Environmental CH 5
T or F: Primary and secondary ecological successions tend to increase biodiversity of communities and ecosystems by increasing species richness and interactions among species.
T
When populations of two different species interact over long periods of time, changes in the gene pool of one species can lead to changes in the gene pool of the other. What is this called?
coevolution
Kelp forests are composed of large concentrations of ____.
seaweed
What type of succession begins in an area where an ecosystem has been disturbed, removed, or destroyed, and that contains soil or bottom sediment?
secondary succession
gradual establishment of communities after a wild fire
secondary succession
Kelp forests help reduce ____ by blunting the force of incoming waves and trapping some of the outgoing sand.
shore erosion
an example of a predator that uses camouflage
snowy owl
The capacity to withstand external stress and disturbance is called ____.
stability
Late successional plants are largely unaffected by plants at earlier stages of succession because they are not in direct competition for resources, a factor called ____.
tolerance
The nonpoisonous ____ butterfly gains protection by looking like the bad-tasting ____ butterfly, which is a protective device known as ____.
viceroy; monarch; mimicry
What is an example of a K-selected species?
whales
an example of a prey species that exerts a selective pressure on lion and cheetah populations
zebra
An example of an internal parasite is a ____.
tapeworm
Bats prey on certain species of moths by using high-frequency echolocation to locate them. Certain moths have evolved ears that can hear these frequencies allowing them to escape. This is an example of ____.
coevolution
A population increases through birth and ____.
immigration
The ability of a living system to survive moderate disturbances is called ____.
inertia
What occurs when members of two or more species interact to gain access to the same limited resources?
interspecific competition
If multiple species find themselves competing for the same resource, the competition can be reduced by which of the following?
resource partitioning
T or F: At the population level, parasites are always harmful to the host species.
F
T or F: Humans are exempt from population overshoot and dieback.
F
T or F: Intraspecific competition plays a larger role in most ecosystems than interspecific competition.
F
T or F: Organisms with clumped distributions are fairly rare.
F
T or F: The growth rate of a population increases as its size nears the carrying capacity of its environment.
F
T or F: The most common interaction between species is commensalism.
F
Which of the following exhibits primary succession?
a rock exposed by a retreating glacier
If the resilience of a damaged ecosystem is low enough, the degraded area may not be restored by secondary succession. When this happens, the damaged ecosystem has reached ____.
a tipping point
Kelp forests play key roles in marine ecosystems, in part by supporting important biodiversity. These kelp forests are threatened by ____.
sea urchins
T or F: The population of white-tailed deer has soared and this can pose a problem for humans since they are carriers of malaria.
F
What occurs when an interaction benefits one species but has little, if any, effect on the other?
commensalism
What is the most common interaction between species?
competition
Emigration is the ____.
departure movement of individuals from a population to another area
What has caused the population of the southern sea otters to fluctuate?
parasites that breed in cats
What is said to occur when one organism feeds on another organism by living on or in the other organism?
parasitism
the ability of an ecosystem to survive moderate disturbances
persistence
A group of interbreeding individuals of the same species in the same geographic region is called a(n) ____.
population
What is the number of individuals in a population found within a defined area or volume that can limit the size of some populations?
population density
gradual establishment of communities of species in lifeless areas
primary succession
Species with a capacity for a high rate of population growth are called ____.
r-selected species
Each population in an ecosystem has a ____ to variations in its physical and chemical environment.
range of tolerance
Parasites ____.
rarely kill their hosts
Which of the following exhibits secondary ecological succession?
recently flooded land
What refers to the ability of a living system to be restored after a period of moderate to severe disturbance?
resilience
the ability of an ecosystem to be restored
resilience
Through natural selection, different species of birds called honeycreepers have shared resources by evolving specialized beaks to take advantage of certain types of food such as insects, seeds, fruits, and nectar from certain flowers. This is called ____.
resource partitioning
use behavioral strategies to scare off predators
blowfish
The primary reason why southern sea otter recovery is ecologically important is because they ____.
are a keystone species
Most ecologists now recognize that mature, late-successional ecosystems ____.
are in a state of continual disturbance and change
Some species that tend to reproduce later in life and have a small number of offspring with long life spans ____.
are vulnerable to extinction
The maximum population of a given species that a particular habitat can sustain indefinitely is the definition of ____.
carrying capacity
Some prey species discourage predators with chemicals that are poisonous, irritating, foul smelling, or bad tasting. What is this called?
chemical warfare
What is the most common distribution of populations?
clumped
The hind wings of the Io moth resemble eyes of a much larger animal. What is this called?
deceptive looks
Plants such as pitcher plants share a commensalistic interaction with large trees in tropical and subtropical forests by attaching to the trunks or branches of the trees. The pitcher plants are examples of ____.
epiphytes
By 1900, white-tailed deer populations in the United States were drastically reduced, but now, since laws have been passed to protect them and their natural predators, their population has ____.
exploded
When plotting the number of individuals in a population against time, the data yield a J-shaped curve. What does this curve indicate?
exponential growth
The situation in which one set of species makes an area suitable for species with different niche requirements and often less suitable for itself is called ____.
facilitation
an example of a species using resource partitioning
honeycreepers
Too much or too little of any physical or chemical factor can prevent the growth of a population, even if all other factors are at or near the optimum conditions. What is this ecological principle?
limiting factor
Exponential growth followed by a steady decrease in population growth until the population size stabilizes is typical of ____.
logistic growth
There are ____ limits to population growth in nature.
low
Grasslands have ____ and can burn easily.
low inertia
The pollination of flowering plants by species such as honeybees is ____.
mutualism
The relationship between clownfish and sea anemone is called ____.
mutualism
When two species behave in ways that benefit both by providing each with food, shelter, or some other resource, it is called ____.
mutualism
T or F: A brown bear and a salmon are engaged in a predator-prey relationship.
T
T or F: A late loss population (K-selected species) is exemplified by species such as elephants and rhinoceroses.
T
T or F: A survivorship curve shows the percentages of the members of a population surviving at different ages.
T
T or F: Animal predators tend to kill the sick, weak, aged, and least fit members of a species because they are the easiest to catch.
T
T or F: Grasslands have a high resilience and therefore can recover quickly following a fire.
T
T or F: Humans compete with many other species for space, food, and other resources.
T
T or F: In communities and ecosystems, the types and numbers of species change in response to changing environmental conditions.
T
T or F: In predator-prey relationships, the predator is seeking food for itself and its offspring, while the prey is seeking not to become food for the predator. As a result, predator and prey populations exert tremendous natural selection pressures on each other
T
T or F: Large mammals, such as elephants and rhinoceroses, are especially vulnerable to extinction because of their reproductive patterns.
T
T or F: Populations of most plants and animals depend, directly or indirectly, on solar energy.
T
T or F: Scientists have changed their view about a stable type of climax community as the end product of succession and are now suggesting that we cannot predict the course of succession
T
T or F: The carrying capacity of any given area is not fixed.
T
What was the primary reason the southern sea otter nearly went extinct by the early 1900s?
They had thick, luxurious fur.
What is a feature of r-selected species?
They have populations that fluctuate between high and low.
