Biology Final
Terms
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- Clumped
- Describing a dispersion pattern in which individuals are aggregate in patches
- Dominance hierarchies
- A linear "pecking order" of animals, where position dictates characteristic social behaviors
- Sociobiology
- The study of social behavior based on evolutionary theory
- Exponential Population Growth
- The geometric increase of a population as it grows in an ideal, unlimited environment
- Inclusive Fitness
- showed that since relatives of an organism are likely to share more genes in common, an organism also may increase its own fitness by keeping its collateral relatives viable so they can pass those genes on to the next generation.
- Landscape Ecology
- The application of ecological principles to the study of land-use patterns; the scientific study of the biodiversity of interacting ecosystems
- Chemical Cycling
- The use and reuse of chemical elements such as carbon within an ecosystem
- Ozone Layer
- The layer of O3 in the upper atmosphere that protects life on Earth from the harmful ultraviolet rays in sunlight
- 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
- Secondary ecological Succession
- A type of succession that occurs where an existing community has been cleared by some disturbance that leaves the soil intact
- Eusocial
- the phenomenon of reproductive specialisation found in some animals, where a large group of sterile colony members carry out specialized tasks and care for the few reproductive members.
- Biotic
- All the organisms that are part of the environment
- Problem Solving
- Inventive behavior that arises in response to a new situation
- Trophic Structure
- The different feeding relationships in an ecosystem, which determine the route of energy flow and the pattern of chemical cycling
- Consumers
- Organisms in a food chain that are heterotrophic, but feed exclusively on other living organisms, i.e. they are predators or herbivores
- Physiological
- a biological discipline which studies the adaptation of organism's physiology to environmental conditions.
- Coevolution
- The mutual influence on the evolution of two different species interacting with each other and reciprocally influencing each other's adaptations
- Carrying Capacity
- The maximum population size that can be supported by the available resources, symbolized as K
- Fragmentation
- the emergence of discontinuities (fragmentation) in an organism's preferred environment, including reduction in total habitat area, increased edge habitat, isolation of habitat patches, and reduction of the average size of patches
- Food Webs
- The elaborate, interconnected feeding relationships in an ecosystem
- Monogamous
- a mating relationship wherein one male and one female mate only with each other
- Zoned Reserves
- An extensive region of land that includes one or more areas undisturbed by humans surrounded by lands that have been changed by human activity and are used for economic gain
- Landmarks
- A point of reference for orientation during navigation
- Association
- The acquired ability to associate one stimulus with another; also called classical conditioning
- Climate
- usually defined as the "average weather", or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of temperature, precipitation, and wind, etc. over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years.
- Ecosystem
- All the organisms in a given area as well as the abiotic factors with which they interact; a community and its physical environment
- Ultimate
- explanations that focus on the evolutionary rationale for a phenomenon, such as why it might be adaptive
- keystone Species
- Species that are not usually abundant in a community yet exert strong control on community structure by the nature of their ecological roles or niches
- Random
- Describing a dispersion pattern in which individuals are spaced in a patternless, unpredictable way
- 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
- Endemic
- Species that are confined to a specific, relatively small geographic area
- Life Tables
- A table of data summarizing mortality in a population
- Sustainable Development
- The long-term prosperity of human societies and the ecosystems that support them
- Spatial Learning
- Modification of behavior based on expeience of the spatial structure of the environment
- Richness
- The simple count of number of species in an area.
- Territories
- An area that an individual or individuals defend and from which other members of the same species are usually excluded
- Cognition
- The ability of an animal's nervous system to perceive, store, process, and use information obtained by its sensory receptors
- Abiotic
- non-living parts of an ecosystem, such as rocks, soil, water bodies and atmosphere
- Immitation
- Learning by observing and mimicking the behavior of others
- Kin Selection
- A phenomenon of inclusive fitness, used to explain altruistic behavior between related individuals; i.e. an individual's alleles may benefit more from that individual sacrificing itself for its kin than by selfishly saving itself
- Chemical Prospecting
- the search for new pharmaceuticals, insecticides, or other useful chemicals based on the natural chemicals used by organisms in their environment to deter predators, pathogens, etc.
