Community Interactions

QUICK REVIEW

•What is community?
•What is population?
 Community Interactions
• Powerfully affect an ecosystem
• Include:
– Competition
– Predation
– Symbiosis
 Competition
• When organisms of the same or different
species attempt to use an ecological
resource at the same place and the
same time
– Resource any necessity to life
– Plants and animals compete
– Winner and losers
• Interspecific competition
– Competition between same two species
– When 2 or more species rely on same
limited resource in a community
– Ex. African savannah
 Niche
• Each species unique living arrangement in
a community
• “Role”
– Think about a specific position player on a
team i.e. pitcher on a baseball team
• Ex. Lizards in a rainforest
• Includes:
– Habitat
– Food sources
– Time of day organism is most active
 Rules, rules, rules
• Fundamental rule in ecology
– Competitive Exclusion Principle
• Russian biologist G.F. Gause
– Paramecium caudatum vs. Paramecium
aurelia
– Separately, both thrive in a culture
– P. aurelia could gather food more quickly
than the P. caudatum, therefore, if they are
grown together, P. aurelia will thrive while
P. caudatum will die out
• 2 species so similar in requirements that the
same resource limits both population’s
growth, and one species may succeed
over another
• No two species can occupy the same niche
in the same habitat and the same time
 Competitive Exclusion:

The Ciliate Paramecium over 24 d

Grown in
Separate
Flasks

Grown in
the Same
Flask

9
 Predation
• Interaction where an organism captures
and feeds on another organism
• Predator
– Organism that does the killing and eating
• Prey
– Organism that is being killed and eaten
(victim)
•
 Predator Adaptations
• Speed
• Agility
• Coloring/camouflage to ambush prey
• Packs/teams
– Ex. Wolves
• Acute senses
– Ex. Rattle snake heat sensor organs
• Claws, teeth, fangs, stingers, poison
 Camouflage Assists Predators
(a)

Frogfish

(b)

Cheetah

17
 Camouflage by Blending in

Nightjar (bird)

Sand dab (fish)

18
 Camouflage

• To avoid detection by
predators, some animals
have evolved to resemble
objects such as bird
droppings, leaves, or thorns

19
A Plant That Mimics a Rock

Cactus

Chapter 27 20
 Prey adaptations
• Safe locations
• Flee
• Coloring/camouflage to hide
• Defensive coloration
– “warning coloration”
• Mimicry
– Organisms imitate dangerous organisms by
appearance and actions
• Hawk moth larva
• Plants
– Thorns, spines, poisonous chemicals
 Camouflage by
Resembling Specific Objects
Moth
Leafy Sea
Dragon-sea
droppings leaves/weed

Treehoppers- leaves
Chapter 27 22
Warning Coloration

Chapter 27 23
Chapter 27 25
 Protection Through Mimicry

• Snowberry flies avoid by jumping spider

predation by mimicking them both
visually and behaviorally

26
 Visual and Behavioral Mimicry
(a)

(b)

27
 Protection Through Mimicry

• Some animals deter predators by

employing startle coloration
– Have spots that resemble eyes of a large
predator

28
 Startle Coloration
Peacock moth

Swallowtail butterfly caterpillar

Chapter 27 29
 Chemical Warfare

• Both predators and prey have evolved

toxic chemicals for attack and defense
• Spiders and poisonous snakes use
venom to paralyze their prey and deter
predators
• Many plants have evolved chemicals to
deter herbivores
• Bombardier beetle sprays hot chemicals
from its abdomen
30
Chemical Warfare

31
 Coevolutionary Adaptations

• Plants have evolved a variety of

chemicals to deter herbivores
– Example: the toxic and distasteful
chemicals in milkweed
• Some animals evolve ways to detoxify
these chemicals, allowing them to eat
the plants
– Plants may then evolve other toxic
substances

32
The monarch butterfly
uses deterrent chemicals
of milkweed, acquired by a
feeding caterpillar, to make
itself distasteful to its
predators

Chapter 27 33
 Symbiosis
• Any relationship where
two species live
closely together
• Symbiosis literally
means “living
together”
• 3 main types
– Parasitism
– Mutualism
– commensalism
 What type of relationship is this?
• Who is helping who?
 Mutualism
• Both species benefit
from the
relationship
• A Happy couple
• Flowers and bees
– Flowers need bees
for pollination,
bees need
flowers nectar
What type of relation ship is going
on here?
•Who is helping
who?
 Commensalism
• One member of the relationship benefits
while the other is neither harmed nor
helped
• One-sided
• Rare in nature
• Food or shelter
• Barnacles on whale
• Seaweed on back of crab
What type of interaction is going on
here?
 Parasitism
• One organism lives on or inside another
organism and harms it
• Parasite obtains all or part of its nutrients from
the other organism
• Host
– Organism that is harmed in relation ship; the one
that provides the nutrients to the parasite
• Parasite
– Organism that gets its nutrients from the host
• Do they want to kill their host?
– No, because they need them…they will weaken or
hurt the host in some way
Symbiosis

Chapter 27 48
 Recap
• What are the three types of interactions in
a community?
– Competition
– Predation
– Symbiosis
• What types do we have?
– Mutualism
– Commensalism
– Parasitism
 Ecological Succession
• Do all ecosystems stay the same all the
time?
• What are some things that cause changes
to ecosystems?
– Natural and unnatural
– Quickly and slowly

• Ecosystems are constantly changing in
response to human and natural
disturbances.
• As an ecosystem changes, older habitants
die out and new organisms move in,
causing more change
 Ecological Succession
• Series of predictable changes that occur in
a community over time
– Physical environment
– Natural disturbance
– Human disturbance

Primary Succession
• Succession on land
that occurs on
surfaces where
no soil exists
• Volcanic eruptions
• Glaciers melting
•
 Stages of Primary Succession
• Start with no soil, just ash and rock
• First species to populate this area
– “pioneer species”
– For example, pioneer species on volcanic
rock are lichens (LY-kunz)
• Lichens made up of fungus and algae that
can grow on bare rock
• When lichens die, they for organic material
that becomes soil…now plants can grow


•
 Secondary Succession
• Succession following a disturbance that
destroys a community without destroying
the soil
• Natural
– hurricane
– fires
• Human disturbances
– Farming
– Forest clearing
 Succession in Marine Ecosystems

• Deep and dark

• Can succession happen?
• 1987 dead whale off of California
– Unique community of organisms living in
remains
– Represents stage in succession in an
otherwise stable, deep-sea ecosystem
– Whale-fall community

 Whale-Fall Succession
• Begins when large whale dies
– Sinks to barren ocean floor
– Scavengers and decomposers flock to carcass , our first community
• Amphipods
• Hagfish
• sharks
• After a year, most tissues have been eaten
– Now, second small community of organisms live here
– Body is decomposing, releasing nutrients into the water
• Small fishes
• Crabs
• Snails
• worms
• Only skeleton remains…
– Third community moves in
• Heterotrophic bacteria
• Decompose oil in bones release of chemical compounds
• Who uses these chemical compounds?
– Chemoosynthetic autotrophs
• In come the crabs, clams, and worms that feed on this bacteria
 Human Activity and Species
Diversity
• Land clearing
– Farmland
– Diverse forest replaced with single crop
– Decreases species diversity
• Introduced species
– Humans move a species from its native
land to a new location, intentionally or
accidentally
Study Chapter 35, Population Ecology and Community Interactions

Teacher,