Chapter 51: Animal Behavior

51.1: Discrete sensory inputs can stimulate both simple and complex behaviors

• Behavior: Action carried out by muscles under control of the nervous system

• Behavioral Ecology: Ultimate causation—why a behavior occurs in the context of natural selection

  • ex. How does the behavior aid survival and reproduction?

  • ex. What is the behavior’s evolutionary history?

• Proximate causation is how a behavior occurs or is modified

  • ex. What stimulus triggers the behavior and how do the various body systems bring it about?

  • ex. How does the animal’s experience during growth and development influence response to the stimulus?

• Fixed Action Pattern: Sequence of unlearned acts directly linked to a simple stimulus

• Sign Stimulus: Trigger for fixed action pattern

• Migration: Regular, long distance change in location

• Signal: Stimulus transmitted from one organism to another

• Communication: Transmission and reception of signals between animals

• Pheromones: Chemical substances animals use who communicate through odors or tastes

51.2: Learning establishes specific links between experience and behavior

• Innate Behavior: Behavior developmentally fixed

• Learning: Way an animal’s environment can influence its behavior

• Imprinting: Establishment of long lasting behavioral response to a particular individual or object

• Sensitive Period: Only time period imprinting can take place

• Spatial Learning: Establishment of a memory that reflects the environment’s spatial structure

• Cognitive Map: Formulated during spatial learning, a representation in an animal’s nervous system of the spatial relationships between objects in its surroundings

• Associative Learning: Ability to associate one environmental feature with another

• Cognition: Process of knowing that involves awareness, reasoning, recollection, and judgement

• Problem Solving: Cognitive activity of devising a method to proceed from one condition to another in the face of real/apparent obstacles

• Social Learning: Learning through observing behavior of other individuals

• Culture: System of information transfer through social learning of teaching, influences behavior of individuals in a population

51.3: Selection for individual survival and reproductive success can explain diverse behaviors

• Foraging: Food otaining behavior

• Optimal Foraging Model: Says that natural selection should favor a foraging behavior that minimizes costs of foraging and maximizes benefits

• Monogamous: One male and one female

• Polygamous: Individual of one sex mating with several of another

• Mate Choice Copying: Behavior in which individuals in a population copy mate choice of others

• Game Theory: Evaluates alternative strategies in situations where outcome depends on strategies of all individuals involved

51.4: Genetic analyses and the concept of the inclusive fitness provide a basis for studying the evolution of behavior

• Altruism: Selflessness, behavior that reduces an animal’s individual fitness but increases fitness of other individuals in the population

• Inclusive Fitness: Total effect an individual has on proliferating its genes by producing its own offspring and providing aid that enales other close relatives to produce offspring

• Coefficient of Relatedness: Fraction of genes that on average are shared

• Hamilton’s Rule: Natural selection favors altruism when benefit to recipient multiplied by the coefficient exceeds cost to the altruist (rB > C)

• Kin Selection: Natural selection that favors altruism by enhancing reproductive success of relatives

• Reciprocal Altruism: Exchange aid

Chapter 52: An Introduction to Ecology ang the Biosphere

52.1: Earth’s climate caries by latitude and season is changing rapidly

• Climate: Long term prevailing weather conditions in a given area

• Variations in sunlight intensity throughout the year

  • March Equinox: Equator faces sun directly, all regions have 12 hours of daylight, 12 hours of darkness (March)

  • June Solstice: Northern hemisphere tilted towards sun, longest day and shortest night, Southern shortest day and longest night

  • September Equinox: Equator faces sun directly, all regions have 12 hours daylight, 12 hours of darkness (September)

  • December Solstice: Southern hemisphere tilted towards sun, longest day and shortest night, Northern shortest day and longest night

• Microclimate: Very fine, localized patterns in climatic conditions

• Climate Change: Directional change to global climate that lasts three decades or more

52.2: The distribution of terrestrial biomes is controlled by climate and disturbance

• Biomes: Major life zones characterized by vegetation type (in terrestial biomes) or physical environment (in aquatic biomes)

