Environmental Science

Lecture-8
Individuals and species

Autoecology is the field within ecology that deals with the

study of:
Individuals,
Populations, and
Species.
Individuals and species

Important topics in autecology include the following:

Difference among species in
- Life-history characteristics and in
- Adaptations
to various kinds of environmental conditions.
Individuals and species

- Influences of the environment on individual organisms,

including effects on their development and behavior
- The cause of changes in the size and makeup of
populations
Life-History Characteristics

Each species is unique and can be described by its:

Anatomical,
Biochemical, and
Ecological
attributes.
These characteristics are ultimately determined by the
collective genetic variations that exist among the individuals
that comprise the species.
Life-History Characteristics

Each species is unique.

Nevertheless, species can be aggregated into groups based
on similarities of their attributes .
These affinities may be due to related species sharing
aspects of their evolutionary history. For example trees
(genus Acer) look rather alike and occur in habitats of
temperate forest.
Life-History Characteristics

Similarly, all members of the cat family (Felidae) bear a

certain resemblance and are ecologically comparable in that
all are:
Predators,
although of different prey and in different kinds of habitat.
Life-History Characteristics

However, unrelated species may also display similar

attributes, usually because they have had a history of
analogous changes through a phenomenon known as
evolutionary convergence ( or parallel evolution).
Life-History Characteristics

Convergence suggests that, through natural selection,

unrelated species living in comparable environments may
evolve to resemble each other and to play similar functional
roles in their ecosystem.
Life-History Characteristics

There are many examples of evolutionary convergence

among unrelated groups of organisms.
For instance, all perennial (long-lived ) plants growing in
arid environment have a need to conserve moisture.
Life-History Characteristics

The critical function is enhanced by a growth form that

includes adaptations to
Reduce water loss, such as
Cylindrical trunk and branches, tissues protected by a waxy
cuticle, and no leaves.
Life-History Characteristics

Thorniness is another trait in an arid environment because

spines deter herbivores from consuming biomass and stores
of water.
Many desert-inhabiting plants have developed one or more of
these adaptations, including species of
Cacti (arid habitat) ,
Euphorbs (flowering plants) and
Succulents (retain water in arid climates).
Life-History Characteristics

There are also examples of convergence among species of

animal.
One is the similarities of the timber wolf of Eurasia and
North America and the marsupial wolf of Australia.
Life-History Characteristics

Another example is the groundhog (large ground Squirrels) of

North America and the marsupial wombat of Australia.
Also, the Penguins of the Southern Hemisphere are similar
to the guillemots(gilluh-mots) , murres (MY-URES), puffins,
and related auks of the Northern Hemisphere.
Life-History Characteristics

Ecologists often categorize plant species on the basis of their

autecology(study of individual organisms).
One system is based on the adaptations of plants for coping
with certain kinds of habitat conditions.
Life-History Characteristics

The ecologists Philip Grime has suggested that plant

strategies can be divided into three basic categories, which
are determined by
- Life history and its relationship
to habitat.
Life-History Characteristics

This system proposes that two groups of environmental

factors-Disturbance and
Stress-
have a strong influence on the evolution of plant life-history
strategies.
Life-History Characteristics

Disturbance may be :
Frequent or uncommon occurrences, and severe or mild in
its intensity. Stress is a longer-term site condition, and it can
be intense if associated with an extreme shortage of
moisture, light, or nutrients, or innocuous if these vital
factors are well available.
Life-History Characteristics

Any environment can be characterized by the importance of

these two group of factors, which result in four basic kinds
of habitat conditions.
Life-History Characteristics

1. Low stress and rare disturbance

2. Low stress but frequent disturbance
3. Intense stress but rare disturbance
4. Intense stress and frequent disturbance.
The three primary life-history strategies are
Competitors, Ruderals, and Stress tolerators.

