Term Papers on Ecology

Term Paper Title	Ecology
# of Words	1158
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	4.63

Ecology

In the original Greek "oikos" means,
"house". So ecology is "the study of the house" the
place where you live, or the environment which
technically includes all those factors, both nonliving
and living, that affect an organism. Ecology then is
the study of the interactions of organisms in their
environment includes both the living (biotic) and
physical (abiotic) factors of the environment. It's
also the science, which formulates and tests
hypotheses about environment. Ecology is the
relationships, identification and analysis of
problems common to all areas. Ecology studies
the population and the community, evaluates cause
and effects of the responses of populations and
communities to environmental change.
POPULATIONS The population is defined as an
assemblage of individuals of a single species that
live in the same place at the same time. Also,
biologists add an additional condition: the
individuals in a population must interact with each
other to the point of being able to interbreed.
Population is important to understanding many
important ecological and evolutionary phenomena.
Ecologists can use information from population
ecology to predict the success of a given species
or assemblage of species. One attribute of
populations that is observed in nature is their
dispersion, or the way in which individuals are
distributed in a given area. Typically, biologists
refer to three types of dispersion: - Clustered
(aggregated), Regular (evenly spaced), Random
(irregularly spaced) Populations showing a
clustered pattern are common in nature and are
found among many different types of organisms.
Clustered dispersion patterns are often due to
environment heterogeneity. Regular dispersion
patterns are relatively rare in nature and occur
when a resource is scarce. A good example of
regular spacing occurs in animals that exhibit
territoriality, a phenomenon in which animals
establish an area for themselves and fight off all
other individual seeking to invade that area.
Regular dispersion patterns can also be observed
in plants. Random patterns can be found in a
variety of organisms (trout in lake or maple trees in
a forest). Regardless of which organisms, the
number of births almost always has the potential to
be greater than the number of deaths. In other
words populations of all species have the capacity
to grow. That property is crucial importance to the
success of all species. However, all species will
not increase under all circumstance, but instead
they can, given appropriate conditions. There are
two models of population growth: the exponential
model and the logistic model. One of the most
basic models of population biology is the
exponential growth equation, which is: )N/)t =
rmaxN This equation states that, in a growing
population, the rate of change in population size is
determined by the maximal intrinsic rate of
increase (rmax) multiplied by the number of
individuals in that population (N). If a population
growth very quickly we called that an exponential
increase and its growth curve has a J-chaped
called J-chaped curve. A population cannot
continue to grow indefinitely because this equation
contains additional term called the carrying
capacity (K) which is not fixed, but carrying
capacity is constantly affected by many factors,
both biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living). The
logistic population growth predicts that
populations will grow rapidly at first. However, as
the number of individuals in the population (N)
approaches the carrying capacity (K), the
population growth rate eventually slows to zero,
and the population stabilize at K. The result is a
sigmoidal or S-shaped curve which is often
divided into three phases: the first is called the lag
phase (the period of slow growth that occurs
when population numbers are low). The second is
the log phase, which occurs when growth rate
accelerates and becomes relatively rapid. The
third is the saturation phase, during which
population growth decelerates as N approaches
K. All...

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