EI - Ecological Interactions Module Overview
Ecological Interactions
Take a look at the image below and think about what is going on in it.
Is it: Two people at a party? A mother and a child at the doctor? Or is it a teacher talking to a student?
Chances are the first thought was this is a teacher talking with a student. Perhaps giving some pointers on the student’s writing or asking a question to probe the student’s thinking. These thoughts came to mind because you know and understand student/teacher interactions and can interpret behaviors.
Ecology is the study of the interactions between organisms and their environment, and it is essential to look at the interactions that happen within an ecosystem. No matter which ecosystem is looked at, just like no matter what school is looked at, there are fundamental interactions between biotic and abiotic factors that are found across all of them. These interactions play a significant role in the diversity and the health of an ecosystem.
Module Lessons Preview
In this module, we will study the following topics:
Roles in the Ecosystem
Species Interactions
Community Structure
Ecological Succession
Key Terms
- Biodiversity: the variety of life and its processes; including the variety of living organisms, the genetic differences among them, and the communities and ecosystems in which they occur
- Climax Community: the final stable stage of ecological succession that may be reached in an undisturbed community
- Commensalism: symbiotic relationship in which one species benefits while the other species is neither hurt nor helped
- Competitive: an ecological relationship in which two organisms compete for the same resources
- Community Structure: is the composition of a community, including the number of species in that community and their relative numbers
- Competitive Exclusion Principle: a principle of ecology stating that two different species cannot occupy the same niche in the same place for very long
- Ecological succession: changes through time in the numbers and types of species that make up the community of an ecosystem
- Foundation Species: a species that modifies the environment so that it can support the other organisms that form the community
- Habitat: physical environment in which a species lives and to which it has become adapted.
- Host: in a parasitic relationship, the species that is harmed
- Interspecific Competition: in ecology, is a form of competition in which individuals of different species compete for the same resources in an ecosystem
- Keystone Species: a species on which other species in an ecosystem largely depend, such that if it were removed the ecosystem would change drastically
- Mutualism: type of symbiotic relationship in which both species benefit
- Niche: an organisms’ place or position in an ecosystem
- Parasite: species that benefits in a parasitic relationship
- Parasitism: an ecological interaction in which one organism lives in or off another
- Pioneer Species: type of species that first colonizes a disturbed area.
- Predation: an ecological relationship in which one animal preys on another for food
- Primary Succession: change in the numbers and types of species that live in a community that occurs in an area that has never before been colonized
- Secondary Succession: change in the numbers and types of species that live in a community that occurs in an area that was previously colonized but has been disturbed
- Species Diversity: a function of both the number of different species in the community (species richness) and their relative abundances (species evenness)
- Species Richness: the number of different species in a particular community
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