• Climograph: Plot of annual mean temperature and precipitation in a particular region

• Ecotone: Area of intergradation between two biomes

• Canopy: Upper layer of forest

  • Top to bottom is canopy → low tree layer → ground layer of herbaceous plants → forest floor → root layer

• Disturbance: Event that changes a community by removing organisms from it and altering resource availability

• Many different biomes

  • Tropical Forest: Vertically layered with high competition for light, at equitorial and subequitorial regions

    • Tropical Rain Forest: Constant rainfall

    • Tropical Dry Forest: Precipitation is seasonal

  • Desert: Low, widely scattered vegetation, low precipitation, at bands near 30 degrees north and south latitude

  • Savanna: Warm year round, scattered thorny trees, at equitorial and subequitorial regions

  • Chaparral: Dominated by shrubs and small trees, + many kinds of grasses and herbs, with high plant diversity. Midlatitude coastal regions

  • Temperate Grassland: Dominated by grasses and forbs, highly seasonal, like ¼ up or down

  • Northern Coniferous Forest/Taiga: Largest terrestial biome on earth, a band across northern North America and Eurasia

  • Temperate Broadleaf Forest: Two distinct vertical layers, mainly at midlatitudes in Northern Hemisphere

  • Tundra: High winds and low temperatures

52.3: Aquatic biomes are diverse and dynamic systems that cover most of Earth

• Pelagic Zone: Photic and aphotic zones

  • Photic Zone: Upper region with sufficient light for photosynthesis

  • Aphotic Zone: Lower region where little light penetrates

    • Abyssal Zone: Deep in the aphotic zone

• Benthic Zone: Bottom of all aquatic zones

  • Benthos: Sand and inorganic sediments that occupy the benthic zone

    • Detrius: Dead organic matter, major source of food for benthic species

• Thermocline: Narrow layer of abrupt temperature change, seperates warm upper layer from cold deeper water

• Turnover: Sends oxygenated water from lake’s surface to bottom and brings nutrient rich water from bottom to surface

52.4: Interactions between organisms and the environment limit the distribution of species

• Oligotrophic Lakes: Nutrient poor, oxygen rich

• Eutrophic Lakes: Nutrient rich, oxygen poor in the deepest zone in summer, and if covered with ice in winter

  • High amount decomposable organic matter

    • High rates of decomposition in deeper layers cause periodic oxygen depletion

• Littoral Zone: Shallow well lit waters close to shore

• Limnetic Zone: Further from shore where water is too deep for rooted plants, has lots of phytoplankton (including cyanobacteria)

• Wetland: Habitat inundated by water at least some of the time, supports plants adapted to water saturated soil

• Estuary: Transition area between river and sea

• Interdial Zone: Periodically submerged and exposed by tides, twice daily

• Oceanic Pelagic Zone: Vast realm of open blue water constantly mixed by wind driven oceanic currents

• Coral Reefs: Formed from calcium carbonate skeletons of corals

• Marine Benthic Zone: Seafloor below surface waters of coastal (neritic) zone and pelagic zone

• Hydrothermic Vents: Home to unique assemblages of organisms

• Dispersal: Movement of individuals or gametes away from area of origin or from centers with high population density

52.5: Ecological change and evolution affect one another over long and short periods of time

• Ecological interactions can cause evolutionary change, as when predators cause natural selection in a prey population

• Likewise, an evolutionary change can alter the outcome of ecological interactions

Chapter 53: Population Ecology

53.1: Biotic and abiotic factors affect population density, dispersion, and demographics

• Population: Group of individuals of single pecies living in the same general area

• Density: Number of individuals per unit area/volume

• Dispersion: Pattern of spacing among individuals within the boundaries of the population

  • Clumped, most common, individuals aggregated in patches

  • Uniform, evenly spaced, from direct interactions between individuals in the population

  • Random, absence of strong attractions or repulsions among individuals

• Mark Recapture Method: Method to estimate size of wildlife populations

  • Capture a random sample of individuals, and mark them, then release them. A few days or weeks later they will capture or sample a second set of individuals and see the proportion of marked to unmarked

