Ecology

• Ecology is the study of interactions between living things & organisms and their environment
• Ecosystem is a group of organisms that interact with their environment
• Habitat is a place where a living thing lives
• A community is all the different animals and plants in an area
• Ways to catch animals: pooter, beating tray, sweep net and pitfall trap
• Pooter: jar with 2 straws, 1 covered with cloth at the end. You suck through covered cloth and insect gets sucked in through other straw
• Beating tray: shake a tree/bush and place underneath so insects fall on it
• Sweep net: to catch animals that fly
• Pitfall trap: dig a hole in the ground and place a plastic cup inside. Cover it with leaves, insects will fall in a few days
• A quadrat is a square frame that’s used to estimate plant numbers
• Scrambling competition: all competing organisms get some of the resource, only occurs for plants (eg tree will grow as tall as possible to get the most light for photosynthesis)
• Contest competition: a physical contest between 2 organisms in which only 1 of the gets the resource (resource could be mating rights, territory and food)
• Advantages of competition: it maintains a species at sustainable levels, it’s also a driving factor in evolution
• Adaptation: any characteristic that improves an organisms chance of survival
• Interdependence: the way organisms rely on each other (eg apple trees help bees by providing nectar and a habitat, bees help trees by pollinating them so that they produce more apples)