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104 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
Why are biological hotspots important |
to conserve due to the number of endemic species found in the area |
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what are hot spots |
reservoirs of the most diverse organisms,yet the most endangered, sites of biodiversity in the planet |
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what is the biosphere |
the sum of all ecosystems across the world |
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what are biomes? |
main categories of ecosystems across large geographical areas |
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what major variation do the world biomes roughly correspond to? |
vegetation types, climate, topography and soli type |
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what is topography |
the arrangement of physical features, both natural and artifical of an area |
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what are some examples of terrestrial biomes? |
tropical rainforests, deserts, grasslands and tundra |
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do each biome have similar features? |
yes |
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what forms the lagrest part of the biosphere? |
aquatic biomes |
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what factors affect the kinds of organisma that inhabit a aquatic environment |
how permanent the body of water is, salinity, depth and nutrient availability |
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what do biomes have within them? |
number of differnet ecosystems |
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what is an ecosystem? |
the interaction between the environment and its community |
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what is a community? |
the different species inhabiting an area at one particluar time |
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What ia an environment? |
abiotic and biotic components of an area |
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difference between environment and community |
community is living, envornment is living and nonliving |
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Are ecosystems self contained? |
yes relatively and are able to support themselves by cycling or exchanging materials |
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how are ecosystems named |
usually by the vegetation type and distribution (density) |
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what do ecosystems contain? |
habitats |
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what is a habitat? |
is an area or environment within an ecosystem where an individual species lives, feeds, and reproduces |
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what is habitat specific for? |
each population |
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what is a population? |
is a group of individuals belonging to the same species, living in the same habitat at the same time |
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what does an ecologist study?? and who was it studied by first? |
the relationships between living thingsand their surrondings, which is also called ecology. Ernst Haeckel |
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how can environments be classified? |
on their biotic and abiotic factors |
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what are abiotic factors? |
physical and chemical factors such as temperature, light intensity, texure and Ph of the soil, concentration of gases, availablilty of water |
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what does a limiting factor do? |
restricts every organism to a particluar area |
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what is a limiting factor? |
is an element of the environment that restricts the survival of an organism to a region |
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what is the zone of physiological stress? |
where the plant can grow but the conditions are not ideal for survival |
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what is the zone of intolerance? |
where the plant cannot survive |
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what does the distribution of terrestrial environments mainly depend on? |
climatic variation |
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what are the 4 main elements of climate? |
temp, water, light and wind |
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what does water and and temp significantly impact? |
geographical range of an organism |
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what also aids classification? |
substrate concentration |
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what is humus? |
being supplied with nutrients from continual decomposition of plant and animal debris |
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what is a limiting factor |
the rate of decompsition |
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what is it about soil that is important to identify |
physical and chemical feature of soil - determined by properties, such as location depth texture colour porosity, ph |
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what does aquatic environment include? |
both marine (salt water) and freshwater environments |
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examples of aquatic environments? |
oceans bays estuaries, creeks, streams, rivers. Lanks ponds and swamps |
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salt concentration in marine and freshwater environs |
mraine - 3% freshwater - >1% |
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hiw are ocean environments classified? |
according to depth, distance from the shoreline and the way they are found |
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what is the first 200m of ocean |
photic zone - photosynthesis 90% of marine life |
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water between 200 and 1000m? |
mesopelagic - not much sun |
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between 1000m and 4000m |
bathypalegic |
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between 4000m and 6000m |
abyssopelagic |
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between 6000 and 11000 |
hadalpelagic |
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what are the 2 subgroups of fresh water? |
still and moving water |
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how can freshwater environments be classified? |
production of organic matter - nutrient rich and nutrient poor |
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what is eutrophication? |
is the increased conventration of nurients in waterwyas that promote algae bloom - negative effects |
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what does nutrient composition depend on? |
terrain that flow through - fast moving more nutrient |
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environments and ecosystems are classified by what? |
by their component species and species interaction |
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what are ecosystmes usually named after? |
most dominant species in the community along with its overall distribution |
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what does ecosystem distribution depend on? |
factors such as soil type and climate, remebering that the ecosystem is the ineractions between species and these factors |
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what is vegetation classified accroding to? |
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difference between classifing ecosystems and environments |
environment - based on biotic and abiotic ecosystem - based on abiotic or biotic compnents, but are usually named after their dominant species |
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ground cover in deserts |
in patches, widely spaced |
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ground cover in grass lands |
