Landscape Ecology Flashcards
Landscape ecology
studies how the spatial characteristics of a habitat influence local and regional biodiversity
Species-area-relationships
show that there are generally more species in larger habitats
Smaller habitats support smaller population sizes, thus increasing local…
extinction risk and excluding larger-bodied animals that need greater prey density
Habitat fragmentation
can break up one large habitat into smaller fragments in turn altering species interactions
natural or human induced
Alpha diversity
local diversity (species richness in a relatively small area of homogeneous habitat
Beta diversity
total number of UNIQUE species in each local habitat, such as the number of unique species present in ONLY community x and ONLY in community
Gamma diversity
regional diversity – the total species richness in all the habitats
