Chapter 6 Ecology

1. Chapter 6Ecology Preserving The Animal Kingdom

2. Animals and Their Abiotic Environment • Habitat: includes all living and nonliving of the animals environment • Tolerance Range: the range of values in which animals live • Range of Optimum: Defines the conditions under which an animal is most successful • Limiting Factor: when factors necessary for an animal’s survival and reproduction in out of range • Taxis: when an animal orients itself to an abiotic factor

3. ENERGY • Heterotrophic • Autotrophic • Energy budget

4. TEMPERTURE • Torpor • Hibervation • Winter sleep • Aetivation

5. OTHER ABIOTIC FACTORS • Include: moisture, light, geology, and soils. • The texture, amount of organic matter, fertility, and water holding ablity directly influence the number and kinds of animals living in or on the soil.

6. POPULATIONS • Populations are groups of individuals of the same species that occupy a given area at the same time and have unique attributes. • 2 important attributes involve the potential for population growth and the limits that the environment places on population growth.

7. POPULATION GROWTH • Exponential growth: the population increases by the same ratio per unit time. • Environmental resistance: the constraints that climate, food, space, and other environmental factors place on a population • Carrying capacity: the population size that a particular environment can support • Logistic population growth: growth curves assume a sigmiod, or flattened S shape

8. POPULATION REGULATION • The conditions that an animal must meet to survive are unique for every species. • Density-independent factors: influence the number of animals in a population without regard to the number of individuals per unit space. • Ex. Weather conditions often limit population • Density-dependent factors: are more severe when population density is high (or sometimes very low) than they are a other densities.

9. INTRASPECIFIC COMPETITION • Intraspecific competition: competition aming members of the same species.

10. INTERSPECIFIC INTERACTIONS • Members of other species can affect all characteristics of a population. • Interspecific interactions include herbivory, predation, competition, coevolution, and smbiosis.

11. Herbivory and Predation • Animala that feed on plants by croppig portions of the plant, but usually not killing the plant, are herbivores. • This conversion provides food for predators that feed by killing and eating other organisms.

12. Interspecific Competition • When members of different species compete for resources, one species may be forced to move or move or become extinct, or the two species may share the resource and coexist.

13. Coevolution • Occurs when species are competing for the same resource or during predator-prey interactions • Also occurs with flowering plants and pollinating animals.

14. Symbiosis • Symbiosis: some of the best examples of adaptations arising through coevolution come from two different species living in continuing, intimate associations • Parasitism: a common form of symbiosis in which one organism lives in or on a second organism. • Commensalism: a symbiotic relationship in which one member of the relationship benefits, and the second is neither helped nor harmed. • Mutualism: a symbiotic relationship that benefits both members

15. Other Interspecific Adaptations • Camouflage: occurs when an animal’s color patterns help hide the animal, or a developmental stage, from another animal. • Cryptic coloration: is a type of camouflage that occurs when an animal takes on color patterns in its environment to prevent the animal from being seen by other animals. • Countershading: is a kind of camouflage common in frog and toad eggs. • Aposematic coloration: warning patterns on animals • Mimicry: when a species resembles another species and gains porotection.

16. COMMUNITIES • Community-all population living in an area • Ex: a stream community of rainbow trouts that helps controll the population of invertebrates • Dominant species: are responsible for establishing community characteristic. • Community diversity: a variety of animals in a community

17. The Ecological Niche • Ecological niche includes all attributes of an animal’s lifestyle • Ex: where it looks for food, what it eats, where it nests & the condition of temp.

18. Community Stability • Succession: the dominant members os the community change a community in predictable ways • Pioneer community: the first community to become established in an area • Seral stage: each successional stage • Sere: the entire successional sequence • Climax community: the final community

19. Trophic structure of Ecology • Ecosystems: communities and their physical environment • Food Chain: the sequence of organisms through which energy moves in an ecosystem • Food webs: complex interconnected food chains • Trophic level: organisms grouped accorhing to the form of energy used. • Producers (autotrophs) • Consumers (heterotrophs)

20. Cycling Within Ecosystems • Biogeochemical Cycles: matter moving through the ecosystem.

21. Ecological Problems • Name some ecological problems.

22. Human Population Growth • Age structure: shows the proportion of a population in prereproductive, reproductive, and postreproductive classes. • Birthrates are falling world round due to more women in the work force and the AIDS epidemic.

23. Pollution • Pollution is any detrimental change to an ecosystem. • Acid deposition: falling sulfuric acid made by combined sulfur dioxide and water. • Greenhouse effect: carbon dioxide released in burning fuels is accumulating in the atmosphere. • Biological magnification: the accumulation of matter in food webs

24. Resource Depletion and Biodiversity • Biodiversity: the variety of living organisms in an ecosystem.