Marine Ecology Unit 1 Vocab

Great Oxygenation

·       The slow, methodical change in the Earth’s atmosphere from 0% oxygen to 21% oxygen over a period of 3 billion years driven the chemosynthetic activities of archaea (chemoautotrophs) and the photosynthetic activities of cyanobacteria (blue green algae) that led to the great diversification of multi-cellular life (eukaryotes).

Ecology

·       the study of interactions of organisms and their environment.

Geomorphology

·       The physical template defined by the Earth’s configuration of the land and ocean.

Biogeochemistry

·       The interactions among chemical, geological, and biological processes in an ecosystem.

Ecosystem

·       a biotic community, its abiotic environment, and the fluxes of energy and matter within.

Anthropocene

- the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment

Functional Biology

roles, or functions, that species play in the community or ecosystem in which they occur.

The Great Acceleration

The rapid, multifaceted, and profound changes in human culture and earth systems generated by technological advances that gathered steam with the Industrial Revolution and, in the mid-twentieth century, sparked a chain reaction in human population growth, resources consumption, and rising global economic activity.

Plankton

Organisms living suspended in the water column and incapable of moving against water currents

Nekton

·       Organisms with swimming abilities that permit them to move actively through the water column and to move against currents.

Trophic Cascade

·       A strong interaction among trophic levels in a food chain, where changes in density at one level results in indirect effects at a trophic level that does not directly interact with the first level.

Food Web

A network describing the feeding interactions of the species in a defined region.

Trophic Guild

·       In a food web, a level containing organisms of identical feeding habitats with respect to the web.

Equilibrium

·       A state of relative stasis in community structure where the forces that influence the addition and removal of species are balanced.

Disturbance

·       A rapid change in the environment that greatly alters a previously persistent community.

Supply Side Ecology

·       A processes where the community structure of adults is strongly influenced by the availability of larval recruits at a previous time of colonization, usually post-disturbance.

El Nino

·       El Niño and the Southern Oscillation, also known as ENSO is a periodic fluctuation (i.e., every 2–7 years) in sea surface temperature (El Niño) and the air pressure of the overlying atmosphere (Southern Oscillation) across the equatorial Pacific Ocean.  The presence of an El Niño, or its opposite – La Niña – sufficiently modifies the general flow of the atmosphere to affect normal weather conditions in many parts of the world.

Marine Heat Wave

periods of persistent anomalously warm ocean temperatures, which can have significant impacts on marine life as well as coastal communities and economies.

Coral Bleaching

·       When corals are stressed by changes in conditions such as temperature, light, or nutrients, they expel the symbiotic algae living in their tissues, causing them to turn completely white.

Biodiversity

the variety of life, including variation

among genes, species and functional traits.

Ecosystem functions

ecological processes that

control the fluxes of energy, nutrients and organic

matter through an environment.

Ecosystem services

the suite of benefits that

ecosystems provide to humanity.

Monophyletic

a set of all species descended from a

common ancestor.

Polyphyletic

a set of species descended from more

than one common ancestor, not including all

descendants from those ancestors.

Paraphyletic

a set of species descended from a

common ancestor, but which does not include all

descendants of that ancestor.

Osmotrophy

Energy derived from absorbing

organic compounds

Chemoautotrophy

Energy derived from oxidizing inorganic compounds.

Phototrophy

Energy derived from sunlight driven carbohydrate synthesis.

Heterotrophy

Energy derived from consumption of organic compounds alive or dead

Deposit Feeding (Detritovory)

Consumption of organisms & detritus from the sediment surface

Suspension Feeding (Planktivory

Consumption of organisms from the water column

Grazing (Herbivory)

Consumption of primary producers

Parasitism

Consumption of a host by an organism living on or inside the host

Predation

Consumption of one organism by another

Biogeography

The distribution of life forms across the earth and the science of the historical

and environmental processes that shaped this distribution

Species pool

A set of species occurring in a certain region that could potentially colonize and inhabit a local community

Coriolis effect

The deflection of air or water flow, relative to the solid earth beneath, as a result of the earth’s rotation. Deflection is clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counter- clockwise in the southern hemisphere

Ekman transport

Movement of surface waters at a right angle to the direction of the wind due to the Coriolis effect.

Geostrophic flow

Large scale circular flow around an ocean basin (gyre), generated by the balance between Coriolis-induced pressure inward and gravity-forced pressure outward.

Thermohaline circulation (ocean conveyor belt)

The global movement of water through the deep ocean, beginning with the sinking of cold saline waters during polar winters, and its slow flow through the deep ocean basins until upwelling again thousands of years later.

Upwelling

The movement of nutrient-rich water from a specified depth to the surface, usually driven by surface winds.

Convergent front

The junction between two water currents that flow together; generally lateral pressure drives water downward (downwelling) along the lines of contact.

Neritic zone

The 0-150 m depth zone landward of the continental shelf-slope break.

Epipelagic zone

The 0-150 m depth zone oceanward of the continental shelf-slope break.

Endemicity

The degree of taxonomic uniqueness of an area, usually expressed as the proportion of taxa that are unique to the area and considered to have originated there. (between 30-40%)

Species Richness (S)

The number of species present in a prescribed area

Evenness

The component of diversity accounting for the degree to which all species are equal in abundance, as opposed to strong dominance by one or a few species

Diversity index

A parameter describing, in combination, the species richness and evenness of a collection of species. Local diversity a. Regional diversity y. Change in diversity b

Speciation

The evolutionary origin of new species as a result of divergence among populations of an ancestral species (birth of a species).

Extinction

The loss of a species having no remaining descendants recognized with the characteristics that defined the species (death of a species). Smaller organisms may persist from 5-10 million years whereas megafauna usually only 1-3 million years.

Dispersal

similar to gene flow

Ecological process of movement of organisms, usually referring to permanent movement away from a place of birth. Related to the evolutionary process of gene flow – The movement of alleles from one subpopulation to another.

Ecological drift

similar to genetic drift

Ecological process of random fluctuations in species abundance that are unrelated to competition, predation, physical tolerance, or other deterministic processes.More often seen in small populations.

Ecological selection

similar to natural selection

Ecological process for the deterministic interactions among organisms and their environment that influence which species are present in a community.

Species-Area Relationship (SAR)

The increase in the number of species recorded (species

richness S) as the cumulative area (A) of sampled habitat increases.

Allopatric Speciation

Physical Separation, also referred to as vicariance

origin of new species as a result of separation by extrinsic barriers.

Parapatric Speciation

Creation of Hybrid Species

Origin of new species by divergence of populations along an ecological transition while the populations remain physically and demographically connected.

Sympatric Speciation

Behavioral separation (mating behaviors)

Origin of new species in the absence of physical barriers to interbreeding by divergence of subpopulations that differ in habitat or other resource use or mating behavior

Theory of Island Biogeography

A body of theory, developed by MacArthur and Wilson (1963, 1967) that aims to predict the species richness of island communities as a function of island (habitat patch) size and distance from the mainland (source community), as they influence immigration and extinction probabilities; an early development of neutral theory in ecology.

Species-Energy Hypothesis

The hypothesis that species richness is higher in habitats that

receive more energy for metabolism.

Ecological Opportunity Hypothesis

The hypothesis that the diversity of a system is limited by competition for finite resources, such that a region with low species richness will show an elevated speciation rate, often producing a high number of endemic species.

Key innovations

A phenotype that allows a lineage to adopt a new way of life or occupy a new habitat that releases it from competition, and over time can result in adaptive radiation.