ENVS Chapter 5

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

What would cause a population to overshoot its carrying capacity?

a reproductive time lag between birth and death rates

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

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

secondary succession

a process started by an event (forest fire, harvesting, hurricane) that reduces an already established ecosystem to a smaller population of species

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

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

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

commensalism

The relationship between bacteria that live in the digestive systems of animals, such as humans, is ____.

mutualism

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

resource partitioning

Species can, over a long period of time, develop adaptations that allow them to reduce or avoid competition by sharing resources. This is called ____.

resource partitioning

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

stability

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

population

What describes an organism that is too old to reproduce?

postreproductive

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

Kelp forests are composed of large concentrations of a(n) ____.

seaweed

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

secondary succession

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

shore erosion

Kelp forests are a very important ecosystem in marine waters by supporting important biodiversity. These kelp forests are threatened by all of the following except _____.

southern sea otters

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

primary succession

a new substrate devoid of vegetation and other organisms usually lacking soil, such as a lava flow or area left from retreated glacier, is deposited

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

Which of the following is not considered a form of nondestructive behavior?

using the energy or body of another organisms as a food source

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

viceroy; monarch; mimicry

By 1900, white-tailed deer populations in the U.S. were reduced to about ____, but now, since laws have been passed to protect them and their natural predators have nearly been eliminated, their population is over ____ in the U.S.

50,000; 25 million

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

Carrying capacity

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

They have thick, luxurious fur

What is a population's distribution of individuals among various age groups called?

age structure

There are ____ limits to population growth in nature.

always

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

are a keystone species

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

Bats prey on certain species of moths by using high frequency echolocation to locate their prey. Certain moths have evolved ears that can hear these frequencies allowing them to escape. This is an example of ____.

coevolution

What is the most common interaction between species?

competition

Emigration is the ____.

departure movement of individuals from a population to another area

Plants such as bromeliads share a commensalism interaction with large trees in tropical and subtropical forests by attaching to the trunks or branches of the trees. The bromeliads are an example of ____.

epiphytes

From the ____ point of view, parasites are harmful, but from the ____ perspective, parasites can promote diversity.

host's; population's

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

Grasslands have ____ and can burn easily.

low inertia

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

Which of the following has caused the population of the southern sea otters to fluctuate?

parasites from house cats

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

parasitism