ES 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Dna Replication, Environmental Factor, Parasitism

• School: NCSU
• Department: Environmental Science
• Course: ES 100
• Professor: Stephanie Jeffries

Document Summary

Species - organisms of the same kind that are genetically similar enough to breed in nature and produce live, fertile offspring. Population - all the members of a species living in a given area at the same time. Biological community - all of the populations living and interacting in a particular area. Ecosystem - biological community and its physical environment. Adaptation - the acquisition of traits that allow a species to survive in its environment. Adaptation is explained by charles darwin"s theory of evolution by natural selection. The process of better-selected individuals passing their traits to the next generation is called natural selection. Mutations - changes in dna coding sequence that occur by chance (e. g. , random mistakes in. For every environmental factor, there is an optimal range within a species lives or reproduces most easily, so abundance is high. The horizontal axis here could represent a factor such as temperature, rainfall, vegetation height, or availability of some critical resource.