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Description
Flashcards by Shareef Akbari, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by Shareef Akbari
about 8 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| What is succession? | What happens to an environment after a disturbance. |
| What did Clement believe happened after a disturbance? | Super-organism perspective: All organisms work together to bring the environment back to maturity (climax equilibrium) |
| What did Gleason believed happened after a disturbance? | All organisms are individuals that compete against each other. The endpoint occurs because some species dominate over others. It is the difference between species that determines the change that happens in succession |
| What is the relationship between diversity and number of disturbances? | They are proportional. |
| What is the intermediate disturbance hypothesis? | Species richness is maximized at an intermediate disturbance frequency. |
| Why does diversity decrease with low frequency/high-intensity disturbances? | Species cannot tolerate it. Disturbance is too intense. |
| Why does diversity decrease with high frequency/low-intensity disturbances? | There is too much competition. |
| What disproved the intermediate disturbance hypothesis? | If the hypothesis was correct, relationship between disturbance frequency/intensity should be normally distributed everywhere. But empirical evidence showed a bunch of different distributions. |
| What is primary succession? | Chronological change of a biotic community in a newly established area. |
| What are the characteristics of early successional species? | Strong dispersers Good competitors for nutrients. |
| What benefits do early successional species give to later successional species? | They increase the nutrient content of the soil when they die. |
| Why is fireweed always the first thing to colonize an area that was recently destroyed by a fire? | Because its seeds are carried by the wind and it is a very good disperser. |
| What is the relationship between dispersal and competitive ability? | They are inversely proportional |
| What is the pattern that species follow during succession? | Starts off with very good dispersers because they arrive the soonest. They establish themselves, but then species that are worse dispersers appear because it takes them longer to get there. However, because dispersal is inversely proportional to competitiveness, this means that they are better competitors and so replace the first species. This keeps on happening until there are no species that can outcompete the ones that are there. |
| What is secondary succession? | Chronological change in a biotic community following a disturbance. |
| What soil changes usually happen over time in secondary succession? | Organic carbon content increases, nitrogen levels increase, pH decreases. |
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