C
Life-History Characteristics

- Competitor
These plants are dominant in habitats in which disturbance is
rare and environmental stresses are relatively unimportant.
Under such condition, competition is the major selective
influence on plant evolution and on the organization of their
communities.
Life-History Characteristics

Competitive plants are effective at acquiring resources and

using them to achieve a dominant position in their
community by interfering with the productivity of other
plants.
Life-History Characteristics

Useful adaptations in competitors include

► Rapid tall growth,
► Spreading canopy, and
► Widely spreading root system-
these characteristics help to occupy space and take
advantage of resources.
In addition, seedlings of many competitive plants can
establish themselves beneath a closed canopy.
Life-History Characteristics

-Ruderals
They occur in frequent disturbed environments with
abundant resources, so stress is not great.
Ruderal plants are therefore well adapted to utilizing rich
but temporary habitats.
They are typically short-lived and intolerant of stress and
competition.
Life-History Characteristics

Ruderals produce large number of seeds, which usually

have mechanisms for long-distance dispersal so that newly
disturbed habitats can be colonized.
Life-History Characteristics

Stress-Tolerators
They are adapted to environments that are marginal in terms
of climate, moisture, nutrient supply, but are infrequently
disturbed and therefore stable.
They are typical of arctic , desert, and other stressful
environments, and are generally short, slow-growing, and
intolerant of competition.
Life-History Characteristics

Another system of categorizing organisms, more commonly

applied to animals, involve two groups of life-history
characteristics.
One consists of longer-lived organisms that produce relative
few progeny, but invest a lot of resources in each to improve
their chance of survival.
These are known as K-selected species.
Life-History Characteristics

The other group, referred to as r-selected , includes short-

lived species that produce large number of small offspring,
each of which has a relatively small chance of survival, but
due to the enormous numbers it is likely that some will
persist.
Life-History Characteristics

K-selected species are dominant in relatively stable,

mature habitats in which competition is the controlling
influence on community structure, while r-selected species
occur in younger, recently disturbed habitats in which
resources are freely available and rapid population growth is
possible.
Life-History Characteristics

Species can also be considered in terms of other aspects of

their reproductive strategy, such as how often they
reproduce.
Some species have only one reproductive event during their
lifetime, usually dying afterwards.
Life-History Characteristics

This type of reproduction , known as semalparous , is seen

in
annual plants and
biennial plants,
many inspects and other invertebrates, and Pacific salmon.
Life-History Characteristics

Most semelparous (single reproductive episode) species are

short-lived, but some can live for many years, gradually
accumulating enough energy to sustain a massive , “big-
bang” reproductive effort.
Semelparous reproduction is favoured in rich habitats that
are frequently disturbed, and it is common among Ruderal
and selected species.
Life-History Characteristics

Species that reproduce a number of times during their lives

are known as iteroparous (multiple reproductive episode).
These are typically long-lived species that live in stable
habitats.
Life-History Characteristics

Iteroparous species may produce large numbers of small

offspring
(r-selected),
Or
they may produce fewer, larger young, each of which receives
a substantial investments of parental resources (K-selected).
Autecology also deals with the lives of individual organisms
and how they are influenced by their physical and biological
environments.
Life-History Characteristics

As we know that all individual organisms have a fixed

complement of genetic information, known as their
genotype.
However, the expression of genetic information (the
phenotype) is influenced by environmental conditions, a
phenomenon known as phenotypic plasticity.
Life-History Characteristics

If individuals experience difficult environmental conditions,

the phenotypical expression of their genetic potential may
include a suboptimal growth rate and the reproduction of
few or no progeny.
In contrast, other individuals that live in a more benign
environment can achieve higher productivity and have many
offspring.
Life-History Characteristics

The latter, more prolific circumstances is highly desirable in

terms of an individual achieving evolutionary “success”.
By definition, successful individuals have managed to
maximize their fitness-their genetic contribution to future
generations.
Life-History Characteristics

The success of an individual organisms is also affected by

unpredictable disturbance, which may result in injury or premature
death.
Even if living in benign environment, with good access to the
necessities of life,
An unlucky individual may just happen to be:
scorched(burned) by a wildfire,
devoured by a predator,
debilitated by a disease, or
hit by a truck.
Life-History Characteristics

There are several important points to understand about

population ecology:
- Population of all species are dynamic. They change over
time due to varying rates of birth, death, immigration,
and emigration.
- Population of all species can, potentially, increase rapidly
under conditions in which resource availability and other
factors that are not constraining.
-
Life-History Characteristics

- Some populations are relatively stable.

