Species Interactions
A relationship in which members of one species consume members of another species.
Predation (predators consuming prey)
As the prey population increases in a predator-prey relationship, why does the predator population also increase?
Because there is more food for the predators to survive off of.
What can be recycled and reused many times in an ecosystem?
Nutrients (like water, carbon, nitrogen, etc)
What is a keystone species?
One that plays an especially important role in its community.
A very similar relationship to predation except that animals (primary consumers) are consuming plants.
Herbivory
What does a limiting factor do?
It limits the growth or development of an organism, population, or process.
Why is the nitrogen cycle very important?
Because nitrogen is needed to build nucleic acids and proteins.
What do both predators and prey have to predation that evolved through natural selection?
Adaptations
What does a predator-prey relationship tend to do regarding both of the species involved?
They tend to keep the populations of both species in balance.
Give an example of a density-dependent limiting factor
predation
How do nutrients cycle? (e.g. What trophic levels do they go through?)
From producers to consumers and back to producers through the decomposers.
Name a common adaptation in both predators and prey.
Camouflage
Predator-prey relationships account for the most of what kind of transfers in food chains and food webs?
Energy transfers
Density independent factor
weather (storm)
What type of plants have the ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen, due to a mutualistic symbiotic relationship with bacteria found in root nodules of these plants.
Legume plants.
You design a study to test whether changes in room temperature have an effect on math test scores. What is the independent variable?
The temperature of the room.
Biomes as different as deserts and wetlands share something very important. All biomes have ________.
populations of interacting species
*BONUS!! DOUBLE PTS (unrelated to category)*
What is the difference between resource partitioning and character displacement?
Resource partitioning is how competing species share an existing habitat by utilizing different resources, whereas character displacement is the actual evolutionary process that causes them to develop different physical or behavioral traits to do so.
What is nitrogen fixation AND ammonification?
Nitrogen-fixation is the process where special nitrogen-fixing bacteria transform nitrogen gas into useful forms organisms can use, typically living in the roots of plants in the pea family. Ammonification is the process where the bacteria turns nitrogen gas into ammonium, which can be used by organisms as a source of nitrogen.
Define competition, the two types of competition, and which of those leads to extinction or specialization.
Competition is a relationship between organisms that strive for the same resources (such as food, water, or space) in the same place. Intraspecific competition occurs between members of the same species, and leads to specialization, while interspecific competition occurs between members of the different species, and leads to extinction.