Course Notes Field Ecology Essay

Submitted By OBgrl
Words: 593
Pages: 3

“The study of the relationship between orgasms and their environment”
Biotic->living
Abiotic Biotic (living)

Organisms are influenced by factors of their physical and chemical environment:
• climate,
• moisture,
• nutrients,
• fire,
• toxins. Organisms are influenced by other organisms: competition, herbivory, predation, parasitism, disease, and mutualism.

Ecology is SCIENCE-observe, hypothesis, experiment, data, analysis, tools
Ecology is interdisciplinary and applicable
Ecology is ALL PERVASIVE
parasitism, population ecology, limiting factors, biodiversity
ECOSYSTEM->fundamental unit, includes abiotic and biotic components, large or small, emergent properties (combination is more than the parts)
How to we characterize:
ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONS (measurement of change)
->productivity (rate of increase of biomass), biogeochemical cycles (eg. Carbon and nitrogen cycles), flow of energy, water flow
ECOSYSTEM STRUCTURE
->biotic components: dominant species, biodiversity ;abiotic: soil, water, minerals; used to categorize landscapes-biomes, regions, ELC (ecological land conservation), wetlands ect,
ECOSYSTEM SERVICES (benefits for us)
->provisioning services, regulating services, cultural services :
SUSTAINABILITY-knowledge and skills=must know stuff

Size of ecosystem depends on what you study

• Limiting factors: factor with lowest availability relative to need.
• Limiting Factors: temperature, solar radiation (sun and shade), relevance, environmental stress
• From an evolutionary point of view, ‘optimal’ conditions are those under which individuals leave most descendants (i.e. they are the fittest).
• Pulse-short term stress, Press-long term (exposure and response)
• STRESS: Environmental stress, chemical stress (acidity, smog), climatic (ice storm, global warming), physical (tsunamis, ATVs), biological (herbivory, -decrease in biomass, predation and stuff)
• Indicator species are sensitive to stressors and used as a good indicator for them (frogs good about water, sharks are top predator so they absorb the toxins, whales are like mammals so similar effects to humans and long life span)
• Niche concepts: FUNDAMENTAL NICHE: where organisms have the ideal environment, REALIZED NICHE: where they actually live ie. Racoons environmental parameters not geographical dimentions
• Fitness is the number of kids
• Genotype+phenotype
• ADAPTATION: Phenotypic Plasticity: ability of an organism to change appearance in response to changes in the environment (dandilions)
• Successful plasticity = better fitness
• Ecological energetics: studying how solar energy is converted by plants and converted to other species
• Fluxes of energy means that community processes are strongly linked with the abiotic environment
• Autotrophs: 2 types: Photoautotroph (photosynthesis), Chemoautotroph (chemosynthesis, oxidation of sulpher, exothermic hot springs)
• Sunlight +