- Optimal Foraging Theory
- The basis for analyzing behavior as a compromise of feeding costs versus feeding benefits, anticipating that animals will attempt to maximize energy obtained as a function of time and/or eneergy spent
- Search Images
- A mechanism that animals use to scan areas for a particular size and color of food, especially use of certain sign stimuli
- Polygamous
- a mating relationship wherein one partner mates with multiple other partners of the opposite sex, but each of those partners mates only with the one. Polygyny (one male has multiple females) is found more commonly than polyandry (one female has multiple male partners)
- Hydrology
- the movement, distribution, and quality of water throughout the Earth
- Niche
- The "job" a species plays in a community, e.g. small seed consumer, top predator.
- Mutualism
- A symbiotic relationship in which both participants benefit
- Kineses
- A change in activity or turning rate in response to a stimulus, that does not necessarily correspond to the direction of that stimulus. e.g. turning rate increases, but the direction of each turn is random in direction
- Food Chain
- The pathway along which food is transferred from trophic level to trophic level, beginning with producers
- Populations
- a subfield of ecology that deals with the dynamics of species populations and how these populations interact with the environment.
- Density-Dependent
- Any characteristic that varies according to an increase in population density, e.g. mortality rates that increase with an increase in population size
- Promiscuous
- a mating relationship wherein each individual mates with multiple other individuals, and forms no exclusive pair bond
- Ecosystem Ecology
- the integrated study of biotic and abiotic components of ecosystems and their interactions within an ecosystem framework. This science examines how ecosystems work and relates this to their components such as chemicals, bedrock, soil, plants, and animals
- Estuary
- The area where a freshwater stream or river merges with the ocean
- Taxes
- Movement toward or away from a stimulus
- sustainable resource management
- A management policy in which long term resource viability is emphasized instead of short-term economic gain
- Innate
- Behavior that is largely genetically programmed appears to be performed in virtually the same way by all individuals of a species
- Gap Analysis
- Research method used to study the distribution of organisms relative to landscpae features and habitat types
- Parasitism
- A symbiotic relationship in which the symbiont (parasite) benefits at the expense of the host by living either within the host (as an endoparasite) or outside the host (as an ectoparasite)
- Behavior
- activity (muscular or otherwise) triggered by a stimulus, governing interactions with the environment or other individuals.
- Habitat Edges
- the portion of a habitat patch that immediately borders another, so that its physical characteristics do not completely match the interior of its own patch.
- Benthic
- The bottom surfaces of aquatic environments
- Biodiversity Hotspots
- A relatively small area with an exceptional concentration of endemic species
- Habitat Complexity
- a rough measure of the number of unique habitats in an environment, and the range of physical structure among them
- Fragmentation
- the emergence of discontinuities (fragmentation) in an organism's preferred environment, including reduction in total habitat area, increased edge habitat, isolation of habitat patches, and reduction of the average size of patches
- Corridors
- narrow strips of intermediate habitat that, while not optimum for residence, allow members of a species to disperse from one patch to another more easily
- Community
- the study of the distribution, abundance, demography, and interactions between coexisting populations
- Endangered
- A species that is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range
- Threatened Species
- A species that is likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range
- Biodiversity
- All of the variety of life; usually refers to the variety of species that make up a community; concerns both species richness (the total number of different species) and the relative abundance of the different species
- Agnostic Behaviors
- A type of behavior involving a non-lethal contest of some kind that determines which competitor gains access to some resource, such as food or mates
- symbiotic relationships
- An ecological relationship between organisms of two different species that live together in direct contact
- Logistic Population Growth
- A model describing population growth that levels off as population size approaches carrying capacity
- Producers
- Organisms that make organic food molecules from CO2, H2O, and other inorganic raw materials: a plant, alga, or autotrophic bacterium
- Photic
- a zone of the ocean where light penetration is high enough for photosynthesis
- Disphotic
- a zone of the ocean where light penetration is too low for photosynthesis, but vision is still possible for some species
- Signals
- A behavior that causes a change in behavior in another animal
- Altruism
- Behavior that reduces an individual's fitness while increasing the fitness of another individual
- Commensalism
- A symbiotic relationship in which the symbiont benefits but the host is neither helped nor harmed
- Wetland
- An ecosystem intermediate between an aquatic one and a terrestrial one. Wetland soil is saturated with water permanently or periodically
- Primary Ecological 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
- Pathogens
- A disease-causing organism
- Evenness
- A mathematical measure of how the total number of individuals in an area are divided among the number of species in an area. In even communities, most species have about the same number of individuals present, where in uneven communities almost all individuals present belong to one species.
