Bio1B Ecology

Mutualism

(+/+) ; both organisms benefit. Ex: termite and microbiome; lichen with fungi and algae (or cyanobacteria).

Commensalism

+/0 ; bird eating the bugs that the buffalo steps on.

Facilitation

+/0 ; important for ecological succession; rushes effect on temperature, salinity levels, etc. in the ecosystem.

Amensalism

0/- ; Ex: buffalo stepping on a grasshopper.

Biome Concept

A biome is a type of regional or global biotic community characterized by convergences in organismal adaptations and overall physiognomy based on similar climates.

Climograph

A climograph is a plot of temperature v precipitation illustrating where these major terrestrial biomes of the world occur in relation to temperature and precipitation.

Food Web

A complex trophic network made up of interconnected food chains - a web of interactions.

Herbivory

A consumer resource relationship (+/-). One organisms eating a plant. Ex: turtle consuming sea grass.

Direct Estimation of N

A direct estimation of N involves counting actual organisms.

Conservation Biology

A field of applied ecology focused on the management and protection of organisms and ecosystems.

California Current

A flow of cold water that influences the western Pacific coast of the USA

Trophic Guild

A group of species that exploit the same diet resources or exploit different resources in a similar way

Keystone Species

A keystone species is a species that exerts strong control on community composition and function, without being numerically abundant in terms of number of individuals or biomass. Ex: piaster starfish.

Thermocline

A layer in a large body of water, such as a lake, that sharply separates regions differing in temperature, so that the temperature gradient across the layer is abrupt.

Lotka-Volterra Equations

A logistic model of the effect of interspecific relationships on population dynamics. Adds alpha and beta term that model the proportional effect of species 1 on species 2 and vice versa.

Inverted Pyramid

A lot of aquatic ecosystems have an inverted plankton. The base compartment (photoautotroph compartment) is small, and the primary consumer is often a bigger compartment. This is because the phytoplankton are so productive and creating so much energy that is being used at the next level that you don't see it at any one time. It just has a really large energy turnover; masking high dynamism.

Physiognomy

A macroscopic view of a landscape/ecosystem.

Shannon Diversity Index (H)

A means to calculate diversity. The Shannon Diversity Index adds the proportions of each species in the community together. H = - ((pA * ln pA) + (pB * ln pB) + (pC * ln pC) + ... ), where pA is equal to the proportion of species A, pB is the proportion of species B, and so forth.

Per Capita Growth Rate (R)

A measure of the growth rate of a population. r = b-d

n-dimensional Hypervolume

A model of the niche mathematically where the axes of this theoretical space represent the dimensions of the organism's relationship to the environment. The most important adaptations of an organism are quantified in an n-dimensional array.

Trophic Cascade

A phenomenon in which predators at high trophic levels indirectly affect populations at low trophic levels

Food Chain

A series of steps in which organisms transfer energy by eating and being eaten. Begins with organisms that can produce their own food (i.e. autotrophs).

Dominant Species

A species that is numerically abundant in individuals or biomass is a dominant species. Ex: chestnut tree.

Mediterranean Climate

A wet and cool winter + a warm and dry summer

Wetland

A wetland can be defines as any land area that is perennially or seasonally inundated such that it supports vegetation with aquatic adaptations.

Agricultural Runoff, Eutrophication

Agricultural Runoff: NPK fertilizers tend to leach into adjacent ecosystems where they flow downstream and ultimately into wetlands, lakes, and oceans. Eutrophication: Excessive richness of nutrients in a lake or other body of water, frequently due to runoff from the land.

Allee Effect, Extinction Vortex

Allee Effect: small populations can go into an extinction vortex where a population gets trapped as a result into a downward spiral. A weak allee effect is when a small population grows slowly. A strong allee effect is when r is actually negative in the beginning which means a downward spiral.

Ecological Pyramid

An ecological pyramid represents the number of organisms, or the biomass, or the energy, at each trophic level in a community. A normal pyramid is largest at the base.

Ecosystem Engineer

An ecosystem engineer is an organism that physically alters local systems. Such alterations may or may not benefit other species. Ex: beavers, elephants, humans.

Ecotone

An ecotone is an interface community that exists between two distinct, adjacent communities. Ecotones are often very diverse because they include species from the neighboring communities, in addition to their own species.

Competition

An interspecific interaction. Includes exploitative competition, interference competition, etc.

Parasitism

An organism that steals another organisms' nutrient resources. Usually parasites are lethal to the host as it is so in parasitoids.

Ecology of Social Groups

Animal species vary from solitary to highly social. The degree to which an animal is solitary or social is not necessarily intrinsic to the species: individuals of a species may be solitary during part of they year, but highly social in the reproductive season, or when food is patchily distributed.

Age Structure Pyramid

Another way to look at a society's population dynamics is through an age structure pyramid. You see age 0 to late ages and bars by density + divided into male and females. A bottom heavy pyramid implies high birth rate; majority of the population is young. A pentagon shape implies something in between (slower growth but maintaining population growth). A mushroom shape implies the majority are in menopause (reduced population growth rate).

