Brandon Toliver

Ecology Midterm 2 Study Guide

April 7, 2019
Competition Lecture 1

 Describe all possible types of species interaction

o Competition – negative/negative
o Exploitation – negative/positive
 Parasitism – tape worm in the human digestive tract
 Brood Parasitism – birds that lay eggs in others’ nests
o Neutralism – neutral/neutral
o Mutualism – positive/positive

o Commensalism – positive/neutral
 Woodpeckers that live in tree holes
o Amensalism – negative/neutral
 Black Walnut secretes juglone, a chemical substance that kills nearby species
 Explain what a niche is
o Range of physical and chemical conditions under which that species is able to survive
and reproduce – temperature, salinity, and pH
o Realized – biotic and abiotic
o Fundamental – only abiotic factors
 Draw resource use axes and % utilized to differentiate between generalist and specialists (drawn
on the board)
 Explain the paramecium, warbler, and barnacle studies
o Barnacle Study
 Field study of competitive exclusion with removal experiments. Found that two
species of barnacles lived at different depths in the water. Distribution of the
larvae was even and overlapped over the entire zone of interest, but the adult
distribution did not overlap. Cthalamus were found towards the top and
Semibalanus were found in the middle and deep waters. FUNDAMENTAL and
REALIZED niches. Both could survive in both places, but the Semibalanus
dominated at the lower depths, since they crushed the other barnacles but dried
out if they were in shallow water
o Warbler Study
 Resource partitioning in space
 Found that coexistence of species can occur due to resource partitioning. Found
that different species of warblers spent time in different parts of a tree, which
indicated that they used different resources from the tree in their niche. Partition
available resources.
o Paramecium Study
 Grew paramecium together and apart
 Logistic population growth was observed in both species, and the carrying
capacity varied according to species and the amount of food available
 Single species responses – intraspecific competition
  Interspecific competition – between different species
 Led to Gause’s law – competitive exclusion principle
 Define competitive exclusion
o States that no two species can coexist in exactly the same ecological niche. As a result, if
two species are using exactly the same resources, one of them is expected to win the
competition and to drive the other species to extinction in that location
 Give an example of all six types of competition
o Consumption – one species inhibits another by consuming a shared resource
o Preemption – species prevents occupation by taking up all available space
 Mussels on a cliff
o Allelopathy – species releases growth inhibitors or toxins to inhibit or kill other species
 Garlic mustard
 Inhibit the germination in other plants
o Overgrowth – species grow over individuals of another species, inhibiting access to a
resource
 Grasses
o Territorial – behavior of one species that excludes another species from a specific
location that is defined as a territory
 Blue jays that prevent other birds from nesting in its territory
o Encounter – nonterritorial encounters of individuals of different species affect one or
more of the species involved
 Hyenas and vultures fighting over a corpse
 Explain some reasons why there are so many species
o Resource Partitioning
o Variation Environmental Conditions
o Competition for Multiple Resources
Competition Lecture 2

 Draw an R* graph with two resources and two competing species and determine competitive
outcomes (most of this drawn on the board)
 Explain ⍺
o Competition Coefficient – the per capita effect on the growth of one species of another
species. The competition coefficient describing the effect on species 1 of species two
would be A12. (1 being affected and 2 the affector)
 Draw Lotka-Volterra competition graphs and predict outcomes of competition (again a lot of this
was on the board)
 Use the Lokta-Volterra competition equation to determine competing species’ abundances
 Define mutualism, commensalism, and symbiosis
o Mutualism – mutually beneficial interaction between individuals of two species
o Commensalism – individuals of one species benefit; individuals of the other species do
not benefit but are not harmed
o Symbiosis – two species live in close physiological contact with each other
 Give an example of a mutualism
o Facultative – species can survive independently of the mutualism
o Obligate – species cannot survive without the mutualism
o Tropic – based on supplying food or nutrients
 o Habitat – based on shelter or protection
o Service – based on ecological services like pollination, dispersal, defense against
herbivores, predators or parasites
Predation, Parasitism, and Herbivory Lecture 3

