AP Biology --> Ecology Unit

Population Ecology

Kinesis

Random changes of speed of movement of organism

in accordance to a stimulus.

Organisms move slower in favorable conditions (humans love moving slowly while watching TV) whilst the organisms move faster when in an unfavorable environment (when beetles are in a too hot/too cold climate)

Migration

Animal

Movement

Cyclic movement of animals over long distances depending on the time of year.

Birds migrate north and south to go towards warmer conditions

Agonistic Behavior

Altruistic Behavior

Coefficient of relatedness

Organism helping out another organism, even at own expense

• Behavior from conflict over resources
• Involves intimidative display & submission, can be subtle.
• No fighting or violence

Protecting of siblings due to siblings have high ratio of your genes

Dominance Hierarchies

Taxis

Ranking of power among members of a community

• Alpha and Beta members
• Not always permanent (can overthrow leader, like Tunisia and Egypt)
• This is established in order to decrease waste of energy and risk of physical fighting/competition for food --> establishes order so that resources go to certain "alpha" males first before it goes on to other organisms in the hierarchy
• Seen in Chimpanzees

Reflex movement towards or away from a stimulus

--> Stimulus can be chemical(chemotaxis) visual, auditory, etc.

--> Phototaxis: Movement towards or away light

Animal Behavior

Optimal Foraging

Foraging

Inclusive Fitness

The best way to "forage"

Feeding behavior of an individual

Overall ability for individuals to pass genes to next generation. Includes relatives genes as well. This is due to the same genes being passed on to offspring

Search Images: Visual aid for food. For example, fish eat whatever fits in their mouth, no matter what the substance. Human search images include round, soft objects.

Reciprocal Altruism

Territoriality

An organism displays altruistic behavior in hopes that the other organism helps him/her in the future

Defending physical geographic area(s) against other individuals, since the territory may have beneficiary resources (food, mates, breeding sites)

Associative Learning

• Animal uses a stimulus to associate it with another

--> Classical Conditioning in dogs

Operant Conditioning

• Behavior based on trial and error.
• Different from classical conditioning (associative learning), since this has to do with an animal's OWN behavior to a response.

Fixed Action Pattern

• Pre-programmed response to some kind of stimulus
• --> Once begun, it cannot be stopped until it finishes its "course"

Observational Learning

Types of Animal

Learning

Learning how to do something based on watching others do it first, no matter how much experience you've had with a certain skill

Habituation

Unimportant stimuli lead to loss of response (we take things for granted, too).

Behavioral Ecology:

Study of interaction between animals and their environments (hence also studying their behaviors in such environments)

Ethology:

Study of animal behavior (more narrower/specialized)

Insight Learning

Doing something correctly without previous experience

Us humans "insightfully" know that if we

were small in size, everything else would be

bigger...have we ever been small in size?

Imprinting

Learned behavior that is innate (irreversible) during a part of life

that is somewhat critical to the formation of the behavior

Latent Learning

Animals obtain info by exploring surroundings and use that knowledge for future behavior

Ecology

Peacock feather display...agonistic behavior

Chemical

Visual

Pheromones: Mammal chemical message for mating

Animal Communication

Tactile (Touch)

Chimpanzee grooming behavior...

Auditory

Dispersion Patterns

Biotic components: Living organisms of an ecosystem.

Abiotic Components: Non- Living parts of an ecosystem (weather, food, sunlight, waste products...

Niche: What the organism uses in terms of resources...biotic or abiotic (you can think of it as the role/job of the organism in the ecosystem.

Population Density: How many organisms in a certain area

R-Selected:

• Offspring mature quickly
• Require little parental care (usually ignored)
• Reproduces quickly
• Dies quickly

Opportunistic populations

K-Selected:

Density Dependent Factors:

Population is affected by population density

Denisty Independent Factors: Limiting of population that has nothing to do with population size (Bad Weather, Natural Distasters)

• Birth rate: Offspring produces per time period.
• Death Rate: Number of deaths per time period.
• Sex Ratio: Kind of obvious...
• Generation Time: Amount of time needed for individuals to reach reproductive maturity.
• Age Structure: --> This Chart!!
• IMMIGRATION RATE: rate at which individuals move INTO a given population.
• EMIGRATION Rate: Rate at which individuals LEAVE a given population.
• KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION