Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Microbial Ecology
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1
Introduction
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Overview
Environment
All of an individual organism’s surroundings, both the
inanimate components (air, soil, water) and other plants and
animals.
Abiotic - The nonliving component of the environment
Biotic - The living component of the environment
Biosphere - the portion of earth that is inhabited by
living organisms.
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Vocabulary
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Vocabulary
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Vocabulary
Species
» Groups of interbreeding natural populations that
are reproductively isolated from other such groups
Population
» Group of organisms belonging to one species that
occur within a defined area.
Community
» the populations of different species that exist in
the same defined area (groups of populations
living together as an association).
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Vocabulary
Habitat
» Inanimate or abiotic components for individual,
population, and community
Ecosystem
» Habitat plus community
Trophic level
» The level of an organism in a community based
on its feeding requirements (e.g., producers are at
the lowest trophic level)
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Vocabulary
Succession
» Continuous replacement in time of one community
by another community.
» These changes in communities are controlled by
both the dynamic nature of the abiotic and biotic
components of the ecosystem
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Vocabulary
Climax community
» The mature stable community developed after
many stages of ecological development.
» When the population reaches equilibrium and the
communities stop changing, the system has
reached a climax (activated sludge)
» some ecosystems never reach a climax
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Vocabulary
Energy Transfer
» Organisms utilize solar radiation and a pool of
chemicals as their prime source of energy
(Primary producers)
» This energy is transferred from one organism to
another (from one trophic level to another)
» This is the basis of the nutrient cycles that we will
discuss later in the semester
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Vocabulary
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Vocabulary
Biomagnification
» An important attribute of food chains is their ability to
concentrate nonmetabolizable toxic materials
» Materials that are present in extremely low concentrations in
the abiotic phase can be concentrated in a stepwise manner
until at the higher trophic levels they may upset essential
metabolic processes
» The large numbers of individuals consumed to maintain the
next trophic level magnifies the concentration of toxic
material per unit body weight
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Vocabulary
Biomagnification
» The ecological danger of biomagnification is
amplified by the concentration of toxic materials in
specific organs and tissues
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Vocabulary
Homeostasis
» The buffering capacity of an ecosystem that allows
the ecosystem to resist perturbations
Positive feedback
» when part of the output is returned to the original
input
Negative feedback
» when materials are taken out of the system
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Vocabulary
Pollutant
» a substance that occurs in the environment at
least in part as a result of human activities, and
which has a deleterious effect on living organisms
Contaminant
» a substance released by human activities, does
not have a deleterious effect
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Biotic & Abiotic Influences
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Sustainable Ecosystem: an ecosystem that
is maintained through natural processes
Sustainability: the ability to maintain
natural ecological conditions without
interruption or weakening
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Limiting Factor: any factor that restricts the
size of a population
e.g. biotic: availability of food
abiotic: access to water
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Biotic & Abiotic Influences
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Biotic & Abiotic Influences
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