Edge Effects

Areas become patchier as more land is exploited so the forest is now in patches. This alteration of habitat creates a shrinkage overall in spatial area, spatial extent of the natural habitat and increase the amount of edge habitat. This leads to more edge conditions and edge-adapted organisms.

Community Boundaries

Assemblages of species do not function as discrete units in a strict sense, and it is therefore difficult to draw the physical boundaries around a community. In some instances, disjunct abiotic factors create discrete biotic boundaries in community composition, such as at the edge of forest, or in the transition from a lake to a grassland.

Associated Species

Associated species can be used for population size estimation as well. Ex: the presence of Peregrine Falcons is correlated with the absence of Artic Foxes.

Pteridophyte Forests

Back to the Paleozoic (about 300 million years ago), ecosystems were different. You have these large plants producing massive forests and growing in such perfusion that the deitrus they were creating built up massive loads of material that wasn't being decomposed as fast as production. These sedimentary products of decaying bodies sank into the Earth and were subjected to high temperature and pressure and transformed into coal deposits.

White Nose Syndrome

Bats in North America are failing. They get this white fungal infection on their noses.

Global Birth Rates

Birth rates remain high in countries nearer the equator, the so-called 'developing world'. Wealthier the country, lower the birth rate.

Community Concept

By definition, a community includes all the species in a local area. Community studies are generally focused on a subset of the whole, for example the plant community, or the spider community.

Acidification

CO2 in the water becomes acidic (as carbonic acid). This acid dissolves away the calcium carbonate in the coral reefs, shells of mollusks, and other organisms. This is bad for the ocean ecosystems.

Global Climate Change

CO2 is a heat trapper; CO2 allows radiation to pass through it but upon radiation it gets trapped by carbonic acid which warms the terrestrial space beneath that gas.

Carbon Dioxide (CO2)

CO2 is going up year to year in the atmosphere. Annual peaks in CO2 is seasonal and related to the hemispheres. Dips in CO2 are northern summers where the boreal forests are going crazy and pulling in so much CO2 and releasing it and not capturing as much in the winter.

Interspecific Interaction Types

Can be classified according to the effect that they have on the participants (positive, negative, neutral). Amensalism: 0/- Commensalism/facilitation: +/0 Consumer-Resource: +/- Competition: -/- Mutualism: +/+

Tracking Distribution and Behavior

Captured, handled, marked. Ex: sticker on the wing of a butterfly.

Boreal Forest (Taiga)

Captures a lot of atmospheric carbon when the great conifer forests of the taiga enter the growing season and conduct photosynthesis. Pine, fir, and spruce are intensely harvested from the taiga.

Carrying Capacity (K)

Carrying capacity is the limited amount a population can reach.

Brood Parasites

Cases where animals exploit another animals' parental care. Ex: cuckoo birds.

Parasitic Plants

Cases where plants exploit another plants' nutrient resources. Ex: mistletoe.

Fixed Interval Growth

Change in the number of individuals in time is equal to per capita growth rate with time * the number of individuals that exist in the moment giving a measure of how rapidly a population is increasing or decreasing.

Charles Elton

Charles Elton was one of the first prominent people to be part of that formal ecology discipline. He was an animal ecologist who made very detailed descriptions of the Artic food web.

Ecosystem Services

Clean water, intact forests, resistance of flooding due to catching of water in upstream systems, the role of organisms like bees, carbon fixation, air quality,

Whole Ecosystem Science (Macrocosm)

Coined by Linderman. He tried to encapsulate the entire ecosystem of Cedar Bog Lake. A mathematical method of exploring an ecosystem.

Zonation in Lakes and Oceans

Commonalities between oceans and lakes: open water areas and shelf areas

Community and Individual Metabolism

Community metabolism: the metabolism of an entire community with respect to the flow of energy and the transfer of energy across levels Individual metabolism: how food is consumed by an individual organism and processed and excreted and used in the life of the organism.

Resources and Conditions

Conditions include all of the environmental factors that affect organisms, but these factors are not used by organisms. Ex: ambient temperature, water, salinity, and wind speed. Resources: physical, chemical, or biological materials that are actually consumed by organisms. Such resources are often finite in abundance and in limited supply.

Predator-Prey Relations

Correlated peaks and trough in population size, but are offset in time. The peaks of prey abundance precede the peaks of predator abundance are then followed by minima in prey abundance, which are then followed by minima in predator abundance, and so on.

Protected Areas

Countries around the world attempt to protect land. We see the economic necessity of protecting the environment.

Tangled Bank Metaphor

Darwin's "Tangled Bank" referenced an interaction system of organisms along a creek where the insects, plants, birds, and everything was mixed together and interacting and influencing one another. This metaphor of a tangled bank is thought to be at the roots of a community ecology

Shrubland (Chaparral, Fynbos)

Dense ecosystem of low lying plants with tough leaves; rare biome; Mediterranean climate; fires occur cyclically in these areas

Mangrove Forest

Dense forests of mangrove trees in shallow marine waters on tropical and subtropical coasts. Mangroves are also marine-adapted, woody angiosperms that grow in the intertidal. They are breeding grounds for marine life. Intact mangrove forests are effective buffers against storm surges.

