BIO120H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Evolutionary Arms Race, Aposematism, Interspecific Competition
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BIO120H1 Full Course Notes
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Community ecology seeks to answer questions such as: Community ecologists investigate the factors that influence biodiversity, community structure, and the distribution and abundance of species. These factors include interactions with the abiotic world and the diverse array of interactions that occur between most species. Species interactions include competition, predation, herbivory, parasitism and mutualisms. Questions like what are the feeding relationships among species. Who competes for whom and for what resources. Does the presence of some species benefit others. Food webs are graphical depictions of the interconnections among species based on feeding relationships. Role of keystone species in communities is another important tenet. Keystones species are those whose presence or absence profoundly affects other species in the community. Similar species commonly use limiting resources in different ways. Resource partitioning helps to explain how seemingly similar species can coexist in the same ecological community without pushing one to extinction through competition. Only named 2 million species on earth.