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Theoretical ecology is the scientific discipline devoted to the study of ecological systems using theoretical methods such as simple conceptual models, mathematical models, computational simulations, and advanced data analysis. Effective models improve understanding of the natural world by revealing how the dynamics of species populations are often based on fundamental biological conditions and processes. Further, the field aims to unify a diverse range of empirical observations by assuming that common, mechanistic processes generate observable phenomena across species and ecological environments. Based on biologically realistic assumptions, theoretical ecologists are able to uncover novel, non-intuitive insights about natural processes. Theoretical results are often verified by empirical and observational studies, revealing the power of theoretical methods in both predicting and understanding the noisy, diverse biological world.
A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthparts adapted to rasping or grinding. Horses and other herbivores have wide flat teeth that are adapted to grinding grass, tree bark, and other tough plant material.
This glossary of ecology is a list of definitions of terms and concepts in ecology and related fields. For more specific definitions from other glossaries related to ecology, see Glossary of biology, Glossary of evolutionary biology, and Glossary of environmental science.
The viviparous lizard, or common lizard, is a Eurasian lizard. It lives farther north than any other species of non-marine reptile, and is named for the fact that it is viviparous, meaning it gives birth to live young. Both "Zootoca" and "vivipara" mean "live birth," in Greek and Latin respectively. It was called Lacerta vivipara until the genus Lacerta was split into nine genera in 2007 by Arnold, Arribas & Carranza.
Population ecology is a sub-field of ecology that deals with the dynamics of species populations and how these populations interact with the environment, such as birth and death rates, and by immigration and emigration.
An apex predator, also known as a top predator, is a predator at the top of a food chain, without natural predators of its own.
In ecology, r/K selection theory relates to the selection of combinations of traits in an organism that trade off between quantity and quality of offspring. The focus on either an increased quantity of offspring at the expense of individual parental investment of r-strategists, or on a reduced quantity of offspring with a corresponding increased parental investment of K-strategists, varies widely, seemingly to promote success in particular environments. The concepts of quantity or quality offspring are sometimes referred to as "cheap" or "expensive", a comment on the expendable nature of the offspring and parental commitment made. The stability of the environment can predict if many expendable offspring are made or if fewer offspring of higher quality would lead to higher reproductive success. An unstable environment would encourage the parent to make many offspring, because the likelihood of all of them surviving to adulthood is slim. In contrast, more stable environments allow parents to confidently invest in one offspring because they are more likely to survive to adulthood.
Intraspecific competition is an interaction in population ecology, whereby members of the same species compete for limited resources. This leads to a reduction in fitness for both individuals, but the more fit individual survives and is able to reproduce. By contrast, interspecific competition occurs when members of different species compete for a shared resource. Members of the same species have rather similar requirements for resources, whereas different species have a smaller contested resource overlap, resulting in intraspecific competition generally being a stronger force than interspecific competition.
Competition is an interaction between organisms or species in which both require a resource that is in limited supply. Competition lowers the fitness of both organisms involved since the presence of one of the organisms always reduces the amount of the resource available to the other.
Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, both in ancient and in recent times.
Interspecific competition, in ecology, is a form of competition in which individuals of different species compete for the same resources in an ecosystem. This can be contrasted with mutualism, a type of symbiosis. Competition between members of the same species is called intraspecific competition.
In ecology, a community is a group or association of populations of two or more different species occupying the same geographical area at the same time, also known as a biocoenosis, biotic community, biological community, ecological community, or life assemblage. The term community has a variety of uses. In its simplest form it refers to groups of organisms in a specific place or time, for example, "the fish community of Lake Ontario before industrialization".
The storage effect is a coexistence mechanism proposed in the ecological theory of species coexistence, which tries to explain how such a wide variety of similar species are able to coexist within the same ecological community or guild. The storage effect was originally proposed in the 1980s to explain coexistence in diverse communities of coral reef fish, however it has since been generalized to cover a variety of ecological communities. The theory proposes one way for multiple species to coexist: in a changing environment, no species can be the best under all conditions. Instead, each species must have a unique response to varying environmental conditions, and a way of buffering against the effects of bad years. The storage effect gets its name because each population "stores" the gains in good years or microhabitats (patches) to help it survive population losses in bad years or patches. One strength of this theory is that, unlike most coexistence mechanisms, the storage effect can be measured and quantified, with units of per-capita growth rate.
Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species.
Overpopulation or overabundance is a phenomenon in which a species' population becomes larger than the carrying capacity of its environment. This may be caused by increased birth rates, lowered mortality rates, reduced predation or large scale migration, leading to an overabundant species and other animals in the ecosystem competing for food, space, and resources. The animals in an overpopulated area may then be forced to migrate to areas not typically inhabited, or die off without access to necessary resources.
The paradox of the pesticides is a paradox that states that applying pesticide to a pest may end up increasing the abundance of the pest if the pesticide upsets natural predator–prey dynamics in the ecosystem.
The Janzen–Connell hypothesis is a widely accepted explanation for the maintenance of tree species biodiversity in tropical rainforests. It was published independently in the early 1970s by Daniel Janzen and Joseph Connell. According to their hypothesis, host-specific herbivores, pathogens, or other natural enemies make the areas near a parent tree inhospitable for the survival of seedlings. These natural enemies are referred to as 'distance-responsive predators' if they kill seeds or seedlings near the parent tree, or 'density-dependent predators' if they kill seeds or seedlings where they are most abundant. Such predators can prevent any one species from dominating the landscape, because if that species is too common, there will be few safe places for its seedlings to survive. However, because the predators are host-specific, they will not harm other tree species. As a result, if a species becomes very rare, then more predator-free areas will become available, giving that species' seedlings a competitive advantage. This negative feedback allows the tree species to coexist, and can be classified as a stabilizing mechanism.
The match/mismatch hypothesis (MMH) was first described by David Cushing (1969). The MMH "seeks to explain recruitment variation in a population by means of the relation between its phenology—the timing of seasonal activities such as flowering or breeding - and that of species at the immediate lower level", see Durant et al. (2007). In essence it is a measure of reproductive success due to how well the phenology of the prey overlaps with key periods of predator demand. In ecological studies, a few examples include timing and extent of overlap of avian reproduction with the annual phenology of their primary prey items, the interactions between herring fish reproduction and copepod spawning, the relationship between winter moth egg hatching and the timing of oak bud bursting, and the relationship between herbivore reproductive phenology with pulses in nutrients in vegetation
Coexistence theory is a framework to understand how competitor traits can maintain species diversity and stave-off competitive exclusion even among similar species living in ecologically similar environments. Coexistence theory explains the stable coexistence of species as an interaction between two opposing forces: fitness differences between species, which should drive the best-adapted species to exclude others within a particular ecological niche, and stabilizing mechanisms, which maintains diversity via niche differentiation. For many species to be stabilized in a community, population growth must be negative density-dependent, i.e. all participating species have a tendency to increase in density as their populations decline. In such communities, any species that becomes rare will experience positive growth, pushing its population to recover and making local extinction unlikely. As the population of one species declines, individuals of that species tend to compete predominantly with individuals of other species. Thus, the tendency of a population to recover as it declines in density reflects reduced intraspecific competition (within-species) relative to interspecific competition (between-species), the signature of niche differentiation.
Island syndrome describes the differences in morphology, ecology, physiology and behaviour of insular species compared to their continental counterparts. These differences evolve due to the different ecological pressures affecting insular species, including a paucity of large predators and herbivores as well as a consistently mild climate.
References
- 1 2 White, P. J.; Bruggeman, Jason E.; Robert A., Garrott (2007). "Irruptive population dynamics in Yellowstone pronghorn". Ecological Applications. 17 (6): 1598–1606. doi:10.1890/06-2032.1. PMID 17913126.
- 1 2 Boutin, Stan (1995). "Testing predator-prey theory by studying fluctuating populations of small mammals". Wildlife Research. 22 (1): 89–100. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.575.6975 . doi:10.1071/WR9950089.
- ↑ Andersen, Reidar; Linnell, John D. C. (2000). "Irruptive potential in roe deer: Density-dependent effects on body mass and fertility". The Journal of Wildlife Management. 64 (3): 698–706. doi:10.2307/3802739. JSTOR 3802739 . Retrieved 17 November 2020.
- ↑ Vandermeer, John H.; Goldberg, Deborah E. (2003). Population Ecology: First Principles. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-11440-4.