| Interspecific Interactions and Community Structure |
| 1. |
List the categories of interspecific interactions and explain how each interaction may affect the population densities of the two species involved. |
| 2. |
State the competitive exclusion principle. |
| 3. |
Define an ecological niche and restate the competitive exclusion principle using the niche concept. |
| 4. |
Distinguish between fundamental and realized niche. |
| 5. |
Explain how interspecific competition may lead to resource partitioning. |
| 6. |
Define and compare predation, herbivory, and parasitism. |
| 7. |
Give specific examples of adaptations of predators and prey. |
| 8. |
Explain how cryptic coloration and warning coloration may aid an animal in avoiding predators. |
| 9. |
Distinguish between Batesian mimicry and MŸllerian mimicry. |
| 10. |
Describe how predators may use mimicry to obtain prey. |
| 11. |
Distinguish among endoparasites, ectoparasites, and parisitoids. |
| 12. |
Distinguish among parasitism, mutualism, and commensalism. |
| 13. |
Explain the relationship between species richness and relative abundance and explain how both contribute to species diversity. |
| 14. |
Distinguish between a food chain and a food web. |
| 15. |
Describe two ways to simplify food webs. |
| 16. |
Summarize two hypotheses that explain why food chains are relatively short. |
| 17. |
Explain how dominant and keystone species exert strong control on community structure. Describe an example of each. |
| 18. |
Describe and distinguish between the bottom-up and top-down models of community organization. Describe possible features of a model that is intermediate between these two extremes. |
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Disturbance and Community Structure |
| 19. |
Define stability and disturbance. |
| 20. |
Provide examples of how disturbance may increase or decrease species diversity. |
| 21. |
Give examples of humans as widespread agents of disturbance. |
| 22. |
Distinguish between primary and secondary succession. |
| 23. |
Describe how species that arrive early in succession may facilitate, inhibit, or tolerate later arrivals. |
| 24. |
Explain why species richness declines along an equatorial-polar gradient. |
| 25. |
Explain the significance of measures of evapotranspiration to species richness. |
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Biogeographic Factors Affect Community Biodiversity |
| 26. |
Define the species-area curve. |
| 27. |
Explain how species richness on islands varies according to island size and distance from the mainland. |
| 28. |
Define and contrast the following pairs of hypotheses:
a. interactive hypothesis versus individualistic hypothesis
b. rivet model versus redundancy model |
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