COMMUNITY CHANGE & SUCCESSION
This term describes predictable changes in species composition over time following disturbance.
What is succession?
This term describes the interdisciplinary study of how humans interact with natural, built, and social environments.
What is Human Urban Ecology?
These are the benefits humans obtain from ecosystems, such as water purification or pollination.
What are ecosystem services?
The HRE is considered this type of estuary because saltwater enters at depth and freshwater flows outward on top.
What is a partially mixed estuary?
When two species compete for identical resources, one will eventually exclude the other.
What is the competitive exclusion principle?
When a disturbance removes most organisms but leaves soil intact, this type of succession occurs.
What is secondary succession?
Neighborhoods with low income tend to have less vegetation and more impermeable surface. This leads to this major inequity in environmental experience.
What is unequal exposure to heat, pollution, and reduced access to green space?
Give an example of a regulating service provided by an urban ecosystem.
What is cooling via trees, stormwater regulation, pollution removal, etc.?
Name one legacy contaminant still affecting the Hudson.
What are PCBs, dioxins, pesticides, or heavy metals?
Two species benefiting one another (but not symbiotically obligated) is called this.
What is facultative mutualism?
This hypothesis states that biodiversity is highest at moderate levels of disturbance.
What is the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis (IDH)?
Name one mental or physical health benefit strongly associated with urban green spaces.
What is reduced stress, improved cardiovascular health, better mood, or increased social cohesion.
Ecosystem function refers to processes like nutrient cycling, whereas ecosystem service refers to this.
What is the human benefit from that function?
This invasive species dramatically increased water clarity by filtering phytoplankton, restructuring the entire food web.
What is the zebra mussel?
Give an example of urban facilitation, where one species unintentionally benefits another.
Streetlights increasing insect abundance → bats feeding more easily.
Give two factors that determine the rate of succession in an ecosystem
What are climate, seed dispersal ability, soil fertility, disturbance frequency, or species life histories? (Any two)
This term describes the loss of daily interaction with biodiversity, leading to reduced ecological awareness.
What is extinction of experience?
Urban areas benefit from green roofs because they reduce this energy-demanding environmental issue.
What is the urban heat island effect?
Low DO (dissolved oxygen) historically occurred in the HRE because of excessive input of this substance.
What is sewage (organic waste) leading to eutrophication and oxygen depletion?
In cities, some species thrive due to reduced predation.
This shift in interaction strength is called this.
What is a trophic release or predator-release effect?
Explain the difference between facilitation, inhibition, and tolerance in successional theory.
Facilitation: early species pave the way for later ones.
Inhibition: early species prevent others from establishing.
Tolerance: later species arrive independently of early ones.
Explain how socioeconomic patterns influence species composition in urban areas.
Income influences landscaping, tree cover, availability of habitats, introduction of ornamentals, and urban planning priorities, all shaping which species thrive.
Name two strategies for conserving biodiversity and ecosystem services in cities (5 exist in lecture).
- Integrating urban ecology and urban planning
- Protecting biodiverse landscape features and biophysical
- Grow the green city
- Maintain or re-establish connectivity
- Use Small Spaces
Explain how urban piers disrupt ecological interactions in the estuary.
Shade reduces light for plants and visual predators
Pilings increase substrate for invertebrates
Flow and sedimentation patterns change
Explain why invasive species may dominate in cities using interaction theory.
Lower predation pressure
Human disturbance favors generalists
High propagule pressure via shipping and ornamentals
Competitive superiority under disturbed conditions