Temperate Seasonal Forest

Dense leafy forests. Changing leaf colors. Deciduous forest. Dropping of leaves is a strategy to take full advantage of the sunshine and warmth of the summer season with big fleshy leaves and to survive the cold winter when solar energy is weak and water is unavailable because it's frozen. Accumulation of dead organic matter on the floor regenerates a deep humus layer rich in microbes, invertebrates, and amphibians. Aquatic systems may occur in these forests, depending on topography and bedrock.

Density-dependent Factors

Density-dependent factors regulate populations depending on how many individuals are present. Ex: competitive interactions can increase the more individuals that are present, parasites, predators, waste that populations create.

Density-independent Factors

Density-independent factors are factors that influence population size without reference to how many individuals are present. Ex: tornado, floods, other environmental factors.

Ecological Disturbance

Disturbances that influence whole communities (all the populations in that area). Disturbances have an impact on diversity; it is hypothesized that an intermediate frequency and intensity of disturbances result in the highest potential diversity in an ecosystem. Ex: lightning, storms,

Diversity: Richness and Evenness

Diversity considers richness and evenness. Richness refers to the number of species. Evenness refers to how equally represented those species are.

Sea Grass Bed

Dominated by a marine angiosperm used to cover vast areas of the tropics and subtropics on the continental shelves. Sea grasses drop anchor in soft, mucky substrates and their leaves are covered with epiphytic microorganisms as well as snails and other small invertebrates. Sirenians and sea turtles cruise through sea grass beds, grazing the leafy blades with their encrustations.

Ocean Currents

Drives climate on land. Warm water currents come toward North American and cycle through the Eastern seaboard, impacting the coastline with warm water while cold water impacts the coastline on the Western side.

Earth Rotation and Tilt

Earth is on a tilt about 23.5 degrees. It spins around once a day (24 hours) depending on whether the earth is facing the sun or not.

Quadrats, Transects

Ecologists often use quadrats and transect to accurately count all of the large individuals of a particular species in the cells of a grid, and then they extrapolate the result to a larger area.

Conversion Efficiency

Efficiency with which one form of energy is transformed into another. In conversion efficiency, energy is often lost as radiant heat, respiration, feces, etc.

African Elephants in Kruger NP

Elephants were protected, population boomed, highly destructive in their pursuit of food and topple small trees to access the upper branches, hunters brought in to limit the population, public backlash was forceful so now they don't try to regulate the population, growing exponentially.

Scientific Natural History

Elton's phrase for what ecology was. He had this rootsy approach to ecology as field biologist.

Charles Darwin

English naturalist. His "Tangled Bank" referenced an interaction system of organisms along a creek where the insects, plants, birds, and everything was mixed together and interacting and influencing one another. This metaphor of a tangled bank is thought to be at the roots of a community ecology

Evapotranspiration, Species Richness

Evapotranspiration is the combination of evaporation and transpiration into a single variable. It is a measure of how much water is in the system. Species richness is how many species of an organisms are present. We see a general increase in species richness with evapotranspiration.

Glacier Bay, Alaska

Example of primary succession. Alaska had a glacier but it now only exists in the farthest regions of the bay. So the edge of the bay are the oldest communities. As a result you can see succession as you go through the landscapes. Pioneer stage -> Dryas stage -> Alder stage -> Spruce/Hemlock stage.

Deserts (30N and 30S)

Explained by Hadley cells as rising hot air falls, heats up, retains moisture, sucks out moisture.

Malthusian Predicament

Exponential growth in the use of pollutant. Our use of resources has all gone exponential while the availability of additional resources is not necessarily keeping at pace. Humans growing multiplicatively and resources growing additively - this discrepancy is the Malthusian Predicament.

Desert

Extremely dry area. Spiny succulents and snakes. Birds are plentiful, surviving on insects and nectar and small reptiles. Blazing hot day turns into blisteringly cold night. Tiny forbs and lichens, and the billions of cells in the biotic crusts, absorb residual morning dew before it evaporates.

G.F. Gause

Famous for articulating the Competitive Exclusion principle based on the interactions of species according to the niches that they occupy. He was studying primarily paramecium in the laboratory.

Joseph Grinnell

Famous for being one of the first to define an ecological niche. He wrote about the relationships of the thrasher to the chaparral in which it lives and to the other organisms that it coexists with as its niche.

Tracks and Sign

Footprints and feces left behind, crayfish chimneys that can be counted for indirect estimation of population.

Indirect Estimation of N

For organisms that are difficult to observe directly, indirect estimation of N is used in which one counts the signs and marks of the organisms' activity such as footprints and feces to generate population size estimates.

Allelopathy, Allelochemicals

Forms of chemical inhibition that create uniform dispersion patterns.