Usually they exist in environments in which resource
availability is predictable so that a balance can be achieved
with the carrying capacity.
For example, relatively little change occurs in the year-to-
year populations of trees growing in old-growth forest,
unless a rare, catastrophic disturbance occurs.
Life-History Characteristics

-Other populations are relatively dynamic,

changing over time and
rarely achieving even a short-term balance with the carrying
capacity of their habitat.
Community Ecology

An ecological community is an aggregation of populations

that occur in the same time and place as a distinctive
grouping, and that interact ----- Physically,
► Chemically, and/ or
► Behaviorally.
Community Ecology

The study of relationships among species within communities

is known as synecology.
Strictly speaking, a community consist of all:
► plant,
► animal, and
► microbial
populations occurring together on a site.
Community Ecology

The Niche: Each species within a community exploits the

environment and interacts with other species in a particular
manner.

Ecologists use the word niche to describe the role of species

in its community, which can be viewed as its “ occupation”
or livelihood.
Community Ecology

Some niches are relatively

-narrow and
- specialized,
- Examples includes
- 1. the niche of bats that feed only on flying inspects of a
certain size
- 2. wasps that pollinate only one or a few species of
plants.
Community Ecology

Other niches, however are much broader, such as those of:

Bears and
Humans,
They forage over an extremely broad range and effect their
ecosystem in diverse ways.
Community Ecology

The so-called fundamental niche is determined by the range of a

species’ tolerance of environmental conditions.
These tolerances are reflected in the following ways:
- The ways species obtains its nutrition and
- How it interacts with other species, and
they are mediated by aspects of
Behavior,
Morphology, and
Physiology.
Community Ecology

In comparison, the realized niche reflects the range of

environmental conditions that a species actually manages to
exploit in nature.

The realized niche is smaller than the fundamental niche because

all species are to some degree constrained by biological
interaction such as
► competition,
► predation, and
► disease.
Community Ecology

Disturbance:
It is an event of destruction of some part of a community, an
occurrence that is followed by a sometimes pronged(divided)
period of ecological recovery called
succession.
Community Ecology

All communities are

dynamic,
changing over time in their
species composition and functional attributes ( such as
productivity, decomposition, and nutrient cycling).
Community Ecology

However, the rate of change depends on the stability of

environmental conditions, which is greatest in communities
that are closed to the end-point of a succession.
Community Ecology

In contrast, the most dynamic communities are associated

with the younger stages of succession.
Disturbance can occur on two special scales.
Community Ecology

- Stand-placing disturbance: They are caused by

wildfire,
a disease epidemic,
clear-cutting, and other
cataclysmic events.
This kind of disturbance is extensive and results in the
immediate replacement of community with a different one,
followed by a period of successional recovery.
Community Ecology

Over time, succession may regenerate a community similar

to what existed before the disruption, or different one may
result.
The younger stages of a sere (seeuh) (dry and bewildered)
(successional sequence) are especially dynamics in terms of
community change.
Community Ecology

During the initial years of recovery, competition is not

intense, and Ruderal, r-selected species dominate.
Later stages of succession are much less dynamic, and
selected species dominate.
Community Ecology

Microdisturbance: These are local disruptions that affect

small areas within an otherwise intact community.
A microdisturbance may, for instance, be associated with:
The death of an individual large tree,
which results in a gap in the canopy, below which community
change is relatively dynamic as species compete to take
advantage of the additional sunlight.
Community Ecology

Similarly, the death of an individual Coral Head represents a

microdisturbance within a tropical reef community.
Although ecological changes are dynamic within a gap
created by a recent microdisturbance,
at the second level the community is relatively stable.
Community Ecology

Gap-phase community dynamics occur in all ecosystems but

are especially important during later stages of succession,
such as in older-growth forests.
Community Ecology

Ecosystem are occasionally subjected to

catastrophic disturbances, such as these forest fires
in 2002 in the boreal forest of northern Quebec.
The individual fires are marked with a red dot, and
their smoke plumes are blowing to the south.
The large white mass at the bottom right is cloud
cover.
Biomes: Global Ecosystems