• Demography: Study of key characteristics of populations and how they change over time

• Life Table: Summarizes survival and reproductive rates of individuals in specific age groups within a population

• Cohort: Group of individuals of the same age

• Survivorship Curve: Plot of proportion or numbers in a cohort still alive at each age

  • Type I is flat at the start, then drops steeply

  • Type 2 is linear and constantly goes down

  • Type 3 drops sharply at the start and then flattens out

• Immigration: Influx of new individuals from other areas

• Emigration: Movement of individuals out of a population and into other areas

• Territoriality: Defense of a bounded physical space against enroachment by other individuals

53.2: The exponential model describes population growth in an idealized, unlimited environment

• Per Capita Growth Rate: Birth rate minus death rate, ignoring immigration and emigration

  • Using per capita birth and death rates allows for a simpler equation in calculating the change in population than raw numbers would

• Exponential Population Growth: Population with ideal conditions (abundant food and can reproduce at physiological capacity) experiences size increase proportional at each instant of time

  • dN/dt = rN

    • r is intrinsic rate of increase, a constant

      • Intrisic Rate of Increase: Per capita rate at which a population growing exponentially increases in size at each instant of time

    • N is current population size

    • dN/dt is the rate which the population is increasing in size at each moment in time

53.3: The logistic model describes how a population grows more slowly as it nears its carrying capacity

• Carrying Capacity: Maximum population size that a particular environment can sustain, K

• Logistic Population Growth Model: Per capita rate of population growth approaches 0 as population size gets close to K

53.4: Life history traits are products of natural selection

• Life History: Traits that affect an organism’s schedule of reproduction and survival

• Semelparity: Organisms that only reproduce once in their lifetime

• Iteoparity: Organisms that produce many times in their lifetime

• K-Selection: Selection for traits advantageous at high densities

• R-Selection: Selection for traits advantageous in low densities

53.5: Density dependent factors regulate population growth

• Density Independent: Birth or death rate that doesn’t change with population density

  • Abiotic factors (space, temperature, natural disaster, etc)

• Density Dependent: Death rate that increases with population density or birth rate that decreases with rising density

  • Biotic factors (competition, increased predation, disease, and intrinsic physiological factors, etc)

• Intersection between density independent and density dependent birth rate is equilibrium density

• Population Dynamics: Population fluctuations from year to year or place to place

• Metapopulation: Links of local populations

53.6: The human population is no longer growing exponentially but is still increasing extremely rapidly

• Demographic Transition: Movement from high birth and death rates towards low birth and death rates

• Age Structure: Relative number of individuals of each age in the population

• Ecological Footprint: Aggregate land and water area needed to produce all resources a person or group of people consume and absorb

Chapter 54: Community Ecology

54.1: Interactions between species can help, harm, or have no effect on the individuals involved

• Community Structure: Number of species found in a community, species present, and relative abundance of these species

• Interspecific Interactions: Relationships between an organism and interactions with individuals of other species in the community

• Competition: -/- interaction when inidividuals of different species each use a resource that limits survival and reproduction of both individuals

  • Competitive Exclusion: (Even slight) reproductive advantage leads to local elimintation of the inferior competitor

  • Ecological Niche: Specific set of biotic and abiotic resources an organism uses in its environment

    • Two species can’t coexist permanently in a community if their niches are identical, but with 1+ significant differences they can

  • Resource Partitioning: Differentiation of niches that lets similar species coexist in a community

  • Character Displacement: Tendency for characteristics to diverge more in sympatric than allopatric populations

• Exploitation: +/- interactions where individuals of one species benefit by harming another species

• Predation: +/- interaction, predator, kills and eats the prey

  • Aposematic Coloration: Warning coloration, bright colors often in animals with effective chemical defenses

  • Cryptic Coloration: Camouflage

  • Batesian Mimicry: Palatable or harmless species mimics unpalatable or harmful species

  • Mullerian Mimicry: 2+ unpalatable species resemble each other

• Herbivory: +/- interaction, herbivore eats parts of plants or alga, harming it but not usually killing it