Solstice and Equinox

Given the tilt, when the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the sun, the southern hemisphere is closest to the sun meaning summer in the south and winter in the north. Vice versa as well. These are the solstices. Equinoxes are when it is approximately equal in terms of day night length.

Gross Primary Productivity (GPP)

Gross Primary Production: Energy captured by 1 producers.

Human Population Growth

Growth that began 2000 years ago, grew exponentially.

Habitat Alteration, Loss, Fragmentation

Habitat Alteration: urbanization, agricultural renovation, forcing of streams and rivers into canals and aqueducts. Fragmentation: edge effects. Loss: As habitats get smaller, populations get smaller. As populations get smaller, genetic diversity tends to decline. As genetic diversity declines, inbreeding becomes a problem.

Haeckel (okologie, oikos)

Haeckel was a well known scientist who popularized a lot of Darwin's ideas. He wrote in a way that the general public could understand the concepts. Largely responsible for communicating Darwin's ideas. He coined the word ecology from oikos and logos (oikos = house/home; logos = study of).

Colony Collapse Disorder

Honeybees are collapsing. One of the factors are a pesticide: neonicotinoids. This class of pesticides is very dangerous to the colonies. Bees are important for pollination.

Global Population Growth

Humans have experienced exponential growth over time despite the growth rate decreasing.

Florida Panther

Hunting and development that resulted in habitat loss and fragmentation. Ultimately new panthers were brought in to prevent inbreeding.

Hydrothermal Vent

Hydrothermal vents occur where tectonic activity generates hot columns of chemically rich gas, such as hydrogen sulfide, that is emitted from the sea floor. Chemoautotrophic prokaryotes form symbioses with tube worms, and shrimp and other organisms tolerate the extreme conditions and thrive.

Temperate Rainforest

In the temperate zone but with next-level precipitation. Dense with biomass, akin to that of a tropical rainforest, with abundant epiphytes, and dynamic microbial communities. Soils are thicker and heavier than those of tropical forests because of the reduced rate of decomposition in the cooler climate. Conifer trees may dominate both the canopy and subcanopy of this biome, and ferns and bryophytes thrive at ground level.

Terrestrial Biomes

Include rainforest, temperate rain forest, boreal forest, deciduous forest, tropical dry forest, grassland, chaparral, savanna, tundra, desert, and grassland.

Population Regulation

Includes density independent factors and density dependent factors.

Consumer-resource Relations

Includes predation, parasitoids, parasitism, herbivory

Savanna

Increased rainfall than a grassland. Trees dot the landscape. Large ungulates graze between the trees and seek shelter below the tree canopies in the hottest part of the day. Fires during the dry season and the herds of grazers limit the recruitment of tree saplings. Vultures help decompose. Swarms of insect herbivores form a food base for small mammals, lizards, and birds. Savanna ecosystems are prized areas for domestic cattle grazing today.

Orographic Effects

Influences of topography on climate and weather

Exploitative & Interference

Interference competition: the sorts of interaction that are direct in the pursuit of a common resource. Exploitative competition: A common exploitation of a common resource base that potentially impacts the resource pool negatively for the other participant.

Interspecific Population Dynamics

Interspecific population dynamics are when species interact directly via predation.

Experimental Lakes Area, Canada

Investigators divided a lake with a barrier and added phosphorus to one side. The bloom of phytoplankton that results from the nutrient input of phosphorus was actually detrimental as it created hypoxic conditions leading to the asphyxiation of aerobic organisms.

Isle Royale (Wolves & Moose)

Island in Lake Superior, when the lake is freezing mammals walk from the mainland to the island, moose and wolves established themselves there, wolves eat moose, issues with disease and stuff so the wolves declined in size i.e. moose population rose

Tropical Rainforest

Jungles. High density of green biomass, with plants festooned on other plants (epiphytic growth). Microbial activity is hyperdynamic. Dead organic mater is quickly decomposed and recycled. Soil is relatively thin. Heavy rain. Contribute more to the conversion of solar energy to primary biomass than any other terrestrial biome.

Kelp Forest

Kelp forests flourish just beyond the intertidal zone. Kelp is a brown alga requiring cold water and can grow rapidly in preferred conditions. Buffer the land against the force of the surf. The fertile and complex kelp ecosystem serves as a nursery ground for many invertebrates and fish.

Life Table, Cohort

Life Table: used to study survivorship patterns by tracking the number alive at the start of the year, proportion alive at the start of the year, number of deaths during the year, death rate, and average additional life expectancy over a period of time/ages. Cohort: a group of individuals in a sample (often of the same generation)

Life History Strategies

Life history strategies introduces another framework to organize our ecological thoughts and analyses through r/K selection theory.

Littoral, Limnetic, Benthic, Pelagic

Littoral: the shore of a lake where aquatic plants grow from fixed roots. Limnetic: open water component in lakes Benthic: zone at the level of the substrate inhabited by a distinct biota. Pelagic: open water component in oceans

Biogeographic Realms

Major geographic regions of Earth that have characteristic animal and plant taxa.

