Ecology
Groups of naturally occurring organisms that can successfully interbreed and produce fertile offspring.
What are Species?
True or False: Energy can be recycled and reused.
False, once it is lost it’s gone
This is the study of interactions among different species.
What is Community Ecology?
Predator-Prey Interactions, Defensive Strategies, Food Web Dynamics, and Foraging Theory are all related to a branch that studies feeding.
Trophic Ecology
Things like land, water, or biota that are useful or valuable in the condition in which they are found
What are Natural Resources?
This is the collection of physical, chemical, biological, and climatic features within which an organism exists.
What is the Environment?
An interacting system of biotic and abiotic components in a particular area or place
What is an Ecosystem?
This is a material of which organisms are composed, moves in numerous cycles within and among ecosystems. All materials vital to life are constantly recycled.
What is matter?
This is when 2 or more organisms use a common resource that is in limited supply,
What is Competition?
What we call an organism that is consumed by another organism and what is doing the consuming.
What are Prey & Predator?
A type of biology seeking to investigate human effects on biodiversity and to develop approaches to prevent extinctions
What is Conservation Biology?
This branch of science includes being able to understand math, biology, chemistry, physics, geography, philosophy, Geology, and anthropology.
What is Ecology?
All the individuals of one species within a specified area at a given time.
What is a Population?
Draw a diagram that shows the flow of ENERGY with at least 4 key players.
Ex: Sun → plant (photosynthesis)→ turtle –Shark (all respire), release heat, dead material broken down by decomposers
DOUBLE PTS:
This is the difference between intraspecific and interspecific competition.
Instraspecic is competition between individuals of the same species while interspecific is competition between individuals of a different species.
These organisms that feed on tissues from more than one kingdom.
What are omnivores?
Name one type of human impact on deforestation, desertification, or global warming.
Ex: cutting down trees, setting fires, burning fossil fuels, etc.
Provide a specific example of a relationship between biota and abiota.
Ex: Humans (biota) going fishing for carp (biota) in the river (abiota)
The layer around the earth in which all living things exist
What is the Biosphere?
Describe how carbon moves through an ecosystem.
Animals breathe out CO2 → atmosphere → plants take in CO2 → carbon is release from roots into the soil → dead organisms slowly turn into hydrocarbons → burned to use as fossil fuels (release CO2 in atmosphere)
Describe Niche or Resource Partitioning and provide an example.
when the competitors switch to different, specific resources that exist in the environment in question. (divide up the resource by space, height, diet, temporal, etc.) Ex: Zebra, gazelle, wildebeest diff. Height of grass (consumed at diff. times
How is it that Plant-Herbivore interactions can sometimes be negative for the plant and sometimes positive?
(-) plant to be eaten/trampled or (+) seed dispersal & germination
These ecological ______________ drastically change an environment and the environment does not always recover.
disturbances
DOUBLE PTS:
Name two of the four reasons why we study ecology that we talked about in class.
Understand how the world works, how humans fit into the global community, everything is connected, how to deal with environmental problems
Name a branch of Ecology and what it studies.
Ex: Population Ecology studies trends in the number of organisms
Write a sentence or two using the words: entropy, succession, and disturbance.
Nature is always in a state of entropy because the environment is always changing. Many disturbances like fires in prairie allow for ecosystems to slowly rebuild via succession, which is why the world is full a variety of environmental factors and ecological patches.
Provide an example of a symbiotic relationship and name what type it is.
Commensalism (shark & remora (+))
Mutualism (clownfish (+) & anemones (+))
Parasitism (Tick (+) & dog (-))
Many plants and animals have defenses that help increase their fitness. Explain how mimicry can do this (may provide an example).
Can make a harmless (palatable) organism appear more dangerous to predators or vice versa allowing for infiltration (increases ability to survive and reproduce)
FREE HINT if you answer a BONUS ?:
A process by which historically contiguous habitats are reduced in size and the remaining habitats are divided into patches.
Habitat fragmentation or degradation