Topic 5: Life Histories and the Niche

Question 1

Altricial

Answer 1

(of a young bird or other animal) hatched or born helpless and requiring significant parental care.

Question 2

Competitor

Answer 2

the species that compete for the same resource

Question 3

Disturbance

Answer 3

White and Picket (1985) define disturbance as any relatively discrete event that disrupts an ecosystem, community, or population structure and changes resources, substrate availability, or the physical environment

Question 4

Fundamental Niche

Answer 4

the physical conditions under which species might live, in the absence of interactions with other species

Question 5

Iteroparous

Answer 5

produce offspring at regular intervals during the life span

Question 6

K-selected

Answer 6

possess relatively stable populations fluctuating near the carrying capacity of the environment. these species are characterized by having only a few offspring but investing high amounts of parental care.

Question 7

Lack’s Hypothesis

Answer 7

hypothesized that natural selection has caused clutch size in birds to evolve toward that which produces the most surviving offspring

Question 8

Law of Tolerance

Answer 8

the abundance and distribution of an animal can be determined by the deviation between the local conditions and the optimum set of conditions for a species

Question 9

Life History

Answer 9

the adaptations of an organism that influence aspects of its biology, such as the number of offspring it produces, its survival, and its size and age at reproductive maturity

Question 10

Niche

Answer 10

the set of biotic and abiotic conditions in which an organism is able to survive and reproduce.

Question 11

Phenology

Answer 11

the study of the relationship between climate and the timing of ecological events, such as the date of arrival of migratory birds on their wintering grounds, the timing of spring platoon blooms, or the onset and ending of leaf fall in a deciduous forest

Question 12

Principle of Allocation

Answer 12

each individual organism has a finite (limited) quantity of resources that it can use for all necessary life processes

Question 13

Trade Off

Answer 13

when one trait cannot increase without a decrease in another (vice versa)

Question 14

r-selected

Answer 14

species are those that emphasize high growth rates, typically exploit less crowded ecological niches, and produce many offspring, each of which has relatively low probability of surviving to adult hood

Question 15

realized niche

Answer 15

the actual niche of a species whose distribution is restricted by biotic interactions, such as competition, predation, disease, and parasitism

Question 16

reproductive effort

Answer 16

the allocation of energy, time, and other resources to the production and care of offspring, generally involving reduced allocation to other needs, such as maintenance and growth

Question 17

ruderals

Answer 17

plants or animals that live in highly disturbed habitats and that may depend on disturbance to persist the face of potential competition from other species

Question 18

semelparous

Answer 18

only produces offspring once in a lifetime

Question 19

Stress Tolerator

Answer 19

are plant species that live in high areas of high intensity stress and low intensity disturbance