Papahanaumokuakea

Marine reserve in Hawaii. Largest marine reserve in the world due to W Bush and Obama.

Methane (CH4)

Methane has even more heat trapping ability (10x more than CO2). Methane level spikes with CO2. Another greenhouse gas.

Coral Reef

Most diverse and productive of all marine ecosystems on a per-unit-area basis. The coral polyps that build the calcium carbonate reefs are filter feeders, trapping plankton and other organic matter. In the interstices of the reef are sponges and other filter-feeders, and shrimp and fish cruise the reef surface in a riot of color and behavioral complexity. Ocean acidification, pollution, rising ocean temperatures and sea levels threaten many coral reefs sytems.

Alexander von Humboldt

Naturalist that mapped plants as he climbed up a mountain, starting a new field of biogeography. He looks at a macroscopic view of a landscape/ecosystem. Humboldt's work marks the foundation of biogeography.

Net Primary Productivity (NPP)

Net Primary Production = Gross Primary Production - Respiration. Energy available to 1 consumers.

Nitrogen Fixation, Nitrification

Nitrogen is fixed by bacteria. Plants associate with nitrogen fixers in order to capture nitrogen because N2 is a strong bond. Humans learned to break the N2 bond through the Haber-Bosch technique.

Tundra

North of the taiga. Marked by frozen soils - permafrost - where the roots of trees fail to support above ground growth in the short growing season. Lichens and mosses and tenacious forbs flourish in the tundra. Large grazers such as caribou and musk ox make a living here. An analog of the tundra biome can be found high on tall mountains in the form of alpine tundra.

Obligate, Facultative

Obligative mutualisms: where both species require their partner for mutual survival. Ex: ants Facultative mutualisms: where both participants benefit from the partnership when it occurs, but the relationship is not vital for survival, and both species are capable of independent survival. Ex: bird and honey badger.

Oligotropic, Eutrophic

Oligotrophic lakes have few accessible nutrients; waters are often clear because of the lack of nutrients and autotrophic activity. Eutrophic lakes are rich in nutrients. Water colors are often browner.

Many-eyes Hypothesis

One of the hypothesis of why organisms group: being less vulnerable to predators. Namely, the more individuals there are in your group, the more vigilant you can be in regards to predators.

Freshwater, Brackish, Marine

Only a tiny slice of water on Earth is fresh water (2.5%). Almost 70% of it is in glaciers and ice caps. The rest is ground water. The smallest slice is ground surface fresh water. Most of the surface freshwater is actually frozen as permafrost. The rest exist as lakes. Brackish water is a water source that is somewhat salty (more so than freshwater). Marine water is salt water.

Global Element Cycles (C, P, N)

Organisms on earth are carbon based lifeforms. Also phosphorus and nitrogen. Phosphorus doesn't have a living component. All the phosphorus in these systems derives from bedrock eroding out slowly and making its way into the system. No gaseous phase of significance. Massive impact on productivity.

Population Fluctuations & Cycles

Overshooting K (carrying capacity) and oscillating around it

Biosphere

Part of Earth in which life exists including land, water, and air or atmosphere

Permafrost

Permanently frozen layer of soil beneath the surface of the ground

Pioneer Species, Climax Species

Pioneer species: the first to colonize previously disrupted or damaged ecosystems, beginning the chain of ecological succession; usually r-selected species; Ex: cyanobacteria, lichens, liverworts, and fireweed. Climax species: plant species that will remain essentially unchanged in terms of species composition for as long as a site remains undisturbed, K-selected; Ex: spruce/hemlock stage.

Walter Climate Diagram

Plots precipitation and temperature on a plot for a spot on Earth. Precipitation shown in the bars; temperature shown in the line. X-axis is in months.

Net Primary Production (NPP)

Plots precipitation/temperature vs. net primary productivity. Roughly sees productivity go up and then tails off at the extreme. At the driest, productivity is low; productivity goes up with increasing precipitation/temperature before tailing off in extreme levels.

Population Growth Models

Population growth models track the overall number of individuals in a population.

Population Size (N), Density

Population size is the measurement of the size of a population as a whole. Density is the measurement of the size of a population in a specific area.

Predation, Parasitoids

Predation: +/- ; benefits one species and is harmful for the other. Parasitoids: Adult organism lays eggs on another organism and its babies consume that organism.

Secondary, Primary, Degradative

Primary succession: succession that begins on a clean slate where there are no organisms essentially. Ex: volcanic eruption. Secondary succession: succession that follows a disturbance that does not eliminate all of the living organisms from an area; Ex: typical forest fire, abandoned agricultural fields, shifting sand along ocean coastlines. Degradative succession: succession of the organisms that inhabit dead organic matter as it decomposes; Ex: fallen tree, carcasses of large mammals.

Coal Deposits (Fossil Fuel)

Pteridophyte forests were turned into coal and other fossil fuels.

