APES
UNIT 3: EVOLUTION AND ECOLOGY
OBJECTIVES
Chapters 5 and 6 and 7in Withgott
Identify, define, or otherwise understand the following terms:
adaptation
adaptive trait
adaptive radiation
natural selection
directional selection
stabilizing selection
artificial selection
Charles Darwin
speciation
allopatric speciation
sympatric speciation
disruptive selection
species
population
community
ecosystem
biome
climatogram
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extinction
mass extinction
generalist
specialist
habitat
niche
fundamental vs.
realized
population density
population dispersion
predation
parasitism
competition
mutualism
symbiosis
food web
producers vs. consumers
primary, secondary
consumers
decomposers
invasive species
resource partitioning
keystone species
succession
primary vs secondary
core – mantle – crust
plate tectonics
plate boundaries
convergent, divergent,
transform
K-selected species
r-selected species
density dependence
density independence
Understand how natural selection operates (see table 5.1)
Distinguish the random part of evolution (mutation) from the nonrandom (natural
selection)
Describe how biodiversity results from the interplay of evolution (speciation) and
extinction
Distinguish between background extinction and mass extinction
Discuss reasons for mass extinctions and recognize the differences between mass
extinctions of the distant past and the one we are in the midst of
Describe some of the ways that scientists study and quantify biodiversity
Compare and contrast the major types of species interactions (predation, etc)
Describe how interspecific competition influences a species’ niche (fig. 6.2) and
resource partitioning (fig 6.3)
Describe the flow of energy in a food web
Recognize the energetic relationships among trophic levels
o Describe and use the ``10 % rule’’
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o Compare and contrast: producers, primary consumers, secondary
consumers
o Explain why there’ll always be a much bigger biomass of producers than
primary consumers, and more primary consumers than secondary
consumers
Describe how a keystone predator can affect the ``structure’’ of an entire
community of organisms
o Give an example
Explain what an invasive species is and why they are threats to biodiversity
Recognize the major terrestrial biomes (see fig 6.16)
o How does climate influence the biome? (see fig 6.17)
o Interpret a climatograph
Describe what a ``dead zone’’ is and how it forms
o What is the role of eutrophication
Define a ``system’’ and distinguish between open and closed systems
Distinguish between negative and positive feedback (see fig 7.1)
o which of these is more worrisome environmentally? Why?
Define productivity
o distinguish net primary productivity from gross primary productivity
o see fig 7.6
What do we mean when we say ``Energy flows, nutrients cycle’’?
Be able to describe, in some detail the following biogeochemical cycles:
o water (hydrologic cycle)
o carbon
o nitrogen
 role of bacteria
o for C and N: sources and sinks
Be able to summarize the phosphorus and sulfur cycles
Describe in general the structure of the earth
o major layers
o map of the tectonic plates
o describe how plates move with respect to one another
o describe results of plate movement