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Ecology 2483 > Lecture 19 > Flashcards

Lecture 19 Flashcards

1
Q

Ecological Roles

A
  • Determined by their trophic interactions
  • Determines the influence of an organism on the movement of energy and nutrients through an ecosystem
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2
Q

Trophic Interactions

A
  • what they eat and what eats them
  • Can change over time
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3
Q

Trophic Levels

A
  • Describe the feeding positions of groups of organisms in ecosystems
  • All organisms are either consumed by other organisms or enter the pool of dead organic matter (detritus)
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4
Q

Detritus

A
  • part of the first level
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5
Q

Detrivores

A
  • part of the second level
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6
Q

Allochthonous

A
  • external energy inputs
  • Found in water systems
  • Inputs can be important in stream ecosystems (99.8%)
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7
Q

Autochthonous

A
  • Energy produced by autotrophs within the system
  • Energy input increases from the headwaters toward the lower reaches of a river
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8
Q

As you Go Downstream

A
  • velocity decreases
  • nutrient concentrations increase
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9
Q

Energy flow among Trophic Levels

A
  • Amount of energy transferred from one trophic level to the next depends on food quality and consumer abundance and physiology
  • Second law of thermodynamics states that during any transfer of energy, some is dispersed and becomes unusable:
  • Energy will decrease with each trophic level
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10
Q

Trophic Pyramid

A
  • Portrays the relative amounts of energy or biomass of each trophic level
  • Very large at base and gets smaller as you go to the top
  • Due to some of the biomass at each level not being consumed, so it is dispersed in the transfer to the next level
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11
Q

Terrestrial Ecosystems

A
  • Energy and biomass pyramids are similar
  • Biomass is closely associated with energy production
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12
Q

Aquatic Ecosystems

A
  • Biomass pyramid inverted
  • Live and die quickly, energy is produced and then leaves the ecosystem
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13
Q

Inverted Biomass Pyramids

A
  • Common where productivity is lowest (nutrient poor regions of the open ocean)
  • Ex. Phytoplankton turnover is high, associated with high growth rate and short life span compared with phytoplankton of nutrient-rich waters
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14
Q

Positive Relationship Between Net Primary Production and Amount of Biomass Consumed by Herbivore

A
  • suggests that herbivore production is limited by the amount of food available
  • Biomass is proportional to NPP and what gets consumed above it ( more stuff = more ability to consume)
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15
Q

Herbivores on Land

A
  • Consume a much lower proportion of autotroph biomass than herbivores in most aquatic ecosystems
  • On average 13% of terrestrial NPP is consumed
  • Aquatic ecosystems average of 35% NPP is consumed
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16
Q

Herbivores are Constrained by Predators

A
  • never reachh carrying capacity
  • Predator removal experiments support this
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17
Q

Autotrophs have defenses against herbivory

A
  • such as secondary compounds, spines, etc
  • Plants of resource-poor environments tend to have stronger defenses than plants from resource-rich environments
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18
Q

Phytoplankton are more nutritious for herbivores than terrestrial plants

A
  • Terrestrial plants have structural components such wood (with few nutrients)
  • Freshwater phytoplankton have carbon
  • nutrient ratios closer to those of herbivores than to those of terrestrial plants
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19
Q

Trophic Efficiency

A
  • amount of energy at on trophic level divided by the amount of energy at the trophic level immediately below it
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20
Q

Trophic Efficiency incorporates three types of efficiency

A
  1. Consumption efficiency
  2. Assimilation efficiency
  3. Production efficiency
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21
Q

Consumption Efficiency

A
  • Higher in aquatic ecosystems than in terrestrial ecosystems
  • Tends to be higher for carnivores than herbivores
22
Q

Assimilation Efficiency

A
  • Determined by food quality and the physiology of the consumer
  • Food quality of plants and detritus is low because of complex compounds such as cellulose, lignins, and humic acids that are not easily digested and low concentrations of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus
23
Q

Animals Have a Carbon: Nutrient Ratio

A
  • Will be similar to the animals consuming them
24
Q

Assimilation Efficiencies of herbivores and Detritivores

A

20-50%

25
Q

Assimilation Efficiency of Carnivores

A

80%

26
Q

Endotherms

A
  • Digest food more completely than ectotherms
  • Thus have higher assimilation efficiencies
  • Allocate more energy to heat production
  • Have less for growth and replication than ectotherms
  • Body size affects heat loss ( as body size increases, the surface area-tovolume ratio decreases)
27
Q

Some Herbivores Have Mutualistic Symbionts

A
  • Help them digest cellulose
  • EX. (cattle, deer, camels) have a modified foregut with bacteria and protists that break down cellulose
  • They have higher assimilation efficiencies than other herbivores
28
Q