RFID, PIT, Telemetry, Camera Traps

RFID: Radio-frequency identification; for larger animals; no battery. Encode information that can be scanned later on. PIT: Passive Integrated Transponder; for larger animals; no battery. Encode information that can be scanned later on. Telemetry: putting a battery-powered tagged collar on an organism and tracking it as it moves through the field in real time. Camera Traps: Spying on animals. Often animals are aware of the camera.

Random, Uniform, Clumped

Random dispersion: dandelions, etc. Uniform dispersion: territoriality resulting in these non-overlapping areas in which organisms live creating an even spread around the landscape. Ex: allelopathy (chemicals to inhibit growth of all other types of plant), competition (competition for resources making the surrounding area devoid of the resource such that other organisms cannot survive). Clumped dispersion: most common; organisms tend to exist in bunches. Lots of organisms are arrayed patchily.

Fundamental and Realized Niches

Realized Niches: the niches an organism experiences in actuality. Ex: the high tide clam is high tide. Fundamental Niches: the niches an organism can potentially experience through their biology. Ex: the high tide clam can go into low tide.

Redwoods, Eucalyptus

Redwood trees are generally considered the tallest trees. They grow well because they have fog to sustain year round growth. Eucalyptus similarly flourishes in the Mediterranean climate.

Resource Acquisition

Resources are acquired by an organisms in ecological time based on strategies that the organism's ancestors acquired over evolutionary time. Plants acquire light as a resource in ecological time based on the strategy of photosynthesis that the plant's ancestors acquired over evolutionary time.

Hadley Cells

Rising columns of warm humid air near the equator that expand as they rise and then condense in the higher, cool air. Thus, hot, rainy tropics. The cold, dry air up high also sinks downward toward Earth where it is compressed by atmospheric pressure and heats up to form arid conditions.

Salt Marsh

Salt marshes occur in low energy tidal zones. They drain with the low tide, exposing mud flats full of microbes and crabs and birds. They fill again with high tide as shrimp and fish enter from the bays and open ocean. Halophiles anchor these systems. Extremely productive and commonly drained and developed as coastal cities.

Sea Star, Sea Otter, Orca

Sea star: keystone predator, eats mussels which prevent the domination of mussels. Sea otter: keystone predator, eats urchins preventing urchins from dominating the systems and eating all the brown algae. Orca: Some orcas in Alaska were eating sea otters as a snack and as a result, the whole ecosystem was affected as loss of sea otters -> more urchins -> less kelp -> loss of key ecosystem habitat etc.

Seasonality, Seasonal Change

Seasonal change is not succession. Change that occurs over an annual cycle with cyclicity is seasonality.

Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest

Showed the importance of management to maintaining healthy ecosystems. When investigators compared watersheds that had been clearcut to those that had been selectively cut (with only the valuable, target species removed) versus those that had not been touched (the controls), they found a massive difference in the amount of nitrogen that was released from the ecosystem.

Tropical Seasonal Forest

Similar temperature profile to a tropical rainforest but with distinct seasons of precipitation, including at least one major dry season. Almost as rich in species as the tropical rainforests. Resemble true rainforests in the rainy season.

Canadian Lynx & Snowshoe hare

Solar flares cause plants to form a thick protective film on leaves to prevent radiation from damaging chloroplasts, hares can't eat the leaves because they're too think, hares all die, lynx have nothing to eat so they die Classic predator prey relationship where predator line on graph lags behind prey

Temperate Grassland (Steppe)

South of the artic tundra into a warmer but not much wetter biome. Horses and other ungulates race across these park-like spaces. Birds of prey trace the skies. Fires race through the dry grasses, sparked by lightning. Flat terrain and rich soils can be ideal for agricultural. Steppe may occur at elevation below the alpine tundra. Shrubs mix with grasses, forb, and lichens are grazed by a wide range of mammalian herbivores.

Enemy Free Space

Space is an important finite resource for many organisms. Ex: urchins compete for spaces that are free from predators, etc.

Invasive Species

Species that enter new ecosystems and multiply, harming native species and their habitats

Non-native Species

Species that migrate into an ecosystem or are deliberately or accidentally introduced into an ecosystem by humans.

Character Displacement

Strong piece of evidence for the existence of competitive interactions. An analysis of competitive interactions over evolutionary timescale. Ex: two species of finches have changed morphologically in their bill when living together but not when living separately.

Survivorship Curves: Types I, II, III

Survivorship curves reflect the death rate of a species population over an average individual lifespan. Percentage of maximum life expectancy vs. number of individuals surviving on a log scale. Type I: a top right corner curve; usually seen in small amounts of offspring with low chance of dying immediately ex: humans. Type II: a linear curve on a survivorship graph; ex: birds. Type III: a bottom left corner curve; usually seen in large amounts of offspring with high chance of dying immediately; ex: trees.

BD Model

The "birth-death model": Nt+1 = Nt + B - D. The most basic mathematical model of population growth. The birth death model assumes that immigration and emigration cancel each other out.

Competitive Exclusion Principle

The Competitive Exclusion Principle suggests that two organisms can't coexist together in a local area over periods of time unless they differentiate their use of resources in some fundamental way. If they're not dissimilar, one species is going to exclude the other from the local environment.

