Study guide Chapter 4-5 Quizlet by: Edgar Calderon
generalist species
A generalist species is able to thrive in a wide variety of environmental conditions and can make use of a variety of different resources (for example, a heterotroph with a varied diet).
specialist species
A generalist species is able to thrive in a wide variety of environmental conditions and can make use of a variety of different resources (for example, a heterotroph with a varied diet). A specialist species can only thrive in a narrow range of environmental conditions or has a limited diet.
non-renewable resource
A non-renewable resource (also called a finite resource) is a resource that does not renew itself at a sufficient rate for sustainable economic extraction in meaningful human time-frames.
renewable resource
A renewable resource is a resource which is replaced naturally and can be used again. Examples are: oxygen, fresh water, solar energy, timber, and biomass. Renewable resources may also include goods commodities such as wood, paper and leather.
allelopathy
Allelopathy is a biological phenomenon by which an organism produces one or more biochemicals that influence the growth, survival, and reproduction of other organisms.
ecological niche
An ecological niche is the part of the environment into which a species fits, and to which it is adapted. A shorthand definition of niche in biology is how an organism makes a living in a place. A niche can be occupied by different species, all of which 'earn their living' in roughly the same way
ubiquitous species
An extremely diverse species that are not found in any particular area
indicator species
An indicator species is any biological species that defines a trait or characteristic of the environment. For an example, a species may delineate an ecoregion or indicate an environmental condition such as a disease outbreak, pollution, species competition or climate change.
exotic/introduced/alien species
An introduced, alien, exotic, non-indigenous, or non-native species, or simply an introduction, is a species living outside its native distributional range, which has arrived there by human activity, either deliberate or accidental. Non-native species can have various effects on the local ecosystem. Introduced species that become established and spread
habitat island
An island with its own environment and species of animals/plants
biodiversity
Biodiversity, a contraction of "biological diversity," generally refers to the variety and variability of life on Earth. One of the most widely used definitions defines it in terms of the variability within species, between species, and between ecosystems. It is a measure of the variety of organisms present in different ecosystems.
biological evolution
Biological evolution, simply put, is descent with modification. This definition encompasses small-scale evolution (changes in gene frequency in a population from one generation to the next) and large-scale evolution (the descent of different species from a common ancestor over many generations).
biotic potential
Biotic potential density dependent. Full expression of the biotic potential of an organism is restricted by environmental resistance, any condition that inhibits the increase in number of the population. It is generally only reached when environmental conditions are very favorable.
early successional species
Ecological succession is the process of change in the species structure of an ecological community over time. The time scale can be decades, or even millions of years after a mass extinction.
late successional species
Ecological succession is the process of change in the species structure of an ecological community over time. The time scale can be decades, or even millions of years after a mass extinction.
environmental ethics
Environmental ethics is the discipline in philosophy that studies the moral relationship of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its non-human contents
evoultion
Evolution is change in the heritable traits of biological populations over successive generations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organization, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules.
genetic drift
Genetic drift (also known as allelic drift or the Sewall Wright effect after biologist Sewall Wright) is the change in the frequency of a gene variant (allele) in a population due to random sampling of organisms. The alleles in the offspring are a sample of those in the parents, and chance has a role in determining whether a given individual survives and reproduces
globalization
Globalization (or globalisation) is the process of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas and other aspects of culture.
secondary succession
Home » Secondary succession. The ecological succession that occurs on a preexisting soil after the primary succession has been disrupted or destroyed due to a disturbance that reduced the population of the initial inhabitants
anthropogenic
Human impact on the environment or anthropogenic impact on the environment includes impacts on biophysical environments, biodiversity, and other resources. The term anthropogenic designates an effect or object resulting from human activity.
ecosystem service
Humankind benefits in a multitude of ways from ecosystems. Collectively, these benefits are becoming known as ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are regularly involved in the provisioning of clean drinking water and the decomposition of wastes.
predation
In an ecosystem, predation is a biological interaction where a predator (an organism that is hunting) feeds on its prey (the organism that is attacked).
extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms (taxon), normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point.
coevolution
In biology, coevolution occurs when changes in at least two species' genetic compositions reciprocally affect each other's evolution. There is evidence for coevolution at the level of populations and species.
parasitism
In biology/ecology, parasitism is a non-mutual relationship between species, where one species, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host.
climax community
In ecology, climax community, or climatic climax community, is a historic term that expressed a biological community of plants, animals, and fungi which, through the process of ecological succession the development of vegetation in an area over time, had reached a steady state.
