Section 3, Part A Flashcards
Name and define one group of factors which compose an organism’s environment, give an example.
Biotic (living) factors: Interactions with other organisms. Interspecific and intraspecific competition are biotic factors which affect species’ population levels.
One example is interspecific competition of hermit warblers and Townsend’s warblers, who live in the same ecosystem (they have the same fundamental niche). Male Townsend’s warblers attack male hermit warblers and evict them from breeding territories, expanding the Townsend’s warblers territory (realized niche) and decreasing that of the hermit warblers. [page 1062, 5th ed]
Name and define one group of factors which compose an organism’s environment, give an example.
Abiotic (nonliving) factors: Environmental conditions (eg soil quality, air quality/temperature, water quality/temperature/salinity, humidity, precipitation, sunlight etc)
(I think examples for this are self-explanatory: people can’t live in the ocean, photosynthetic plants can’t live without sunlight etc) [page 1062, 5th ed]
At what different levels of organization do ecologists study interactions between organisms and their environment?
Organismal, population, community, ecosystem, and global (biosphere)
Define organismal ecology
The branch of ecology in which researchers explore the morphological, physiological, and behavioral adaptations that allow individuals to live in a particular area [page 1060, 5th ed]
Define population ecology
The branch of ecology in which researchers focus on how the number and distribution of individuals in a population change over time [page 1061, 5th ed]
Define community ecology
The branch of ecology in which researchers ask questions about the nature of the interactions between species and the consequences of those interactions [page 1061, 5th ed]
Define ecosystem ecology
The branch of ecology in which researchers study how nutrients and energy move among organisms and through the surrounding atmosphere and soil or water [page 1061, 5th ed]
Define global ecology
As defined by the book, global ecologists quantify the effects of human impact on the biosphere [page 1061, 5th ed]
Define ecology
The study of how organisms interact with each other and their surrounding environments
Define community
A biological community consists of populations of different species that interact with each other within a particular area
Define population
A population is a group of individuals of the same species that lives in the same area at the same time
Define ecosystem
An ecosystem consists of all the organisms in a particular region along with nonliving components (abiotic factors)
Define biotic factor
Biotic factors are any living component that affect another organism, including animals that consume the organism in question, and the living food that the organism consumes.
Define abiotic factor
Abiotic factors are those non-living chemical and physical parts of the environment that affect ecosystems.
