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Community Ecology, ex. of difference in species abundance between two…
Community Ecology
Diversity
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a checklist, or species count can measure the richness of a community
ecology usually focuses on several organisms rather than all of them because there are too many to quantify
the objectives of ecology studies can vary, one might cover species checklists, while another cover just the herbs shrubs and trees present
studies could examine tropic levels, or even alleles present in a community
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species area relationship 
diversity goes down with increase in lattitude, this may be due to harsher conditions and less rainfall or shorter growing seasons farther north
50 million years ago, most of the earth's climate was tropical. 20 million years ago the earth started to cool and ice sheets formed. so temperate plants began to evolve, this probably relates to tropic diversity - temperate plants have had less time to delineate
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Beneficial Interactions
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these ants feed on the nectar and are protected by spines, they also keep out other insects and their wastes and decomposition enrich the soil
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there are small costs for mutualism, something must be given up on each side
facilitation ex is nurse plants, who make a small habitat for other plants underneath
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a community is a group of species that occur together at the same place and time #
these species are limited by each other through competition, predation, or changes they produce in the environment as well as disturbances from accidents or humans
beaver ponds are a community that experience rapid change in plant type and growth, and animal activity
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as beavers and other new organisms mold the pond habitat it experiences stages of succession - predictable sequence of change
spruce-fir forests endure for thousands of years, they are an example of climax communities - stable self-maintaining communities
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the effects humans have on communities has been devastating, #
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metapopulations
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as long as their are new patches an ephemeral species can survive, but if limited to currently occupied patches they may die out
empty patches are not surplus or unneeded, some species need to rotate through them if they are adapted to early succession and poor in later
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this is a common thread throughout the chapter, we must study ecology because we have such a negative impact on it