BIO153H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 50-55: Ecological Study, Northern Hemisphere, Ecosystem Diversity
Document Summary
Key concepts: ecology focuses on how organisms interact with their environment. Climate specifically, both the average value and annual variation in temperature and in moisture is the primary factor that limits the distribution and abundance of terrestrial species: climate varies with latitude, elevation, and other factors. In addition to abiotic aspects of the environment such as physical structure and climate, species distribution is constrained by historical and biotic factors: section 50. 1 outline: areas of ecological study, organismal ecology. In ecology, researchers work at four main levels: organisms, populations, communities, and ecosystems. Organismal ecology: organismal ecologists explore the morphological, physiological, and behavioral adaptations that allow individual organisms to live successfully in a particular area. Population ecology: a population is a group of individuals of the same species that live in the same area at the same time, population ecologists focus on how the numbers of individuals in a population change over time.