Haber-Bosch Process

The Haber-Bosch Process is a technique of fixing nitrogen from gas into a material that could be added to fertilizer and used to stimulate growth.

Principle of Allocation

The Principle of Allocation suggests that with the resources that an organism acquires, it dedicates those resources energetically to different aspects of its biology. They need to dedicate a certain amount of resources to maintenance (basic metabolism, survival), defense, growth, and reproduction. When resources are abundant, more resources can be dedicated to other categories like reproduction, growth, and defense. When resources are limited (stress), more resources are contributed to maintenance and less are towards reproduction, growth, and defense.

1 Producers, 1 Consumers, etc.

The autotroph level of produces is the primary level referred to as 1 producers. The second level overall is the first consumer level, thus 1 consumers. Then follows secondary consumers (2), tertiary consumers (3), quaternary consumers (4), and beyond.

Biogeochemistry

The circulation, the cycling of elements of major importance for living things (carbon, phosphorus, and nitrogen in particular).

Marine Layer, Advection Fog

The cold water current flowing south interacts with the warmer air at lower latitudes that create a foggy marine layer. That marine layer is an advection fog - it is pulled onto land.

Latitudinal Diversity Gradients

The concept that biogeographic zones near the equator generally have more species per unit area, and in general there is a global diversity gradient, where species richness decreases as one moves poleward.

"It's a Question of Scale"

The concept that it is important for an ecology to classify the dispersion pattern of a species based on the scale at which the species is observed and measured.

Ecological Succession

The continuous pattern of colonization and extinction of species in a local community. Succession is non-seasonal and arguably directional. Three types of succession: primary, secondary, and degradative.

Resource Partitioning

The division of environmental resources by coexisting species such that the niche of each species differs by one or more significant factors from the niches of all coexisting species.

Ecological Niche Concept

The ecological niche concept are an organisms' set of adaptations to its habitat, including all of the behavioral, physiological, morphological, and psychological connections that the organism has to its local environment.

Immigration, Emigration, Birth, Death

The four factors that determine the size of the population. Births and immigration add individuals to a population. Deaths and emigration remove individuals from a population.

dN/dt = rN(K-N/K)

The growth rate of population over time equals the rate at which population grows * total population * (carrying capacity - total population)/carrying capacity. Note that as the number of individuals approaches capacity (as K-N -> 0), the population growth rate (dN/dt) also goes to 0. When N exceeds K, the population growth rate goes negative, and the number of individuals in the population declines.

Guild Concept

The guild concept introduces the idea of interspecific guilds as major features of many communities, specifically in terms of trophic relationships. A guild is defined as a group of species that exploit the same class of resources in a similar way.

Heat Capacity of Water

The heat capacity of water influences temperature on land in neighboring adjacent areas. This makes coastal areas more moderate in temperature; they don't go through the extremes because water retains heat well and doesn't release heat readily; this dampens temperatures in coastal areas.

Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis

The hypothesis that an intermediate levels of disturbances correlated with the highest taxon richness.

Intertidal Zone

The intertidal zone is the area between low and high tide lines. Intertidal systems vary greatly in structure depending on whether the substrate is sand, rock, or vegetation.

Mark-Recapture Technique

The mark-recapture technique is a method for studying animals in the field in which one captures and marks a first sample before releasing them back into the lake. Then you recapture a second sample and count how many marked fish you recaptured. The ratio between the first and second sample should be reflective.

Metapopulation Concept

The metapopulation concept is the idea that species are composed of populations, and because populations are often spatially disjunct, most species exist as a network of subpopulations, or as one or more metapopulations. So a metapopulation is a population of subpopulations.

Species Abundance

The number of individuals of each species.

Species Distribution (Range)

The range of a species refers tot he limits of its distribution in space.

Solar Angle of Incidence

The rays of solar energy strike the middle of the Earth more directly with more energy than at the pole. This influences the latitudes such that higher latitudes north and south receive less solar rays than those in the middle.

Community Composition

The species that compose a community.

Restoration Ecology

The study and implementation of restoring damaged ecosystems

Demography

The study of how populations change over time.

Natural History

The study of natural phenomena based on observation and description.

Biogeography

The study of the relationship between organismal distribution and environmental factors across large areas.

Ecosystem Concept

The term ecosystem was coined by a botanist who sought to make the new science of Ecology more respectable in an academic arena that was dominated by physics and chemistry. Tansley (1935) defined the ecosystem as "the whole system (in the sense of physics), including not only the organism-complex, but also the whole complex of physical factors forming what we call the environment or the biome—the habitat factors in the widest sense" (Tansley 1935).

Greenhouse Effect

The trapping of the sun's warmth in a planet's lower atmosphere due to the greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared radiation emitted from the planet's surface. Radiation enters the earth under this CO2 shield or envelope but the radiation back after the solar radiation strikes the earth and so much of it is reradiated back it is maintained at the Earth's surface as a result of the blocking power of CO2.

Population Dispersion

The way individuals are dispersed.