- Biological Magnification
- A trophic process in which retained substances become more concentrated with each link in the food chain
- Detritivores
- A heterotroph that derives its energy from nonliving organic material
- Predation
- An interaction between species in which one species, the predator, eats the other, the prey
- Demographic Transition
- A shift from zero population growth in which birth rates and death rates are high to zero population growth characterized instead by low birth and death rates
- Aphotic
- a zone of the ocean where light penetration is effectively zero, and neither vision nor photosynthesis are possible
- Declining Population Approach
- A proactive approach to species conservation that focuses on detecting, diagnosing and preventing population declines in order to keep the population above a minimum viable size.
- Imprinting
- A type of learned behavior with a significant innate component, acquired during a limited critical period
- Augmentation
- A research method that helps set the stage for recolonization by native species which can then overgrow the exotic plant
- Social Behavior
- Any kind of interaction between two or more animals, usually of the same species
- 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
- Small Population Approach
- An approach to species conservation concerned with the factors that drive a small population to extinction, such as genetic drift, inbreeding, etc.
- Interdidal
- The shallow zone of the ocean where land meets water, which is alternately covered or exposed by the tied
- Habituation
- A very simple type of learning that involves a loss of responsiveness to stimuli that convey little or no information
- Cognitive Maps
- A representation within the nervous system of spatial relations among objects in an animal's environment
- 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
- Fixed Action Patterns
- (FAP)A sequence of behavioral acts that is essentially unchangeable and usually carried to completion once initiated
- Survivorship Curves
- A plot of the number of members of a cohort that are still alive at each age; one way to represent age-specific mortality
- Dispersion
- The pattern of spacing among individuals within geographic population boundaries
- Biosphere
- The entire portion of Earth inhabited by life; the sum of all the planet's ecosystems
- Maximum Sustained Yields
- A method of setting harvest limits such that produces a consistent yield is produced without forcing a population into decline
- Migrations
- The regular back-and-forth movement of animals between two geographic areas at particular times of the year.
- Habitats
- Places where organisms live; environmental situations in which organisms live
- Foraging
- food-obtaining behavior
- Eutrophication
- excessive plant growth and decay in aquatic or marine ecosystems, favoring weedy species and then decomposers, that can choke out the natural biological community of an area. Eutrophication is typically caused by increased flow of nutrients, such as nitrogen or phosphorous, above normal levels.
- Pelagic
- The area of the ocean past the continental shelf, with areas of open water often reaching to very great depths
- Density-Independent
- Any factor affecting a population that has the same effect, regardless of population density, e.g. a tsunami that kills all members of a population in a certain area, regardless of how many of them are present
- Primary Production
- The amount of light energy converted to chemical energy (organic compounds) by autotrophs in an ecosystem during a given time period
- Energy Flow
- The passage of energy through the components of an ecosystem
- Bioremediation
- The use of living organisms to detoxify and restore polluted and degraded ecosystems
- Uniform
- Describing a dispersion pattern in which individuals are evenly distributed in space, e.g. exactly one per square meter
- Sign Stimuli
- An external sensory stimulus that triggers a fixed action pattern
- Learning
- modification of behavior in response to experience in the environment; A behavioral change resulting from experience
- Invasive Species
- a subset of introduced species or non-indigenous species that are rapidly expanding outside of their native range. Invasive species can alter ecological relationships among native species and can affect ecosystem function and human health.