 Give an example of each type of exploitation

o Herbivory – consumption of an autotroph, only part of plant and death may not occur
o Predation – lynx and snowshoe hare
o Parasitism – leech and humans
o Disease – yikes
 Differentiate between generalist and specialist herbivores and list ways that herbivores respond to
herbivory
o Generalist – eat multiple species of plants, switch foraging based on abundance and
quality of available plants
 Search image formation triggers preferential selection of the best available forage
o Specialist – eat particular plant species and specific parts of those species
 Benefits – improve competitive ability through specialization, adaptation
enhances digestive efficiency, and they can use plant chemical defense for their
own defense
o Plant Response
 Tolerance – regrowth, compensation (grow some back), exact compensation
(regrow exactly what was lost), and overcompensation (regrow more than what
was lost)
 Meristems below ground – some plants have their growing point below the
ground to protect them from grazing herbivores
 Defense – structural and chemical defenses
 Structural – toughness, spines, thorns, saw-like edges, and piercing leaf
hairs
 Chemical – compounds that reduce palatability (taste) and digestibility;
or toxic, or attract parasitoids of insect herbivores
o Examples are tannins, alkaloids, and cyanogenic glycosides
o Quantitative – high concentrations, dosage – dependent effects
 Difficult for herbivores to overcome
o Qualitative – defense chemicals – toxic effects at low dosages
 Metabolically less expensive to produce and store
 Easier for herbivores to evolve defenses against
o Apparent vs. Unapparent plants
o Constitutive – defense is always present
o Inducible – defense is produced in response to an attack
 Define the red queen hypothesis
o Co-evolutionary arms race leads to a dynamic equilibrium
o Co-evolution of antagonists leads to a dynamic equilibrium where continued evolutionary
change is necessary for a relatively constant outcome of interactions
o The herbivore will evolve in response to a plant and the plant will evolve in responseto
the herbivore
 Explain the different types of parasites
o Macroparasites – large, visible; include worms and arthropods
 o Microparasites – microscopic; include protozoans, bacteria, and fungi
o Endoparasites – live within their host’s body, often in association with the digestive
system
 Often have different and complex life cycles to promote increased food sources
and reduction in competition between life stages
 Predator-prey system enhances transmission
o Ectoparasites – live on the external surface of the host
o Social Parasitism – use of another organism to help complete the parasite’s life cycle
 Nest or Brood Parasitism
 Weight the pros/cons of being an ecto or endo parasite
o Ecto
 Easier dispersal, more vulnerability, harder to feed on host, easier to avoid host’s
defense system, and high exposure to external environment
o Endo
 Harder dispersal, less vulnerability to enemies, easier to feed, harder to avoid
host’s defense (immune system), and no exposure to the external environment
 List host defenses against parasites
o External Covering – first line of defense for many organisms SKIN and bark on a tree
o Immune Response – in vertebrates, a specialized system of detection/recognition and
defensive cells that fight off microparasites; fights off future and current attacks
 Phytoalexins – strong antimicrobial compounds produced in plants, increase
physical barrier for entrance of parasite and signal other plants of the attack
 Immunological memory
o Biochemical Defense – hosts may produce chemical compounds that inhibit growth and
survival of parasites
 Some plant secondary compounds have anti-microbial properties that inhibit
parasite growth
 Explain diet selection in predators
o How easy it is to find prey, amount of refugia
o Ability to capture and kill prey
o Energy and nutrients contained in the prey
 o Most predators are generalists, cue to consumption is based primarily on the abundance
of prey
 Prey behavioral responses to predators
o Chemical defenses and warning coloration
o Weapons, defensive fighting, spines, and armor
o Feigning death
o Predator swamping
o Schooling
o Escape tactics – behavioral and physical
o Camouflage and startle tactics
o Speed up vulnerable life history stages
 Define crypsis, mimicry, aposematism, and disruptive coloring
o Crypsis – camouflaged colors, shapes, and other ways of hiding from predators
o Mimicry – looking, sounding, or in other ways mimicking a species that predators avoid
 Mullerian Mimicry – different species mimic each other’s warning signals
 Batesian Mimicry – harmless species resemble harmful species
 Monarch and Viceroy
o Aposematism – warning colors, sounds, or other characteristics to alert predators that this
prey will not be tasty
 Monarch butterfly and caterpillars
o Disruptive Coloring – blurs the outlines of an animal with a strongly contrasting pattern
 Blend into the environment
Predation, Parasitism, and Herbivory Lecture 4