• Parasitism: +/- interaction, parasite, derives nourishment from host, which is harmed in the process

  • Endoparasites: Parasites that live within the body of their host

  • Ectoparasites: Parasites that feed on external surface of a host

• Positive Interactions: +/+ or +/0 interaction, 1+ individual benefits and neither is harmed

• Commensalism: +/0 interaction, benefits one species, neither helps nor harms other species

• Amensalism: -/0 interaction, one species is inhabited or destroyed, other is unaffected

54.2: Diversity and trophic structure characterize biological communities

• Species Diversity: Variety of different kinds of organisms that make up the community. Two components

  • Species Richness: Number of different species in the community

  • Relative Abundance: Proportion each species represents all individuals in the community

• Biomass: Total mass of all organisms in a habitat

• High diversity species are more resistant to introduced species, more productive, and able to better withstand and recover from environmental stresses

• Trophic Structure: Feeding relationships between organisms

• Food Chain: Transfer of chemical energy from its sourch in plants and autotrophs through herbivores to carnivores

• Trophic Level: Position an organism occupies in a food chain

• Food Web: Links together a group of food chains

• Energetic Hypothesis: Length of a food chain is limited by inefficiency of energy transfer along it

  • ~10% energy stored in organic matter of each trophic level is converted to organic matter in the next trophic level

• Foundation Species: Strong effects on community as a result of large size or high abundance

• Keystone Species: Not usually abundant in a community, exert strong control through pivotal ecological roles

• Ecosystem Engineers: Species that create or dramatically alter their environment

• Bottom Up Control: Abundance of organisms at each trophic level is limited by nutrient supply or food availability

• Top Down Control: Each trophic level is controlled by abundance of consumers at higher trophic levels

54.3: Disturbance influences species diversity and composition

• Disturbance: Event that changes a community by removing organisms from it or altering resource availability

• Nonequilibrium Model: Plant populations and livestock numbers are usually not in equilibrium

• Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis: Moderate levels of disturbance foster greater species diversity than high or low levels of disturbance

  • High levels reduce diversity by creating environmental stresses that surpass tolerances of species or disturbing too often

  • Low levels allow competitively dominant specis to exclude less competitive ones

• Ecological Succession: Variety of species in disturbed area are gradually replaced by other species, which are also replaced

  • Primary Succession: When ecological succession begins in a virtually lifeless area

  • Secondary Succession: Disturbance has removed most but not all of the organisms in a community

54.4: Biogeographic factors affect community diversity

• Species richness declines from tropics to poles

  • Greater age of tropical environments may also contribute to greater species richness

• Evapotranspiration: Evaporation of water from soil and plants

• Species Area Curve: The larger the geographic area of a community, the more species it has

54.5: Pathogens alter community structure locally and globally

• Pathogens: Disease causing microorganisms, viruses, viroids, or prions

• Zoonotic Pathogens: Pathogens transferred from animals to humans

  • Vector: Infected animal or intermediate species that infects something

Chapter 55: Ecosystems and Restoration Ecology

55.1: Physical laws govern energy flow and chemical cycling in ecosystems

• Ecosystem: Sum of all organisms living in a given area and the abiotic factors they interact with. Two key emergent propertiesm energy flow and chemical cycling

  • Energy enters most ecosystems as sunlight, is converted to chemical energy by autotrophs, passed to heterotrophs, and dissapated as heat

  • Chemical cycling, elements such as carbon and nitrogen are passed between biotic and abiotic components of the ecosystem

• Law of Conservation of Mass: Matter can’t be created or destroyed

• Primary Producers: Autotrophs, trophic level that supports all others

• Primary Consumers: Herbivores

• Secondary Consumers: Carnivores that eat herbivores

• Tertiary Consumers: Carnivores that eat other carnivores

• Decomposers: Consumers that get energy from detrius

  • Detrius: Nonliving organic material

    • ex. remains of dead organisms, feces, fallen leaves

55.2: Energy and other limiting factors control primary production in ecosystems

• Primary Production: Amount of light energy converted to chemical energy in the form of organic compounds by autotrophs

