| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Aposematic coloration | the bright coloration of animals with effective physical or chemical defenses that acts as a warning to predators. |
| Batesian mimicry | A type of mimicry in which a harmless species looks like a species that is poisonous or otherwise harmful to predators. |
| biomanipulation | a technique for restoring eutrophic lakes that reduces populations of algae by manipulating the higher-level consumers in the community rather than by changing nutrient levels or adding chemical treatments. |
| biomass | the dry weight of organic matter comprising a group of organisms in a particular habitat. |
| bottom-up model | a model of community organization in which mineral nutrients control community organization because nutrients control plants numbers, which in turn control herbivore numbers, which in turn control control predator numbers. |
| character displacement | the tendency for characteristics to be more divergent in sympatric populations of two species than in allopatric populations of the same two species. |
| coevolution | the mutual evolutionary influence between two different species interacting with each other and reciprocally influencing each other's adaptations. |
| commensalism | a symbictic relationship in which one organism benefits but the other is neither helped nor harmed. |
| community | all the organisms that inhabit a particular area; an assemblage of populations of different species living close enough together for potential interaction. |
| competitive exclusion | the concept that when populations of two similar species compete for the same limited resources, one population will use the resources more efficiently and have a reproductive advantage that will eventually lead to the elimination of the other population. |
| cryptic coloration | camouflage, making potential prey difficult to spot against its background. |
| disturbance | a force that changes a biological community and usually removes organisms from it. disturbances, such as fire and stores, play pivotal roles in structuring many biological communities. |
| dominant species | those species in a community that have the highest abundance or highest biomass. these species exert a powerful control over the occurrence and distribution of other species. |
| dynamic stability hypothesis | teh idea taht long food chains are less stable than short chains. |
| ecological succession | transition in the species composition of a biological community, often following ecological distrubance of the community; the establishment of a biological community and its physical environment. |
| ecological niche | the sum total of a species' use of the biotic and abiotic resources in its environment |
| ectoparasite | a parasite that feeds on the external surface of a host |
| endoparasite | a parasite that lives within a host |
| energetic hypothesis | teh concept taht the length of a food chain is limited by the inefficiency of energy transfer along the chain. |
| evapotranspiration | tthe evaporation of water from soil plus the transpiration of water from plants. |
| facilitator | a species that has a positive effect on the survival and reproduction of other species in a community and that contributes to community structure. |
| food chain | the pathway along which food is transferred from trophic level to trophic level, beginning with producers |
| food web | the elaborate, interconnected feeding relationships in an ecosystem |
| herbivory | an interaction in which an herbivore eats parts of a plant or alga |
| host | the larger participant in a symbiotic relationship, serving as a home and feeding ground to the symbiont |
| individualistic hypothesis | the concept taht a plant community is a chance assemblage of species found in the same area simply because they happen to have similar abiotic requirements. |
| integrated hypothesis | the concept that a community is an assemblage of closely linked species, locked into association by mandatory biotic interactions taht cause the community to function as an integrated unit, a sort of superorganism. |
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