Population Ecology

Question 1

What does ecology mean?

Answer 1

The study of the interrelationships between organisms and their enviornment.

Question 2

Who is the Father of Ecology, meteorology, geography, and biogeography?

Answer 2

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859)

Question 3

What is ecology concerned with?

Answer 3

The scientific definition of ecology, mathematical ecology, and biogeography.

Question 4

What is the order of how living things are organized?

Answer 4

Biosphere to ecosystems to communities to populations to organisms to organ systems to organs to tissues to cells to molecules to atoms.

Question 5

Can ecology be studied from a number of different perspectives?

Answer 5

Yes

Question 6

What is a population?

Answer 6

A group of individuals in the same area at the same time that are all members of the same species.

Question 7

Do populations exist alone?

Answer 7

No

Question 8

What is a community?

Answer 8

A grouping of populations of different species interacting with one another in the same enviornment.

Question 9

Most population ecologists study what?

Answer 9

Communities

Question 10

Can a community just be a tree?

Answer 10

Yes

Question 11

Do most ecologists study ecosystems?

Answer 11

Yes

Question 12

What is the definition of an ecosystem?

Answer 12

An ecosystem is a very large naturally occurring community of living species occupying a major habitat and associated nonliving aspects.

Question 13

What is the largest entity ecologists study?

Answer 13

The biosphere, or Earth

Question 14

Healthy ecosystems include what to sustain the ecosystem?

Answer 14

Plants, fungi, animals, bacteria, protists, viruses, minerals, water, sunlight, and etc

Question 15

What are the two other names for the biosphere?

Answer 15

Ecosphere or Earth

Question 16

What are the four sorts of data must we collect for population ecology?

Answer 16

Size, density, distribution, and ages of individuals

Question 17

Is Earth’s human population well sustainable?

Answer 17

Yes

Question 18

What does size mean?

Answer 18

Number of individuals that belong to the same species and live in the same geographical area at the same time.

Question 19

What does density mean?

Answer 19

The number of individuals per unit area or volume.

Question 20

What does distribution mean?

Answer 20

The pattern of distribution of the individuals within the population.

Question 21

What are the two things distribution is affected by?

Answer 21

Physical resources and behavioral adaptations of the organisms.

Question 22

What is uniform distribution?

Answer 22

Occurs often where individuals must compete for a limiting resource

Question 23

What is the least common distribution pattern?

Answer 23

Uniform distribution

Question 24

What is clumped distribution?

Answer 24

When prime living conditions are not found uniformly throughout a habitat

Question 25

What is the most common distribution pattern?

Answer 25

Clumped distribution

Question 26

What is random distribution?

Answer 26

When prime living conditions are found throughout the habitat.

Question 27

What is age structure?

Answer 27

The relative proportion of individuals of each age.

Question 28

A growing population has what?

Answer 28

Higher proportion at lower end

Question 29

A shrinking population has what?

Answer 29

Higher proportion at upper end

Question 30

The red-cockaded woodpeckers at The Nature Conservancy’s Piney Grove Reserve has what population?

Answer 30

A growing population

Question 31

If rate of growth remains constant, the speed of the population growth will get what?

Answer 31

Faster and faster

Question 32

What is environmental resistance?

Answer 32

Any environmental force that prevents a population from growing at its maximum potential.

Question 33

Environmental resistances include what?

Answer 33

“Push-back” against population growth Limiting factors Will slow population growth until it stops, and may decline Limited resources such as starvation, disease

Question 34

What are the two types of environmental resistance?

Answer 34

Density dependent and density independent

Question 35

What is a limiting factor?

Answer 35

Environmental aspects that determine where an organism lives.

Question 36

Any environmental factor that is sufficiently in short supply becomes what?

Answer 36

The prime environmental resistance to population growth.

Question 37

Density-dependent environmental resistance is what?

Answer 37

When an environmental resistance only provides resistance when the population sufficiently large.

Question 38

What are examples of density dependent controls?

Answer 38

Disease, predation, housing/habitat shortages, starvation (famine) Leads to lower reproductive rates Self-regulating for most species

Question 39

Game hunters are crucial when what is low and what is it part of?

Answer 39

Predation and density dependent resistance

Question 40

Density independent environmental resistance includes what?

Answer 40

When population size does not matter and they are not usually useful regulators of population growth

Question 41

What are examples of density independent environmental resistances?

Answer 41

Fire, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, drought, volcanoes, natural disasters