Introduction to Ecology & Biosphere
This branch of biology studies the interactions between organisms and their environment.
What is ecology?
This level of ecological study focuses on groups of individuals of the same species living in the same area.
What is population ecology?
An organism’s ecological role, including how it uses resources and interacts with other species.
What is a niche?
This model shows population growth under ideal conditions with no limiting factors.
What is exponential growth?
The presence or absence of this can strongly influence whether a species can survive in a given environment, such as predators, competitors, or pollinators.
What are biotic factors?
The intensity of sunlight varies with this geographical factor, influencing global temperature patterns.
What is latitude?
This dispersion pattern is the most common in nature and often results from resource availability or social behavior.
What is clumped dispersion?
The type of competition that occurs between individuals of the same species.
What is intraspecific competition?
The maximum population size an environment can sustain indefinitely.
What is carrying capacity?
This table combines data on survivorship and reproductive output across different age groups to help predict population growth trends.
What is a life table?
These two major factors determine the distribution of terrestrial biomes
What are temperature and precipitation?
This curve type represents species that produce few offspring but invest heavily in parental care, like humans.
What is a Type I survivorship curve?
This concept states that two species competing for the same limiting resource cannot coexist indefinitely.
What is the competitive exclusion principle?
This term describes the sequence of community changes after a disturbance, such as a volcanic eruption or glacial retreat.
What is ecological succession?
This term refers to the set of favored traits in unstable environments, such as rapid development, early reproduction, and high offspring numbers.
What is an r-selected strategy?
Temperature, light, water, and nutrients are examples of this type of environmental factor.
What are abiotic factors?
Factors like competition and disease that intensify as population density increases are known as this.
What are density-dependent factors?
This is the first species to colonize a barren environment in primary succession.
What is a pioneer species?
This region of the ocean lies between the photic zone and the abyssal zone and has minimal light penetration.
What is the aphotic zone?
When species with overlapping niches evolve to use resources differently in sympatry, it's an example of this phenomenon.
What is character displacement?
The movement of individuals away from centers of high population density or from their area of origin is known by this term.
What is dispersal?
This concept explains how limited resources lead to trade-offs between survival and reproduction.
What is the principle of allocation?
When a harmless species mimics a harmful one to avoid predation.
What is Batesian mimicry?
The tendency for closely related species with similar niches to evolve differences when they coexist.
What is resource partitioning?
This hypothesis proposes that trophic interactions in food webs are regulated by alternating top-down and bottom-up forces across three or more trophic levels.
What is the trophic cascade hypothesis (or the green world hypothesis)?