 Describe the lynx and hare example

o Prey and population cycles
 o As the hare population increases, so does the lynx population which leads to a lot of
predation, which leads to the decline in the population in hares, which then leads to the
lack of prey for the predators which leads to death in predators
 10 – year cycles
 Explain capture efficiency and conversion efficiency
o Capture efficiency
 Units are victims/(victim*time*predator)
 Large alpha means a single predator has a larger effect on prey growth rate
o Conversion efficiency
 Beta
 Units are predators/(predator*time*victim)
 Large Beta means the good source is more valuable
 Draw predator-prey isocline graphs, interpret and predict outcomes given parameter values and
what relaxing assumptions does

 Describe all three functional response curves

o Type 1 – no limit
 Assumes a linear increase in intake rate with food density
o Type 2 – limit is handling time
 Graph has a downward trend and looks as if it reaches an asymptote
 Limited in its capacity to process food, often modeled by a rectangular
hyperbola, assumes that the processing of food and searching for food are
mutually exclusive behaviors
o Type 3 – limit is developing a search image
 Prey refugia
 Learning time
 Prey switching due to the lack of prey and predator desire for more available
resources
 Design an experiment to study competition, exploitation or mutualism
o Predator removal study
o Food addition – directly add food to increase quantity
o Fertilization – add NPK fertilizer to increase plant quantity and quality
 o Control – no manipulations

Communities Lecture 5

 Define a community
o Ecological community is two or more species living in the same place at the same time
o The interactions result in synergies that make communities more than just a sum of their
component parts
o Communities are defined by subset of the species within a uniform area, while
ecosystems include the entire biological and physical features
 Give examples of disturbances
o Disturbance is a discrete event that kills individuals or removes biomass and changes
resources, substrate, or the physical environment
 Stress – abiotic factor or condition that reduces the growth or reproduction of
individuals
o Wind – low frequency and high impact – blows trees over
o Floods
o Drought
o Land Use Change
o Air Pollution
o Geomorphic factors – glaciers, avalanches, and volcanos
o Fire
 Differentiate between primary and secondary succession, how to study them, and give an
example
o Succession – temporal change in community structure at a given location, response to
disturbance over longer time scales
 Progressive, directional change in communities, leading to a stable community
that is characteristic of the region
o Primary – on newly created or exposed substrates (sand dunes, lava flows, ash beds, bare
rock)
 Little or no prior modification by biota
 No seed bank or soil development
o Secondary – on areas previously colonized, but disturbed
 Fire, flood, hurricane, clearcutting, and plowing
  Effect of previous biota persist
o How to study?
 Study over actual time scales – Mount Saint Helens
 Space for Time Substitutions
 Examine different areas that have undergone succession for different
amounts of time
 Michigan Dunes
 List what controls succession and explain the three models
o Facilitation (mutualism/commensalism) – increasing soil resource availability, lessening
the climatic extremes
o Inhibition – competition, herbivory, and allelopathy
o Tolerance – ability to survive the disturbance
 Climatic adaptations – ability to survive the post-disturbance environment
o Life-history traits – reproductive output, longevity, reproductive maturity
o Chance events – in what season did the disturbance occur, what direction did the wind
blow?
o THREE MODELS OF SUCCESSION
 Facilitation – one species or group of species invading an area is replaced by
successive species or groups. By modifying the environment, one group
facilitates the establishment of the next group in the sequence. Important in
primary succession
 Tolerance – all species invade at about the same time. Environmental changes
and resources become limiting. Late successional species persist due to greater
tolerance of low resources. Variable initial species composition leads to different
patterns of succession
 Inhibition – all species invade at about the same time. Once a space is occupied
by any species, new species are inhibited from establishing (competitive
exclusion). Species replacement occurs when existing individuals due. Long
lived species eventually dominate, life-history is important.
 Explain IDH
o Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis – at low levels of disturbance, competition
regulates/limits diversity; at intermediate levels of disturbance there is the greatest
species diversity; at high disturbance levels, many species cannot survive
 Explain alternative stable states
o Predicts that ecosystems or communities can stably exist under multiple states
o Three stages: stability, change, and hysteresis
o Stability occurs when the community resides in a valley
o If a change in some factor occurs, the community may move into another valley of
stability
o Reversal of the change may not result in a return to the original conditions if the original
shift was sufficiently large
 Differentiate between Clements and Gleason’s views of communities
o Clements
 Organismic Concept of Communities – these associations are like organisms;
each species represents an integrated part of the whole
 Development of the community through time (succession) is like
development of an organism
  The community has evolved as an integrated whole; the species interactions hold
it together
 The community is an integrated unit
o Gleason
 Individualistic (continuum) Concepts of Communities – the relationships among
species within a community are a result of similarities in their requirements and
tolerances, not strong interactions or common evolutionary history
 Changes in species abundance occur so gradually that it is not practical
to divide vegetation types into associations
 Species distributions along environmental gradients are the result of the
independent responses of individual species and do not form clusters
 Transitions are gradual and difficult to identify
 A community is a group of species coexisting under a particular set of
environmental conditions
 Explain resistance and resilience
o Resistance – the ease or difficulty of changing the system; how resistant it is to being
changed
 Not allowing itself to be changed, minimally impacted by a disturbance
o Resilience – the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while
undergoing change so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and
feedbacks
 Recover quickly after a disturbance
 They are impacted by the disturbances but this is the ability to recover back to
the initial state
Community Dynamics Lecture 6

