Life 57- Community Ecology

Question 1

Gross primary production

Answer 1

The amount of energy captured by the primary producers in a community

Question 2

Food chain

Answer 2

A portion of a food web, most commonly a simple sentence of prey species and the predators that consume them

Question 3

Shannon diversity index

Answer 3

A formula for quantifying diversity that takes both species richness and species evenness into account; based on a mathematical expression of the certainty with which the next item sampled in a series can be predicted.

Question 4

Primary succession

Answer 4

Succession that begins in an area initially devoid of life, such as on recently exposed glacial till or lava flows

Question 5

Sorenson’s Index

Answer 5

Mathematical formula that measures beta diversity

Question 6

Primary consumer

Answer 6

An organism (herbivore) that eats plant tissues

Question 7

Community

Answer 7

Any ecologically integrated group of species of microorganisms, plants, and animals inhabiting a given area.

Question 8

Trophic cascade

Answer 8

The progression over successively lower trophic levels of the indirect effects of a predator.

Question 9

Food web

Answer 9

The complete set of food links between species in a community; a diagram indicating which ones are the eaters and which are eaten

Question 10

Net primary production

Answer 10

The amount of primary producer biomass made available for consumption by heterotrophs

Question 11

Beta diversity

Answer 11

Between-habitat diversity; a measure of the change in species composition from one community or habitat to another

Question 12

Climax community

Answer 12

The final stage of succession; a community that is capable of perpetuating itself under local climatic and soil conditions and persists for a relatively long time.

Question 13

Gross primary productivity (GPP)

Answer 13

The rate at which the primary producers in a community turn solar energy into stored chemical energy via photosynthesis

Question 14

Species richness

Answer 14

The total number of species living in a region

Question 15

Monoculture

Answer 15

In agriculture, a large-scale planting of a single species of domesticated crop plant

Question 16

Secondary succession

Answer 16

Succession after a disturbance that did not eliminate all the organisms originally living on the time

Question 17

Secondary consumer

Answer 17

An organism that eat primary consumers

Question 18

Island biogeography

Answer 18

A theory proposing that the number of species on an island (or in another geographically defined and isolated area) represents a balance, or equilibrium, between the rate at which species immigrate to the island and the rate at which resident species go extinct.

Question 19

Ecosystem engineer

Answer 19

An organism that builds structures that alter existing habitats or create new habitats

Question 20

Species-area relationship

Answer 20

The relationship between the size of an area and the numbers of species it supports.

Question 21

Facilitation

Answer 21

In succession, modification of the environment by a colonising species in a way that allows colonisation by other species

Question 22

Succession

Answer 22

The gradual, sequential series of changes in a species composition of a community following a disturbance

Question 23

Trophic level

Answer 23

A group of organisms United by obtaining their energy from the same part of the food web of a biological community

Question 24

Keystone species

Answer 24

Species that have a dominant influence on the composition of a community

Question 25

Net primary productivity (NPP)

Answer 25

The rate at which energy captured by photosynthesis is incorporated into the bodies of primary producers bodies through growth and reproduction

Question 26

Primary producer

Answer 26

A photosynthetic or chemosynthetic organism that synthesises complex organic molecules from simple inorganic ones

Question 27

Biomass

Answer 27

The total weight of all the organisms, or some designated group organisms, in a given area

Question 28

Heterotrophic succession

Answer 28

Succession in detritus-based communities, which differed from other types of succession in taking place without the participation of plants

Question 29

Alpha diversity

Answer 29

Species diversity within a single community or habitat

Question 30

Inhibitor

Answer 30

A substance that blocks a biological process

Question 31

Gamma diversity

Answer 31

A regional diversity found over a range of communities or habitats in a geographic region.

Question 32

Ecological efficiency

Answer 32

The overall transfer of energy from on trophic level to the next, expressed as the ratio of consumer production to producer production