ENV100Y5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Ecological Niche, Intraspecific Competition, Interspecific Competition

• School: UTM
• Department: Environment
• Course: ENV100Y5
• Professor: Barbara Murch

Document Summary

Topics: habitats & niches, species interactions, feeding relationships, energy flow, trophic levels and food webs. Interactions with environment: habitat: the environment in which an organism lives and functions, living & non-living components, scale depends on organism. Ecological niche: an organisms use of resources and its functional role in a community, fundamental niche: optimal conditions, realized niche: a subset of fundamental niche due to species interactions. Habitats specialists & habitat generalists: specialists = narrow niches and very specific requirements, generalists = broad niches that can use a wide array of habitats and resources. Niche concept: ma(cid:272)arthur"s war(cid:271)lers: fundamental niche vs. realized niche. Competition: multiple organisms seek the same limited resources. Intraspecific competition; interspecific competition: result: exclusion or coexistence. Resource partitioning: species divide shared resources by specializing in different ways, avoid competition. Effects of resource paritioning: character displacement: characteristics diverge to lessen competition, (cid:862)overlappi(cid:374)g(cid:863) (cid:272)hara(cid:272)teristi(cid:272)s are sele(cid:272)ted agai(cid:374)st.