 Draw a food web and identify the primary, secondary, and tertiary consumers
o Representation of feeding relationships within a community
o Arrows go from prey to predator
 Understand what explains food chain length
o Productivity – more productive systems will have longer food chains (ecosystem size
does not matter)
o Ecosystem Size – larger ecosystems will have longer food chains (production does not
matter)
o Production Space – both productivity and ecosystem size matter
 Explain top-down versus bottom-up and the HSS hypothesis
o Top-down – predator driven
o Bottom-up – resource driven
o HSS – alternating tow-down and bottom-up control in each trophic level
 The world is green so food availability is not limiting herbivore populations
 If herbivores are not limited by food (resources) or weather, they are likely to be
limited by predation (herbivores are regulated by top-down control)
 If predators limit herbivore abundance, then plants are able to increase until they
compete for resources (plants are resource-limited = bottom-up control)
 Define and draw trophic cascade, trophic facilitation, keystone species, and apparent competition
o Trophic Cascade – powerful indirect interactions that can control entire ecosystems,
occurring when a trophic level in a food web is suppressed
  Based on a combination of direct and indirect effects
 Direct Interactions – occur between two species
 Indirect Interactions – occur when the relationship between two species
is mediated by a third species
o Trophic Facilitation – a consumer is indirectly facilitated by a positive interaction
between its prey and another species
o Keystone Species – a species that has a disproportionate influence on community
dynamics given its low abundance, typically predators
 The role of a keystone species may be to create or modify habitats, or influence
interactions among other species
 The removal of a keystone species can lead to changes in community structure
and loss of biodiversity
o Apparent Competition – two species that do not compete directly for resources affect
each other indirectly because they share the same predator
 Contrast ecosystem resistance versus resilience and give an example
o Resistance – the ability to not be changed by a disturbance
o Resilience – the ability to recover after a disturbance to the previous state
o Example
 Does the legacy of drought affect future resistance and resilience to drought?
 Expectation – previously droughted plots will be more resistant and
resilient to a second drought
 Previously droughted grassland was less resistant to the second drought
 Lack of a legacy effect on resilience
Biogeography Lecture 7

 Describe global biodiversity patterns

o Generally, there are more species in the tropics that near the poles
o Mammals are unevenly distributed across the globe
 Explain genetic, species, functional and habitat diversity
o Genetic Diversity – between one’s own population
o Species Diversity – number and abundance of different species
 Species number and relative abundance
 Physical structure
 Interactions among species
 Species Richness – total number of species in a community
 How many and what kind of species are present
 Phylogenetic Diversity – how are species in a community related to one another
evolutionarily?
 Composition – the number of individuals of each species in a community can be
counted or estimated
 More meaningful measure is relative abundance, the proportion of each
species relative to the total number of individuals of all species living in
the community
o Functional Diversity – different ecological roles
 Different things that different organisms do in the ecosystem or community
o Habitat (ecosystem) Diversity – environmental heterogeneity
  Range of habitats in a region
 Draw at RAC and explain richness and evenness
o Rank Abundance Curves – provides information on two features of community structures
o Species Richness – the number of species in the community
o Species Evenness – how equally individuals are distributed among the species

 Calculate Shannon’s diversity

o Widely used index of diversity that considers species richness and evenness
o Species diversity value = (the negative sum of…) * [(the proportion of total individuals *
the natural logarithm of pi)]

