Ecology and Evolution Exam 2 (Mynhardt)

Mutualism

(+/+) Both species benefit from this type of interaction example: anenomeas and clownish! Think Nemo!

Distance effect

(Think of the two island diagram) An ecological concept that basically states that the closer a location is to the mainland, the higher its species diversity.

Commensalism:

(o/+) one organism gains while the other is unaffected. Example: Whales and barnacles.

Ammensalism

(o/-) any relationship between organisms of differing species in which one organism is unaffected while the other is affected negatively or destroyed. - two main types:

Neutralism

(o/o) two organisms live in the same environment and possibly interact but do not affect each other. Examples: A cactus and a lion.

Ecosystem

A biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment, or a community of living organisms living in conjunction with their natural environment and the non-living components of their environment. Example: tropical rain forests are an example of this.

Describe a Fundamental Niche

A fundamental niche is the theoretical niche of an organism if there was an absence of environment limiting factors such as competition, predation and so forth.

Population

A group of organisms that interbreed and live in the same place at the same time. Example: A deer population in the woods.

Competition

A larger or stronger species excludes a smaller species and deprives it of resources. example: A lion and a hyenna.

Species eveness

A measurement of how evenly distributed or how close in number each species in an environment is. Example: If you have 100000 foxes and 10 wolves, then there is very low species evenness.

Species Diversity

A measurement of species richness combined with species evenness that analyzes how many species along with how evenly they are distributed in a given location.

Describe a realized Niche

A realized niche is the part of the fundamental niche an organism actually occupies when factoring in environmental inhibitory factors such as competition, predation, and so forth.

Species Richness

A total number of species found in a community or ecosystem Example: you have a picture with three different types of trees, the species richness of that picture is three.

Edge Effect

An ecological concept that states near the edge of the region where two adjacent ecosystems overlap will hold a higher species diversity. Examples: Land/Water, Forest/City

Organism

An individual animal, plant, or single-celled organism or life form. Example: a Wolf.

Community

An interacting group of various species in a common location Example: a forest with birds, trees, and other small animals.

How does latitude affect species diversity?

Generally speaking, the farther away from the equator you go the lower the species density. For example, species density at the poles will be substantially lower than species density at the equator.

Interference Competition

One individual organism intereferes with the survival of another example: male to male competition in deer

Antibiosis

One organism is unaffected while the other is damaged or killed chemically. Example: Penicillin and certain bacteria.

Exploitative Competition:

a commonon limiting

interspecifc competition

commpetion between different species.

Intraspecific

competiion between the same species