ENVIRON 201 Lecture 3: Environ 201_ Lecture 3
28 Dec 2018
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Ecology: the study of relationships between the living and nonliving beings on earth. Food chains: energy passes from one organism to another. As you go up the food chain, energy is lost as heat so there isn"t enough to support quaternary or pentanary consumers. Carrying capacity= the max pop size of a species that its environment can sustain. Limiting factors slow and stop exponential growth (an s-shaped logistic growth curve) Keystone species=one species at the top of an arch that if they don"t exist lead to an environmental breakdown. Ex: sea otters manage sea urchins, w/o otters urchins mess up environment. Ants have a lot more mass on earth than humans. Need to supply enough energy to entire community b/c only ten percent transfers up. Ex. addition of excess nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, etc. ) to a water body leads to. Increased production of organic matter that dies and sinks.