• Gross Primary Production (GPP): Amount of light converted to chemical energy of organic molecules per unit time

• Net Primary Production (NPP): Gross primary production minus energy used by autotrophs for cellular respiration

  • Usually ~1/2 of GPP

• Net Ecosystem Production (NEP): Measure of biomass accumulation by producers and consumers during a given period of time. Gross primary production minus total respiration of all organisms in the system

• Limiting Nutrient: Element that must be added for production to increase

• Eutrophication: Nutrient status of an acosystem goes from nutrient poor to nutrient rich

55.3: Energy transfer between trophic levels is typically only 10% efficient

• Secondary Production: Amount of chemical energy in consumers’ food converted to their own new biomass during a given period

• Production Efficiency: % energy stored in assimilated food used for growth and reproduction, not respiration

  • Determines amount of energy available to each trophic level

• Trophic Efficiency: % production transferred from one trophic level to the next, usually 10%

55.4: Biological and geochemical processes cycle nutrients and water in ecosystems

• Biogeochemical Cycles: Nutrient cycles that involve both biotic and abiotic components. Two scales, global and local

• Water moves in a global cycle driven by solar energy

• Carbon cycle mostly reflects the reciprocal processes of photosynthesis and cellular respiration

• Nitrogen enters ecosystems through atmospheric deposition and nitrogen fixation by prokarotes

• Proportion of a nutrient in a particular form varies among ecosystems

• Nutrient cycling is strongly regulated by vegetation

55.5: Restoration ecologists return degraded ecosystems to a more natural state

• Bioremediation: Using organisms to detoxify polluted exosystems (usually fungi, prokaryotes, or plants)

• Biological Augmentation: Uses organisms to add essential materials to a degraded exosystem

Chapter 56: Conservation Biology and Glocal Change

56.1: Human activities threaten Earth’s biodiversity

• Conservation Biology: Discipline integrating ecology, phisiology, molecular biology, genetics, and evolutionary biology to conserve diversity of life on Earth

• Endangered Species: A species in danger of extenction

  • Threatened Species: Likely to become endangered in the near future

• Ecosystem Services: Encompass all processes through which natural ecosystems help sustain human life

• Introduced/Invasive Species: Species moved by humans from native locations to new geographic locations

56.2: Population conservation focuses on population size, genetic diversity, and critical habitat

• Extinction Vortex: Small population is vulnerable (inbreeding and genetic drift) which leads to a smaller and smaller population

• Minimum Viable Population (MVP): Minimum population size that a species is able to sustain its numbers

• Effective Population Size: Based on breeding potential of a population, estimate of the MVP

  

  • N_e is the effective population size

  • N_f is the number of females that successfully breed

  • N_m is the number of males that successfully breed

56.3: Landscape and regional conservation help sustain biodiversity

• Ecosystems which arise from human alterations have reduced biodiversity

• Movement Corridor: Narrow strip or series of small clumps of habitat connecting otherwise isolated patches from fragmentation

• Biodiversity Hot Spot: Relatively small area with numerous endemic (species found nowhere else in the world), endangered, and threatened species

• Zoned Reserve: Extensive region including areas relatively undisturbed by humans surrounded by areas changed by humans for money

• Urban Ecology: Field that examines organisms and their environment in urban settings

56.4: Earth is changing rapidly as a result of human actions

• Critical Load: Amount of added nutrient that can be absorbed by plants without damaging ecosystem integrity

  • When nutrient level in an ecosystem exceeds this then it can cause unsafe contamination

• Biological Magnification: Toxins are more concentrated in successive trophic levels of a food web

• Microplastics: Plastic particles less than 5 mm in size, which lasts in the environment for hundreds to thousands of years

• Climate Change: Directional change to global climate that lasts for 3+ decades

  • Greenhouse Effect: CO₂, methane, water vapor, and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere intercept and absorb infared radiation that the Earth emits and radiates it back to Earth

56.5: Sustainable development can improve human lives while conserving biodiversity

• Sustainable Development: Economic development that meets needs of people without limiting the ability of future generations to meet theirs