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| The variety of life, including genotypes, species, communities and ecological processes. |
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| The plant and animal life of a particular region or period. |
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| Minimum and maximum temperatures that define limits of growth and development of an organism, and an optimum temperature at which growth proceeds with greatest rapidity. Cardinal temperatures may vary with the stage of development. |
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| A blended group of species inhabiting a given area; the organisms influence one another's distribution, abundance, and evolution. |
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| Radiation that has been scattered, or is not strongly directional. |
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| The genetic constitution of an organism, acquired from its parents and available for transmission to its offspring. |
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| The light intensity where the rates of photosynthesis and respiration are equal. At light intensities below the light compensation, the plant is starved because its rate of photosynthesis is less than its rate of respiration. |
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| The response of an organism to changes in its photoperiod (the duration of an organism's daily exposure to light), especially as indicated by vital processes (e.g. plants that flower when there are so many hours of light in a day). |
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| The basic unit of living things, consisting of organisms of a given genus. |
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| The response of a plant to cycles of temperature fluctuation (e.g. plants that flower when the temperature is above a given point). |
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| Active dispersal involves movement of the entire organism through its own ability |
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| Refers to characteristics of a given realm or ecosystem. |
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| The ability of a native community to repel invasive species. |
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| A unique geographic region with species which are known only to that area. |
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| When a species has has two or more groups that are related but widely separated from each other geographically. The causes are varied and might demonstrate either the expansion or contraction of a species range (e.g. adventurous frog analogy, tectonic plate shift). |
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| An organism being transported on the outside of a host (burrs, seeds, fleas, &etc, get stuck to an animals fur and are transported). |
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| An organism being transported on the inside of a host (e.g. seeds get eaten and are pooped in a different place). |
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| A group of subpopulations, each isolated in a patch of habitat. Its persistence is dependent on the movement of animals among subpopulations to exchange genes. |
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| Movement of organisms either permanently (as in the migration of humans to the Americas) or temporarily (migratory birds such as Canadian geese). |
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| Process of movement that take advantage of various forms of kinetic energy occurring naturally in the environment. Used by plants, some insects, &etc. |
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| geographical regions that have remained unaltered by the climatic change affecting surrounding regions and that therefore forms a haven for relict fauna and flora. |
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| A species or other group within a community that is representative of an earlier stage of development or of a different set of conditions. |
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| A mover or carrier (e.g. fleas carry plague, river carries sediment, &etc.). |
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| (Or 'chemical interference'). The inhibition of growth of one plant species by another due to the release of chemical substances. |
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| an ecological climax where stability is directly due to the influence of climate. |
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| A type of symbiosis (= the living together of different species of organism which may or may not be to their mutual benefit) where there are two organisms from different species. One obtains food or other benefits from the other without damaging or benefiting it. |
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| One of the biological interactions that can limit population growth; occurs when two species vie with each other for the same resource. |
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| consumers can reduce populations to below carrying capacity |
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| a pattern of vegetation change in which in a small number of species tend to replace each other over time in the absence of large-scale disturbance. |
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| A climax community which has been disturbed by people or their domestic livestock, such as a deciduous forest being replaced by a cropland. |
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| A disturbance is an event that results in a change in biomass or the resources that support species at a rate that is faster than normal change. Endogeneous disturbances occur within an organism |
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| A disturbance is an event that results in a change in biomass or the resources that support species at a rate that is faster than normal change. Exogeneous disturbances occur outside of an organism |
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| a form of competition in which one species either reduces or more efficiently uses a resource and therefore depletes the availability of the resource for the other species. |
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| grazers/browsers eat part or all of primary consumers |
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| initial composition model |
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| This concept suggests that species composition of vegetation following disturbance is determined by the propagules that exist on the site at the time of the disturbance and those which arrive early in the process of stand development |
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| Competition in which one species prevents the other from having access to a limiting resource. |
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| A type of symbiosis in which both members depend on each other for their nutrients or other services. |
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| the growth of one organism (such as a plant) over another, preventing the efficient capture of light, suspended food or some other resource. |
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| parasites feed off other organisms, usually larger than themselves, without killing them |
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| predators kill prey, usually smaller than themselves |
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| Occurs when a competitor recruits to and dominates a habitat, monopolizing all available space, precluding the establishment of potential competitors |
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| A response to some foregoing action or stimulus |
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| In succession, a site begins with two pioneer species. As the forest the species that grows best w/o much shade will prosper. After this species is established the shade tolerant species will eventually take over as it receives more shade underneath the canopy of the other species and prospers. |
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| Growing in poor land or waste places. |
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| The complete cycle of changes from the original state to the climax condition (e.g. oak-maple forest --> forest destroyed by fire--> meadow --> brushland --> young mixed conifer-deciduous forest --> oak-maple forest). |
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| Stress tolerators are plant species that live in areas of high intensity stress and low intensity disturbance. Species that have adapted this strategy generally have slow growth rates, long lived leaves, high rates of nutrient retention, and low phenotypic plasticity. |
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| a stage of succession along a sere prevented from progressing to the climatic climax (i.e., the steady-state community characteristic of a particular climate) by fire, grazing, and similar factors. |
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| Individuals of a species preferentially occupy desirable habitats and prevent other individuals from occupying the same site |
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| comprehensive reserve system |
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| refers to the inclusion within protected areas of samples of each of the ecosystems discernible at the bioregional scale, the likelihood of including functional assemblages of all species within a bioregion will be greatest when the full range of ecosystems present within an area is selected. |
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| The extent to which something is connected. |
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| representative reserve system |
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| is comprehensiveness considered at a finer scale, and infers that the variability within ecosystems is sampled within the reserve system. The consideration of representativeness aims to ensure that information on species distributions and intrinsic/genetic variations is included in the reserve system. The essential thing is that known species and genotypes are adequately reserved with the aim of maximising their viability within a bioregion, not necessarily that they are represented in every ecosystem in which they have been recorded. |
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