competitive exclusion
In ecology, the competitive exclusion principle, sometimes referred to as Gause's law of competitive exclusion or just Gause's law, is a proposition that states that two species competing for the same resource cannot coexist at constant population values, if other ecological factors remain constant.
theory of island biogeography
Insular biogeography is a field within biogeography that examines the factors that affect the species richness of isolated natural communities. The theory was originally developed as island biogeography, to explain species richness of actual islands, principally oceanic.
endemic species
Merge this question into. An endemic species is one that is commonly found in a given habitat, such as whitetail deer in the woods and pastures of the Eastern US. An endemic species is one that is commonly found in a given habitat, such as whitetail deer in the woods and pastures of the Eastern US.
mid-successional species
Mid-successional species are plants and animals that grow after the original species die off. These plants and animals often are the first division of the original species that are created when cells are combined to form a stronger species.
reproductive strategies
Multiple stages taken in order to have the best possible chance of reproducing and passing genes
mutualism
Mutualism is the way two organism of different species exist in a relationship in which each individual benefits from the activity of the other. Similar interactions within a species are known as co-operation.
natural selection
Natural selection is the process by which biological organisms with favorable traits survive and reproduce more successfully than organisms that do not possess such traits, and, conversely, organisms with deleterious traits survive and reproduce less successfully than organisms lacking such deleterious traits
natural selection
Natural selection is the process by which biological organisms with favorable traits survive and reproduce more successfully than organisms that do not possess such traits, and, conversely, organisms with deleterious traits survive and reproduce less successfully than organisms lacking such deleterious traits.
primary succession
Primary succession is one of two types of biological and ecological succession of plant life, occurring in an environment in which new substrate devoid of vegetation and other organisms usually lacking soil, such as a lava flow or area left from retreated glacier, is deposited.
realized niche
Realized niche width is a phrase relating to ecology defining the actual space that an organism inhabits and the resources it can access as a result of limiting pressures from other species
speciation
Speciation is the evolutionary process by which reproductively isolated biological populations evolve to become distinct species. The biologist Orator F. Cook was the first to coin the term 'speciation' for the splitting of lineages or "clad genesis," as opposed to "an agenesis" or "phyletic evolution" occurring within lineages.
species diversity
Species diversity refers to the measure of diversity in an ecological community. Species diversity takes into consideration species richness, which is the total number of different species in a community. It also takes into account evenness, which is the variation of abundance in individuals per species in a community. Keep Learning.
species evenness
Species evenness refers to how close in numbers each species in an environment is. Mathematically it is defined as a diversity index, a measure of biodiversity which quantifies how equal the community is numerically. So if there are 40 foxes, and 1000 dogs, the community is not very even. But if there are 40 foxes and 42 dogs, the community is quite even.
species richness
Species richness is the number of different species represented in an ecological community, landscape or region. Species richness is simply a count of species, and it does not take into account the abundances of the species or their relative abundance distributions. Species diversity takes into account both species richness and species evenness.
resource partitioning
Summary. So, when species divide a niche to avoid competition for resources, it is called resource partitioning. Sometimes the competition is between species (interspecific competition) and sometimes it's between individuals of the same species (intraspecific competition).
carrying capacity
The carrying capacity of a biological species in an environment is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water, and other necessities available in the environment.
commons
The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. These resources are held in common, not owned privately.
geographic isolation
The definition of geographic isolation is a group of plants, animals or other living creatures being separated from mixing genes within their same species. An example of geographic isolation is the people of a remote village only able to reproduce within the village population.
keystone species
The role that a keystone species plays in its ecosystem is analogous to the role of a keystone in an arch. While the keystone is under the least pressure of any of the stones in an arch, the arch still collapses without it.
tragedy of the commons
Tragedy of the commons. The tragedy of the commons is an economic theory of a situation within a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting that resource through their collective action.
inhibition
a feeling that makes one self-conscious and unable to act in a relaxed and natural way
species
a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding.
commensalism
an association between two organisms in which one benefits and the other derives neither benefit nor harm.
fundamental niche
and is often narrower than the fundamental niche. A fundamental niche is the theoretical role, place, or function that a species has within its ecosystem, such as trophic position, life history, habitat, and geographical range.
facilitation
the action of facilitating something.
mutation
the changing of the structure of a gene, resulting in a variant form that may be transmitted to subsequent generations, caused by the alteration of single base units in DNA, or the deletion, insertion, or rearrangement of larger sections of genes or chromosomes.
