Chpt 53 - Community Ecology
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apmiller78 on June 11, 2012
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49 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 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 plant numbers, which in turn control herbivore numbers, which in turn 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 symbiotic relationship in which the symbiont benefits but the host 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 storms, 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 | The idea that long food chains are less stable than short chains. |
| ecological niche | The sum total of a species' use of the biotic and abiotic resources in its environment. |
| ecological succession | Transition in the species composition of a biological community, often following ecological disturbance of the community; the establishment of a biological community in an area virtually barren of life. |
| ectoparasite | A parasite that feeds on the external surface of a host. |
| endoparasite | A parasite that lives within a host. |
| energetic hypothesis | The concept that the length of a food chain is limited by the inefficiency of energy transfer along the chain. |
| evapotranspiration | The 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 home and feeding ground to the symbiont. |
| individualistic hypothesis | The concept, put forth by H. A. Gleason, that a plant community is a chance assemblage of species found in the same area simply because they happen to have similar biotic requirements. |
| integrated hypothesis | The concept, put forth by F. E. Clements, that a community is an assemblage of closely linked species, locked into association by mandatory biotic interactions that cause the community to function as an integrated unit, a sort of superorganism. |
| intermediate disturbance hypothesis | The concept that moderate levels of disturbance can foster greater species diversity than low or high levels of disturbance. |
| interspecies interaction | Relationships between species of a community. |
| interspecific competition | Competition for resources between plants, between animals, or between decomposers when resources are in short supply. |
| keystone species | A species that is not necessarily abundant in a community yet exerts strong control on community structure by the nature of its ecological role or niche. |
| Müllerian mimicry | A mutual mimicry by two unpalatable species. |
| mutualism | A symbiotic relationship in which both participants benefit. |
| non-equilibrium model | The model of communities that emphasizes that they are not stable in time but constantly changing after being buffeted by disturbances. |
| parasite | An organism that absorbs nutrients from the body fluids of living hosts. |
| parasitoidism | A type of parasitism in which an insect lays eggs on or in a living host; the larvae then feed on the body of the host, eventually killing it. |
| pathogen | A disease-causing agent. |
| predation | An interaction between species in which one species, the predator, eats the other, the prey. |
| primary succession | A type of ecological succession that occurs in a virtually lifeless area, where there were originally no organisms and where soil has not yet formed. |
| redundancy model | The concept, put forth by Henry Gleason and Brian Walker, that most of the species in a community are not tightly coupled with one another (that is, the web of life is very loose). According to this model, an increase or decrease in one species in a community has little effect on other species, which operate independently. |
| relative abundance | Differences in the abundance of different species within a community. |
| resource partitioning | The division of environmental resources by coexisting species such that the niche of each species differs by one or more significant factors from the niches of all coexisting species. |
| rivet model | The concept, put forth by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, that many or most of the species in a community are associated tightly with other species in a web of life. According to this model, an increase or decrease in one species in a community affects many other species. |
| secondary succession | A type of succession that occurs where an existing community has been cleared by some disturbance that leaves the soil intact. |
| species diversity | The number and relative abundance of species in a biological community. |
| species richness | The number of species in a biological community. |
| species-area curve | The biodiversity pattern, first noted by Alexander von Humboldt, that illustrates that the larger the geographic area of a community, the greater the number of species. |
| top-down model | A model of community organization in which predation controls community organization because predators control herbivores, which in turn control plants, which in turn control nutrient levels; also called the trophic cascade model. |
| trophic structure | The different feeding relationships in an ecosystem, which determine the route of energy flow and the pattern of chemical cycling. |
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