BIOL 353- Midterm Exam Guide - Comprehensive Notes for the exam ( 78 pages long!)
5 Oct 2017
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Document Summary
How biological invasions affect community structure and ecosystem fucntion. Showed invasion of alien crazy ant causes a rapid, catastrophic shift in the rain forest ecosystem of a tropical oceanic island, affecting at least 3 trophic levels. Crazy ants extirpate the red land crab, indirectly release seedling recruitment, enhance species richness of seedlings, and slow litter breakdown. May be particularly apparent on oceanic islands where native biotas are disharmonic, functional rednudency low, food webs simple, and the fractions of introduced species very large. Litter cover was double, seedling density was 30 fold higher, and seedling psecies richness was. Changes in the abundance of species affect the structure and functionning of ecosystems. Introduced ant has long term implications through idnrect effects on seedlings and hcangse in habitat structure. For seedlings, invasion by crazy ants indrectly acts as a diversity enhancer, but is likely to reduce directly species richness of the litter andcanopy fauna.
