Enviro Ch. 5 MC

54. What was the primary reason the southern sea otter nearly went extinct by the early 1900s?

b. They had thick, luxurious fur.

36. What is a feature of r-selected species?

c. They have populations that fluctuate between high and low.

39. Kelp forests play key roles in marine ecosystems, in part by supporting important biodiversity. These kelp forests are threatened by ____.

c. sea urchins

30. Kelp forests are composed of large concentrations of ____.

c. seaweed

57. What is an example of a K-selected

c. whales

70. Which of the following exhibits primary succession?

a. a rock exposed by a retreating glacier

62. Some species that tend to reproduce later in life and have a small number of offspring with long life spans ____.

e.

49. Some prey species discourage predators with chemicals that are poisonous, irritating, foul smelling, or bad tasting. What is this called?

c. chemical warfare

63. Most ecologists now recognize that mature, late-successional ecosystems ____.

a. are in a state of continual disturbance and change

65. An example of an internal parasite is a ____.

b. tapeworm

66. There are ____ limits to population growth in nature.

c. always

55. A population increases through birth and

e. immigration

35. What is the most common interaction between species?

a. competition

59. Parasites ____.

a. rarely kill their hosts

46. What is said to occur when one organism feeds on another organism by living on or in the other organism?

c. parasitism

61. What occurs when members of two or more species interact to gain access to the same limited resources?

a. interspecific competition

33. Exponential growth followed by a steady decrease in population growth until the population size stabilizes is typical of ____.

a. logistic growth

29. What is the number of individuals in a population found within a defined area or volume that can limit the size of some populations?

a. population density

37. The primary reason why southern sea otter recovery is ecologically important is because they ____.

b. are a keystone species

47. 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

b. coevolution

28. The ability of a living system to survive moderate disturbances is called ____.

b. inertia

22. 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?

b. limiting factor

38. What has caused the population of the southern sea otters to fluctuate?

b. parasites that breed in cats

24. A group of interbreeding individuals of the same species in the same geographic region is called a(n) ____.

b. population

34. 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 ____.

b. resource partitioning

41. What type of succession begins in an area where an ecosystem has been disturbed, removed, or destroyed, and that contains soil or bottom sediment?

b. secondary succession

42. Kelp forests help reduce ____ by blunting the force of incoming waves and trapping some of the outgoing sand.

b. shore erosion

40. The capacity to withstand external stress and disturbance is called ____.

b. stability

51. What is the most common distribution of

c. clumped

56. Emigration is the ____.

c. departure movement of individuals from a population to another area

45. 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 ____.

c. epiphytes

64. When plotting the number of individuals in a population against time, the data yield a J-shaped curve. What does this curve indicate?

c. exponential growth

31. 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

c. facilitation

44. Each population in an ecosystem has a ____ to variations in its physical and chemical environment.

c. range of tolerance

48. If multiple species find themselves competing for the same resource, the competition can be reduced by which of the following?

c. resource partitioning

32. 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 ____.

d. a tipping point

53. The maximum population of a given species that a particular habitat can sustain indefinitely is the definition of ____.

d. carrying capacity

52. 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 ____.

d. coevolution

58. The hind wings of the Io moth resemble eyes of a much larger animal. What is this called?

d. deceptive looks

23. 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 ____.

d. exploded

21. The pollination of flowering plants by species such as honeybees is ____.

d. mutualism

60. The relationship between clownfish and sea anemone is called ____.

d. mutualism

43. 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

d. tolerance

68. The nonpoisonous ____ butterfly gains protection by looking like the bad-tasting ____ butterfly, which is a protective device known as ____.

d. viceroy; monarch; mimicry

26. What occurs when an interaction benefits one species but has little, if any, effect on the other?

e. commensalism

69. Grasslands have ____ and can burn easily.

e. low inertia

27. When two species behave in ways that benefit both by providing each with food, shelter, or some other resource, it is called ____.

e. mutualism

25. Species with a capacity for a high rate of population growth are called ____.

e. r-selected species

50. Which of the following exhibits secondary ecological succession?

e. recently flooded land

67. What refers to the ability of a living system to be restored after a period of moderate to severe disturbance?

e. resilience