Production Efficiency

A
  • Is strongly related to the thermal physiology and size of the consumer
29
Q

Change in food quality

A
  • Impacts trophic efficiency and can determine consumer population size
  • Steller sea lion populations in Alaska declined by about 80% over 25 years
  • Smaller body size and decreased birth rates suggested food quantity or quality might be a problem
  • Prey quantity was not declining
  • Sea lions however had shifted from a diet of mostly herring (high in fats) to more cod and pollock (half as much fat)
  • Change in diet reflected a shift in the fish community
30
Q

Trophic Cascades

A
  • Changes in the abundances of organisms at one trophic level can influence energy flow at multiple trophic levels
31
Q

What Controls Energy Flow Through Ecosystems

A
  • Both controls are important operating simultaneously in ecosystems
  • Top-down control has implications for the effects of trophic interactions on energy flow
32
Q

Bottom Up Control

A
  • Resources that limit NPP determine energy flow through an ecosystem
33
Q

Top Down Control

A
  • Energy flow is governed by predator consumption rates at the highest trophic level, which influences multiple trophic levels below them
34
Q

What determines # of trophic levels in an ecosystem?:

A

Number of trophic level may change due to:
- Addition or loss of a top predator
- Predator in the middle of the food chain
- Omnivore may change food preference

35
Q

Several factors may control the number of trophic levels:

A
  • Amount of energy entering via primary production
  • Frequency of disturbances
  • Ecosystems size
36
Q

Amount of energy entering via primary production

A
  • more production should allow more trophic levels
  • Appears to be important in resource poor ecosystems
37
Q

Frequency of Disturbances

A
  • higher trophic levels depend on lower levels, and take time to re-establish after disturbance
  • If disturbance is frequency, higher level may never establish
38
Q

Ecosystem Size

A
  • Larger ecosystems support larger populations
  • Have more habitat heterogeneity
  • Higher species diversity
39
Q

Feeding Relationships

A
  • can span multiple trophic levels (omnivory)
  • may even include cannibalism (circular arrows)
40
Q

Food Webs

A
  • conceptual models of the trophic interactions of organisms in an ecosystem
  • an important tool for modelling ecological interactions
  • As more organisms are added, the complexity increases to reflect the complexity of real ecosystems
  • Static descriptions of energy flow and trophic interactions
  • Normally don’t include other types of interactions, such as pollination
41
Q

Stability Of Food Webs

A
  • Measured by how much the populations change over time
  • How an ecosystem responds to species loss or gain is strongly related to the stability of food webs
42
Q

Charles Elton and Eugene Odum

A
  • argued that simpler, less diverse food webs should be more easily perturbed
43
Q

Robert May

A
  • Did mathematical analyses
  • used random assemblages of organisms to demonstrate that food webs with higher diversity are less stable
  • strong trophic interactions accentuated population fluctuations
  • more interacting species = more likely that population fluctuations would reinforce one another, leading to extinction of one or more species
44
Q

How does diversity at one trophic level affect stability at other trophic levels?:

A
  1. > plant diversity = > plant biomass and stability.
  2. > plant biomass and stability = > arthropod diversity.
  3. > arthropod diversity = a greater portfolio effect, in which variation in one herbivore population can cancel out variation in that of another.
45
Q

Toxins in Remote Places

A
  • Arctic has been thought of as one of the most remote and pristine areas on Earth
  • Studies of inuit women showed they have PCB concentration in their breast milk
  • Seven times higher than in women in Quebec
46
Q

PCB’s

A
  • Belong to a group of industrial chemical compounds called persistent organic pollutants (POPs)
  • because they remain in the environment for a long time
47
Q

How do these toxins make their way to the Arctic?:

A
  • POPs produced at low latitudes are in gaseous form and enter the atmosphere
  • Atmospheric circulation patterns carry them to the Arctic
    where they condense to liquid and fall from the atmosphere
48
Q

Manufacture and Use of POPs

A
  • banned in North America but some developing countries still use them
  • Emissions of POPs have decreased, but they can remain in Arctic snow and ice for decades
    Everytime the snow melts you get contaminants in the air during spring and summer
49
Q

Corelation between POPs and Diet

A
  • Communities that eat marine mammals tend to have the highest levels of POPs
  • Communities that eat herbivorous caribou tend to have lower levels
50
Q

Understanding Energy Flow in Ecosystems

A
  • Important in understanding the effects of POPs
51
Q

Bioaccumulation

A
  • Some chemicals are not metabolised or excreted
  • Become progressively more concentrated in tissues over and organisms life
52
Q

Biomagnification

A
  • Concentration of these compounds increases in animals at higher trophic levels
  • as animals at each trophic level consume prey with higher concentrations of the compounds

Ecology 2483 (21 decks)

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