Lecture 1

Question 1

Community

Answer 1

interacting populations of different species found in same place/time, interrelationships govern flow of energy and nutrient cycling within community

Question 2

Community Ecology

Answer 2

study of species interactions within a community across different spatial and temporal scales, including distribution, abundance, demography, structure and species interactions

Question 3

Environmental Biology

Answer 3

study of the origins, functions, relationships and interactions, and natural history of populations, species, communities and ecosystems in relations to environmental processes

Question 4

Guild

Answer 4

A group of species at the same trophic level that use approximately the same environmental resources.

Question 5

Functional group

Answer 5

a set of species, or collection of organisms, that share alike characteristics within a community.

Question 6

Autotrophs/primary producers

Answer 6

Organisms such as green plants, algae, and seaweeds that obtain their energy directly from the sun via photosynthesis

Question 7

Heterotrophs/consumers

Answer 7

A species that eats other organisms.

Question 8

Decomposers

Answer 8

A species that feeds or grows on dead plant and animal material

Question 9

Community Structure

Answer 9

The set of characteristics that shape communities

Question 10

Clements’s climax community

Answer 10

communities are stable and do not change, and are determined by the area’s climate

Question 11

Gleason’s view

Answer 11

communities are neither stable nor predictable, individual species respond independently to physical variables to determine their distributions

Question 12

Biological diversity (biodiversity)

Answer 12

all life on earth

Question 13

Alpha diversity

Answer 13

local diversity

Question 14

Gamma diversity

Answer 14

regional diversity

Question 15

Beta diversity

Answer 15

spatial turnover (regional / local)

Question 16

Saturation point

Answer 16

limit on local species richness (leveling off point)

Question 17

Null model

Answer 17

specifies how relationship / pattern should look in nature in absence of a process or mechanism of interest

Question 18

Mid-domain hypothesis

Answer 18

pattern may be due to placing species ranges on a bounded domain (the Earth) (Colwell & Hurtt, 1994)

Question 19

Rescue effect

Answer 19

an increase in fitness of individuals on islands closer to the mainland through increased immigration rates of colonists

Question 20

Megathermal forests

Answer 20

rainforests and warm seasonal forests

Question 21

Species-energy hypothesis

Answer 21

the number of individuals an area can support increases with primary productivity (which is influenced by climate) → the tropics have more species because of the more favourable climate