Demographic Transition

The way populations have rown over time is consistent in many ways between countries. The demographic transition model explains these transitions in population growth in different countries. (1) high birth and death rates (2) death rate starts to plunge while birth rate maintains a high level -> explosive growth (3) birth rate starts to decline (4) birth rate meets death rate at a new level but still explosive growth (5) death rate exceeds birth rate

Delta and Estuary

The zone between the river and the ocean. Has some saltwater and some freshwater influence and exports from the continent.

Oceanic Trash Gyres

There are massive garbage patches out in the oceans that have accumulated as a result of the ocean currents to form these vast spaces of trash in different parts of the world. Gyres are large systems of circulating ocean currents, kind of like slow-moving whirlpools, they're also drawing in the pollution that we release in coastal areas, known as marine debris.

Territoriality

This may arise in a few ways. For example, animals such as cheetahs are highly territorial and mark the edges of their territory with urine (figure, below left). This creates a uniform dispersion pattern in which individuals occupy non-overlapping home ranges of similar size across the landscape.

Bottom-up vs Top-down Causation

Top down effects propagate down the trophic chain/web; Ex: mountain lions. Bottom up effects propagate up the trophic chain/web; Ex: kelp forests.

N=mn/x

Total population = inds marked and released * total inds captured in 2nd sample / marked inds recaptured.

Life History Trade-offs, Constraints

Trade-offs occur among growth, reproduction, and survival. We see that the amount the tree has grown in an year becomes less the more cones there are on the tree. Negative relationship between growth and reproduction. We see that the its survival decreases the more eggs it produces. So negative relationship between survival and reproduction.

Space Debris

Trash bits orbiting the earth.

Hydrological Cycle

Water from the mountainside flows down the creeks and rivers into the sea -> evaporates back into the clouds -> clouds precipitate over the mountains. Note evaporative water over the ocean is greater than precipitation over the oceans. Some of that moisture is pushed over to land and the precipitation over land is greater than what evaporates over the land.

Watershed, Headwater, Stream, River

Watershed: includes the precipitation collection area that, as a result of gravity, gathers rainfall and snowmelt into a coherent system of interconnected waterways. Water in the watershed follows the contours of the land. Headwater: source of a stream or river. Stream: in the headwaters of mountains where the raindrops fall and collect. River: where streams collect and grow in volume.

Instantaneous Growth (dN/dt) / dN/dt = rN

We need to go from fixed intervals to instantaneous rates of change because not all organisms are like squirrels - there is real time with a lot of chaos. Thus, an instantaneous rate of change is dN/dt = rN

Mountain Lion and Zion NP

Were top predators in North and South America before human arrival, now fear humans and avoid human activity, mountain lions in Zion are rare in areas with human traffic, deer are scared of mountain lions so where mountain lions are rare, deer are abundant, deer eat cottonwood trees, when cottonwood trees heavily browsed their roots can't hold the soil and erosion rates are high which impacts other plants/insects/amphibians/causes sedimentation that hurts fish.

Effective Number of Species

When two communities differ greatly in species richness, it is helpful to convert the Shannon-Diversity index into true diversity, the effective number of species. The effective number of species is equal to exp(H).

Aedes Aegypti

White striped mosquitos that transmits dengue and yellow fever. It brought disease into the US. It was Zika that made it into a thing.

Windward, Leeward (Rain Shadow)

Winds move up -> rising air drops its rain on the windward side of the mountain. By the time it descends it is extremely dry creating a shadow.

Zoogeographic Regions, Ecozones

Zoogeographic regions are the spatial distribution of organisms. Wallace's original depiction had six major zoogeographic areas: the Nearctic and Neotropical; the Ethiopian region south of the Sahara; the Palearctic region of Eurasia and the Middle East plus North Africa; the Oriental region of the Indian subcontinent and southeastern Asia; the Indomalaya region; the Australian region. Ecozones are biogeographic divisions of the Earth's surface characterized by the evolutionary history of the plants and animals they contain.

Interaction Coefficients

alpha is defined as the proportional effect of species 2 on species 1. beta is defined as the proportional effect of species 1 on species 2.

Per Capita Birth Rate (b), Death Rate (d)

b = per capita birth rate (B/Nt) d = per capita death rate (D/Nt )

Logistic Growth (S-shaped Curve)

dN/dt = rN (K-N)/K

Exponential Growth (J-shaped Curve)

dN/dt = rN. This graph shows that the population grows fast - rapidly increasing in number. Limiting Factors are not present (unlimited resources). Higher r value is a steeper curve, and the population grows faster.

r-selected, K-selected Species

r-selected: produce many offspring, small offspring size, short maturation time, younger age at 1st reproduction, high mortality rate, short lifespan, no parental care. Thought to have evolved under conditions where rapid population growth is at a premium. K-selected: produce few offspring, large offspring size, long maturation time, older age at 1st reproduction, low mortality rate, long lifespan, extensive parental care. Thought to have evolved under conditions where the populations existed at or near carrying capacity where resources are more limited.