CORRECT ANSWERS
Ecology - correct answer ✔✔ The study of how living things interact with each other and their
environment
- Environments are changing more rapidly now than they have at any time in the past
- Efforts to maintain human health and welfare depend on our ability to cope with these
environmental changes
- Most synthetic field in biology
Primary goal of Ecology - correct answer ✔✔ To understand the distribution and abundance of
organisms
4 Main Levels of Ecology - correct answer ✔✔ 1) Organisms
2) Populations
3) Communties
4) Ecosystems
Organismal Ecology - correct answer ✔✔ The branch of ecology concerned with the
morphological, physiological, and behavioral ways in which individual organisms meet the
challenges posed by their biotic and abiotic environments.
Population Ecology - correct answer ✔✔ The study of populations in relation to the
environment, including environmental influences on population density and distribution, age
structure, and variations in population size.
,Community Ecology - correct answer ✔✔ The study of how interactions between species affect
community structure and organization
Community - correct answer ✔✔ All the different populations that live together in an area
Ecosystem Ecology - correct answer ✔✔ The study of energy flow and the cycling of chemicals
among the various biotic and abiotic components in an ecosystem.
Sockeye Salmon: Organismal Ecology - correct answer ✔✔ After spending 4-5 years growing in
the ocean they travel to the freshwater stream where they hatched.
Females lay eggs in gravel and males compete to fertilize them.
All adults die after breeding.
Sockeye Salmon: Population Ecology - correct answer ✔✔ Researchers use mathematical
models to predict future of salmon populations.
The factors that affect population size can be assessed by mathematical models.
Look at impacts of proposed dams, changes in weather patterns, altered harvest levels, and
protection efforts.
Sockeye Salmon: Community Ecology - correct answer ✔✔ Interactions among salmon and
other species in the marine and stream communities where they live.
At sea; salmon eat smaller fish and are eaten by whales, sea lions, and humans
,In freshwater; preyed on by bears and bald eagles
Subject to parasitism and disease, also affected by disturbances (changes in food supply,
overfishing, suburbanization)
Sockeye Salmon: Ecosystem Ecology - correct answer ✔✔ Link marine and freshwater
ecosystems.
Harvest nutrients in the ocean and transport the nutrients to the freshwater streams when they
breed and decompose.
Conservation Biology - correct answer ✔✔ The effort to study, preserve, and restore threatened
populations, communities, and ecosystems
- David Schindler
Abiotic - correct answer ✔✔ Non-living
Biotic - correct answer ✔✔ Living
Physical Components of an Ecosystem - correct answer ✔✔ Temperature, precipitation,
sunlight, wind
Biotic Components of an Ecosystem - correct answer ✔✔ The members of same or different
species
Nutrient Availability - correct answer ✔✔ Nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are in
short supply
, Often in short supply, removed by currents in streams
Sink to bottom, away from light (lake turnover, ocean upwelling)
Ocean Upwelling - correct answer ✔✔ Nutrients in the sunlit waters of the ocean are constantly
lost in the forms of dead organisms that rain down into the depths
1) winds blow; along the coast of peru, the prevailing winds blow north, moving water at the
surface
2) surface water moves; as the earth rotates, the moving surface water is forced offshore
3) upwelling; as surface water leaves, it is replaced by nutrient-laden water welling up from the
bottom
Lake Turnover - correct answer ✔✔ Spring and fall turnovers occur in response to changes in air
temperature
1) Winter stratification; dense 4 degree water at the bottom becomes nutrient rich while colder
water near surface becomes oxygenated
2) Spring turnover; surface water warms to 4 degrees and sinks, carrying oxygen down and
driving nutrients up
3) Summer stratification; dense 4 degree water at the bottom becomes nutrient rich while
warmer water nest surface becomes oxygenated
4) Fall turnover; surface water cools to 4 degrees and sinks, carrying oxygen down and driving
nutrients up
Without this nutrients would remain on the bottom and aquatic ecosystems would be less
productive
Thermocline - correct answer ✔✔ In water, a distinctive temperature transition zone that
separates an upper layer that is mixed by wind (the epilimnion) and a colder, deep layer that is
not mixed (the hypolimnion)