Key terms Flashcards
(36 cards)
What is ecology?
The scientific study of interactions that determine the distribution and abundance of organisms (Krebs, 1972)
What is distribution?
The way organisms are shared out in an environment
What is a population?
Collection of individuals from the same species that occupy a given area
What is Natural Selection?
process that results in the adaptation of an organism to its environment by means of selectively reproducing changes in its genotype, or genetic constitution. (Darwin, 1895)
What is a unitary organism?
Organisms with a set form, two eyes, four legs two ears ect. Mammals (Vuorisalo and Tuomi, 1986)
What is a modular organism?
Most plants are modular, they divide and grow, no set form
Vuorisalo and Tuomi, 1986
What is resource allocation?
A balance between survival, reproduction, growth and what an organism prioritises. (Boggs, 1992)
What are trade offs?
Organisms allocate limited energy or resources to one function at the expense of another.
Describe R-selection
A low cost high row reward reproductive strategy, common in marine molluscs, broadcast spawning
Describe K-selection
A high cost high rewards reproductive strategy, mammals have few young that are likely to survive and live a long time.
What is CSR classification?
Competition, stress tolerant and ruderal strategies for colonising an area. Grime’s Triangular Model (Grime, 1977)
Define Life History strategies
how natural selection and other evolutionary forces shape organisms to optimise their survival and reproduction in the face of ecological challenges posed by the environment (Stearns 1992)
What is the fast slow continuum?
the differences between taxa, evolve through adaptation to environmental factors such as predictability or mortality rates, allometry to correlate with body size, brain size, or metabolic rate
What are functional traits?
Morpho-physio-phenological traits that impact the fitness of individual species via their effects on growth, reproduction and survival, the three components of individual performance (Violle et al., 2007).
What are ecological strategies?
How species survive in an environment due to behavioural and physical adaptations
What is reproductive allocation?
The proportion of an organism’s energy budget allocated to reproduction at any given time.
Define an ecological community
The aggregate of groups of various species in ecological systems (Aoki, 2012)
What is community structure?
the composition of a community, including the number of species in that community and their relative numbers (Thomson/Brooks-Cole, 2006)
What is symbiosis?
Two species live together in a long-term, intimate association
What is mutualism?
A long-term, close association between two species in which both partners benefit
What is commensalism?
A long-term, close association between two species in which one benefits and the other is unaffected
What is parasitism?
A long-term, close association between two species in which one benefits and the other is harmed
Define Predation
A member of one species, predator, eats all or part of the body of a member of another species, prey
What is competition?
Competition Organisms of two species use the same limited resource and have a negative impact on each other