in arid regions; typically hummocks and tussocks with very low cover >30% |
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ground cover in scrublands |
floiage cover 30-70% |
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ground cover in woodlands |
widely spaced canopy cover of 10-30%; well developed shrubs ad grasses |
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ground cover in alpine |
fairly low continuos cover |
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ground cover in open (sclerophyll) forests
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fairly open canopy cover of 30-70%; good understory and ground cover |
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ground cover in closed (rainforest) forests |
dense canopy cover of 70 -100%; distinct layers or storyeys within forest |
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ground cover in reefs and marshes |
dense growth |
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what is an open ecosystem? |
where animals are apart of multiple communities as they moved from one area to another |
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why is it hard to distinguish where ecosystems start and finish? |
physical features gradually change or merge and the ecosystemoverlap |
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how are organisma able to survive in an ecosystem? |
by a particaluar set of biotic and abiotic factors |
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what is a ecological niche? |
the way which species function within their environment |
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what is another way, the niche of an organism is? |
how it fits into the ecosystem |
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who classified between fundamental and realised niches? |
G.E. Hutchinson |
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what is the fundamental niche? |
is an ideal niche a species would occupy if there was no competitors, predators or parasites |
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what is the realised niche |
is narrower - resulting from an organisms inability to exploit the resources of its habitat becaue of restrictions caused by other organisms |
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what do organisms do as they can not all eat the smae resource at the same time? |
differ in the food source they prefer, their use of space and even the timing of their activities |
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how can competetion be reduced and what is is called? |
night and day, different physical features to exploit different resources - resource partitioning |
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is evrything affected by the presence or absence of other living or non living things? |
yes |
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how do you understand how an ecosystem works? |
by understanding relationships between organisms and interactions |
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why would organisma be in competition? |
because they require the same resources to full fill their needs for survival |
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who has competion? |
many organisms - even those of the same species |
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why do organisms collaborate? |
to catch prey |
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what are intraspecific interactions? |
interactions between members of the same species |
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what are interspecific? |
a relationship between members of different species |
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what helpd shape biodiversity |
way organisms compete or collaborate |
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what is the predator and prey relationship? |
where one organism kills another organsim, the prey,or consumes part of it for food |
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why is it an advantage for a predator to be apart of numerous food chains |
if one prey species becomes of short supply, the predator can turn to others |
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is this relationshp usually balanced and how may it change? |
yes but sometimescondictions change and upset the balance |
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what happens when the prey population decreases? |
increased intraspecific competetion in the predator species |
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what does predation include? |
animals preying on plants, plants preying on animals or animals preying or other animals |
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what effect do seed predators have? |
large - change plant population and distribution and makes seeds unviable when they pass through the digestive system |
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what is another realtionahip that can effect biodiversity? |
disease causing organism and the host |
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how does disease change biodiversity? |
increase - rabbits allowing native population to increase decrease - koalas - chlymidia no babys |
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what is symbiotic relationships? |
general term to describe the relationship in which individuals of two or more different species live together and in which at least benefit |
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what is parasitism? |
one species benefits at the epense of another |
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what is mutualism? |
both species in the relationship benefit and neither are harmed
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what is commensaliam |
one species benefits and the other neither benefits nor is harmed |
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what is a parasite? |
an organism that lives on or in a host, and very well adapted to their host |
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what does the way in which the parasite interacts with its host determine? |
if either live |
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what do the 2 organisms in mutualism share? |
the same ecosystem, and habitat and work together |
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examples of mutualism |
pollinators - insects birds reptiles and small mamals being relied on by the plant to transfer pollen form one to anther, whilst the animals gets to feed on nectar |
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how much do these organism depend on each other? |
very much because if one goes so does the other |
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why are seed dispersors important in biodiversity |
they poo out the seed giving it a new location where it can germinate and grow |
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what is the difference between a seed dispersa and seed predator |
seed predator ruins the seed |
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what is the most intimate relationship? |
with one organism living inside another |
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WHat is commensalism? |
a one sided interaction between species, where only 1 organism benefits, the commensal, with the other organism not getting harmed or benefitting |
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what is a keystonespecies ? |
a species that prevents organisms from lower trophic levels from monopolising food resources and space, instead they allow more biodiversity within a richer area |
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what is an aspect of predatation? |
it affects the coexistence of a number of other species |
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who was the idea of keystone predatation made up by? |
RObert Paine |
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what should be the main point for the management strategies of an entire community? |
the conservation of keystone species |