 Define dominance
o When a single or few species predominate within a community, those species are called
dominants
o Dominant species are most often defined separately for different taxonomic or functional
groups within the community
o Abundance alone is not always a sufficient measure of dominance
 Might be more informative to define dominance using a combination of
characteristics and include both number and size of individuals
 Define alpha, beta, and gamma diversity
o Alpha – local or “within” habitat diversity
 Species richness within small, relatively uniform habitats
 Richness, evenness, and Shannon’s or Simpson’s diversity
 Amount of species in a single location/community
o Beta – “between habitat” diversity
 Diversity due to changed in species from one ‘habitat’ to the next
  Alpha and Gamma
 Dissimilarity metrics
 Difference between two habitats and the amount of species in each
o Gamma – “regional” diversity
 Diversity over relatively large geographic areas; a function of both alpha and beta
diversity
 Total number of species over an entire geographic region
 Describe community similarity and ordinations
o Similarity – beta diversity
 Sorenson’s Index – does not consider abundance

o Ordinations – statistical technique in which data from a large number of sites or

populations are represented as points in a two- or three-dimensional coordinate frame
 Create similarity matric of all plots to one another
 Describe observed patterns of biodiversity change
o Human activities are changing biogeochemical cycles and climate
o Four ways that a community can change
 Change in evenness – change in the relative abundances of the present species
 Re-ordering of species – change in the relative abundance of the present species
in a way that changes the relative abundance positions
 Loss or Gain of species – adding or removing species from the community
 Change in richness – change in the number of species in the community
 Draw a species area curve and explain it
o Species Accumulation (Area) Curves – species richness plotted as a function of the total
number of individuals sampled
o More samples = more individuals
 Increasing the probability that additional species will be found
o At some point, the curve will reach a threshold at which no new species are added despite
additional sampling
o Can be used to indicate how much sampling is “enough” to characterize a given
community
Biogeography – Global Patterns of Diversity Lecture 8

 Understand hypotheses for why we observe a latitudinal gradient

o Regional Energy Availability – regions with more solar energy will have more
photosynthesis and more biologically available energy
 PET
o Water Availability – all organisms require some water to survive, water availability will
limit species richness
 Correlated to water availability
o Net Primary Productivity – places where NPP is high should support more individuals
and thus more species
 Correlate with NPP
o Habitat Diversity – animal species richness is determined by the number of distinct
niches on the landscape, which is largely driven by the richness of the plant community
 Species richness will be correlated with tree species richness TREES
 Describe scales of diversity
o Global scale – global patterns of species diversity and composition are influenced by
geographical area and isolation, evolutionary history, and global climate
o Regional scale – species are determined by broad environmental constraints and by
dispersal limitations
o Landscape scale – species composition and diversity within a region vary depending on
landscape heterogeneity (topographic and environmental features that affect local
conditions and species distributions)
o Local scale – species’ physiology and interactions with other species affect community
composition and diversity
 Detail the three filters in community assembly
o Regional Species Pools and Dispersal Ability
 Provides an upper limit on the number and types of species that can be present in
a community, which is further modified by dispersal abilities
 o Local Abiotic Conditions (habitat stability)
 A species may be able to get to a community but be unable to tolerate the abiotic
conditions
 Changes in environmental conditions can alter community composition
o Species Interactions (both positive and negative)
 Coexistence with other species is also required for community membership
 Other species may be required for growth, reproduction, or survival (facilitation
via commensalism or mutualism)
 Species may be excluded by competition, predation, parasitism, or disease
 Explain how regional and local diversity are related to one-another
o The relative influence of regional and local processes can be determined by plotting local
versus regional species richness
o Marine invertebrate communities may be limited by regional processes, we know this
because the slope on the graph does not reach an asymptote
o Biogeography and Spatial Scale
 Local species richness was always proportionally lower than regional species
richness and that it never leveled off
 Regional species richness explained 75% of the variation in the local species
richness
 Unexplained variation could still be due to the effects of local processes
 Draw an island biodiversity curve and how to determine the # of species
 Explain corridors and SLOSS
o Corridors – dispersal corridors, area of habitat connecting wildlife population separated
by human activities or structures
 Connecting patches gave rise to greater diversity and these trends strengthen over
time
o Single large or several small (SLOSS)
 Extinction rate is lower in larger areas, larger habitat may be preserved with more
small species??
 Single large or several small reserves were a superior means of conserving
biodiversity in a fragmented habitat
 Design a nature preserve to maximize biodiversity
o Several smaller habitats with corridors, fam