

our perspective and what questions we want to ask/what questions we want answered.