A biome is a geographically extensive type of

ecosystem.
A particular biome occurs wherever environmental
conditions are suitable for its development,
anywhere in the world.
Biomes are characterized by the life forms of their
dominant organisms, but not necessarily by their
particular species.
Biomes: Global Ecosystems

Biomes are characterized by the life forms of their

dominant organisms, but not necessarily by their particular
species.
On land, biomes are generally identified by their mature or
older-growth vegetation.
Biomes: Global Ecosystems

In contrast, aquatic biomes are usually distinguished by

their dominant animals.
Biomes are classified using a system that is used at an
international level- that is, by ecologists working in many
countries.
Biomes

Over much of northern Canada the boreal coniferous forest

is dominated by stands of black spruce.
In the boreal forest of northern Europe, Siberia, and
northern parts of Japan, Korea, and China, there are other
species of coniferous trees.
In some cases there may be stands dominated by hardwood
trees, such as trembling aspen in parts of northern Canada.
Biomes

We must also note that any particular biome is

described on the basis of its dominant, most
extensive kind of ecological communities.
For the boreal forest, this is usually stands of
coniferous trees. However, biomes are not
homogeneous, and they contain other kinds of wide-
spread communities.
Biomes (Disturbances)

In addition , local areas may be subjected to

occasional catastrophic disturbances , which may
result in a landscape being composed of a mosaic
stands of various stages ( and ages) of ecological
recovery, called succession.
The Major Biomes

Natural biomes are characterized by their dominant

ecological communities, which are composed of particular
assemblages of:
Plants,
Animals, and other
Microorganisms.
There are also anthropogenic(pollution) ecosystem that are
strongly influenced by humans and their activities, such as
cities and agricultural land.
The Major Biomes

In fact, all of the modern biomes have been

influenced by people to some degree- at the very
least, all organisms in even the most remote places
now contain trace contaminations of organichlorine
chemicals (such as DDT and PCBs) that humans have
manufactured and dispersed into the environment.
Various Division of Biomes

Terrestrial Biomes:
Tundra is a treeless biome that occurs in environment with a
long, cold winter and a short, cool growing season.
There are two types of tundra:
Alpine
Arctic.
Alpine occurs at highest elevations in mountain regions, even
in tropical countries.
Various Division of Biomes

Arctic tundra occurs at high latitudes- that is, in :

Northern regions of the Northern Hemisphere and
Southern parts of the Southern Hemisphere.
Various Division of Biomes

Most tundras (permanently frozen parts of the earth

surface) are a meteorological desert because they receive
sparse precipitation.
Nevertheless, the soil may be moist or wet because the cold
environment restricts the amount of evaporation that occur,
and frozen soil may prevent deep drainage of water.
Various Division of Biomes

Freshwater Biomes
Lentic ecosystem contain standing or very slowly flowing
water, as occurs in lakes and ponds.
The ecological character of lentic systems is most strongly
influenced by water chemistry, particularly its
-Transparency and
-Nutrient
concentration.
Various Division of Biomes

Waters that are sell supplied with nutrients are highly

productive (eutrophic), while infertile waters are
unproductive (oligotrophic).
In general shallow waterbodies are much more productive
than deeper ones of a comparable surface area.
Various Division of Biomes

However, water bodies with poor transparency are

much less productive than might be predicted on
the basis of their nutrient supply.
Various Division of Biomes

Marine Biomes
The open ocean consists of pelagic and benthic ecosystem.
The pelagic (open-water) ecosystem is strongly influenced by
physical and chemical factors, particularly
Waves, Tides, Currents, Salinity, Temperature,
Light intensity, and
Nutrient concentration.
Various Division of Biomes

In Marine Biomes, the rate of productivity is small, and

comparable to that of
Terrestrial desert.
Various Division of Biomes

The primary production is associated with

phytoplankton, which ranges in size from:
Extremely small photosynthesis bacteria
to
Larger unicellular and colonial algae.
Various Division of Biomes

The phytoplankton are gazed by tiny animals ,

known as zooplankton which are eaten in turn by
large
zooplankton and
small fish.
BEST OF LUCK