Population and Community Ecology

Notes on Web - Unit Two - Part 5

Population and Community Ecology

Bruce G. Stewart

General Objectives and Study Guide

Your objectives for these Notes on the Web and associated readings and exercises are:

To name and describe the contrasting models that are used to explain community composition;
To describe the climax-pattern model of succession and to name and explain other models that represent processes of succession;
To name and describe three patterns of population distribution and the two broad categories of reasons for those distributions, biotic and abiotic;
To define the concept of "limiting factors" and give examples;
To diagram, label, and explain the logistic growth curve of exponential population growth;
To define and explain the concept of carrying capacity;
To define such concepts as survivorship and doubling time and explain their relationship to population growth curves;
To infer from human age-structure diagrams whether a population is likely to be stabilizing or growing exponentially, and to give logical reasons for your choices;
To describe and give examples of density-independent and density-dependent population control factors;
To define ecological niche, competive exclusion principle, habitat, resource partitioning and their relationships to population levels and diversity within a community;
To describe predator-prey population dynamics and examples of antipredator defenses;
To name, explain, and give examples of the major types of symbiosis;
To know common terms and facts associated with the topics of population and community ecology.

Related Textbook Readings:

For General Biology BIO 1114 only: Chapter 38 of your textbook (Johnson and Losos 2008).
For General Zoology ZOO 1114 only: The population and community ecology materials in Chapter 38 of your textbook (Hickman, et al. 2006)

Reminder about Textbook Study

As with the ecosystem ecology topics, your textbooks have excellent presentations of the materials on population and community ecology, including generous excellent illustrations. Check the general objectives above to make sure that you have covered all of the topics in the textbook readings.

The "Self-Test" and other questions at the end of the chapter will be helpful for general biology students, although many more detailed questions will be included in the lecture exam. Similarly, study questions in the zoology textbook will be helpful review for general zoology students, but again, they are not comprehensive.

As with all materials throughout the semester, you will have opportunities to ask questions or ask that any relevant material from your assignments be discussed in class and/or in threaded discussions on Internet.

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