Chapter 1 - Web of Life Flashcards
Occur when humans take actions without giving much thought to how our actions might affect the environment
Global Changes
Driven by the ways on how organisms interact with their physical environment
Natural Systems
The scientific study of how organisms affect and are affected by other organisms and their environment
“Events in the natural world are interconnected”
Ecology
Events that are linked or connected to one another
Sometimes, they only have little influence to each other
Can be a result of sharing features of the environment
E.g. food
Connections in Nature
Early observations suggest that parasites cause amphibian deformities
Presence of Ribeiroia ondatrae in deformed frogs
Why is decline in amphibian species occurring more often now than in the past?
Connections in nature can lead to unanticipated side effects
Ex. Nutrient addition - results to algae increase, which is the food of snails, so abundance of algae = more snails = more 1st intermediate host for the parasite = more deformed amphibians
Indirect and unanticipated effects of human actions - population size, extent of land development, etc.
Resulted to the bloom of many infectious diseases
Scientific study of interactions between organisms and their environment
Scientific study of interactions that determine distribution and abundance of organisms
Scientific endeavor
≠ environmental activist
Ecology
Discipline related to ecology that incorporates concepts from the natural sciences and social sciences focused on how people affect the environment and how these can be addressed.
Environmental Science
Realizations of Ecologists (3)
Natural system do not necessarily return to their original state after a disturbance
Random perturbations often play an important role in nature
Different communities can form in the same area under similar environmental conditions
Levels of Biological Organization involved in Ecology
Population
Community
Ecosystem
Landscapes
Biosphere
Universal feature of living systems
Change in the genetic characteristics of a population over time
Evolution
Process by which organisms gradually accumulate differences from their ancestors
Descent with modification
Characteristic that enables organisms to improve their ability to survive or reproduce within its environment
Adaptation
Individuals with particular traits tend to survive and reproduce at a higher than those that do not possess it
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Natural Selection
cyclic movement of a nutrient between organisms and the physical environment
Nutrient Cycle
How do ecologists answer ecological questions
Ecologists evaluate competing hypotheses about natural systems with observations, experiments, and models
Includes altering one or more features of the environment and observes the effect of that change
Cause-and-effect relationship
Control group and experimental groups present
Ecological Experiment
Directional change in climate that occurs over 3 decades or longer
Climate change
What is replication and what is its advantage
Each treatment, including the control, is performed more than once
Advantage: the higher the replicates, the less likely the results are due to variable that was not measured or controlled in the study
Steps of the Scientific Method
Observe nature and ask a well-framed question about those observations
Use previous knowledge or intuition to develop possible answers to that question. In science, such possible explanations of a well-framed question are called hypotheses
Evaluate competing hypotheses by performing experiments, gathering carefully selected observations, or analyzing results of quantitative models
Use the results of those experiments, observations, or models to modify one or more of the hypotheses, to pose new questions, or to draw conclusions about the natural world
New observations = new questions = new ideas being tested
“Oekologie” -> Oikos (household) + Logos
(study/knowledge)
- Coined the term ecology
- “the comprehensive science of the relationship of the
organism to the environment”
Ernst Haeckel
Having concern, for, or acting in favor of, the environment
Environmentalism
- Includes subdisciplines of physiological, evolutionary, and behavioral ecology
- Concerned with how an organism’s structure, physiology, and behavior (for animals) meet the challenges posed by environment
Organismal Ecology
- Analyzes factors that affect population size and how and why it changes over time.
- Note: Both population and community ecology also study abiotic factors
- What environmental factors affect the reproductive rate of deers?
Population Ecology
