ESA Community Ecology Flashcards
6 cards from real ESA practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 6 ESA Community Ecology flashcards as text
Which measure captures the dissimilarity between two communities based on shared versus unshared species?
Answer: Jaccard dissimilarity index
The Jaccard dissimilarity index equals 1 minus the ratio of shared species to total species across both communities.
An ecotone is best described as:
Answer: A transition zone between two adjacent ecological communities
An ecotone is the transitional area between two different ecosystems, often exhibiting higher biodiversity than either adjacent community.
Which concept describes the total range of environmental conditions and resources that a species can potentially use in the absence of competitors?
Answer: Fundamental niche
The fundamental niche encompasses all conditions under which a species can survive and reproduce without biotic interactions limiting it.
Food web complexity is often quantified using connectance, which is defined as:
Answer: The ratio of realized trophic links to the maximum possible links
Connectance = actual links / (species²) and measures how densely interconnected a food web is.
Species-area relationships in island biogeography predict that larger islands support more species primarily because they:
Answer: Have lower extinction rates and higher immigration rates
The MacArthur-Wilson equilibrium model attributes higher species richness on larger islands to both reduced extinction rates and elevated immigration rates.
Which successional process involves early colonists making the environment more suitable for later species?
Answer: Facilitation
In the facilitation model, pioneer species modify the abiotic environment in ways that benefit and promote the establishment of later successional species.