Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Shelford's law of tolerance is a principle developed by American zoologist Victor Ernest Shelford in 1911. It states that an organism 's success is based on a complex set of conditions and that each organism has a certain minimum, maximum, and optimum environmental factor or combination of factors that determine success. [ 1 ]
All species have limits of tolerance to abiotic factors. Too much or too little of anything can lower their survival and reproductive success and cause reduced fitness. Changes in temperature resulting from global warming, for example, may cause a species to change its geographical distribution northward.
This form of competition typically manifests in new equilibrium abundances of each prey species. For example, suppose there are two species (species A and species B), which are preyed upon by food-limited predator species C. Scientists observe an increase in the abundance of species A and a decline in the abundance of species B.
An example of the effects of abiotic factors on species distribution can be seen in drier areas, where most individuals of a species will gather around water sources, forming a clumped distribution. Researchers from the Arctic Ocean Diversity (ARCOD) project have documented rising numbers of warm-water crustaceans in the seas around Norway's ...
A generalist species is able to thrive in a wide variety of environmental conditions and can make use of a variety of different resources (for example, a heterotroph with a varied diet). A specialist species can thrive only in a narrow range of environmental conditions or has a limited diet.
An example of direct competition. Intraspecific competition is an interaction in population ecology , whereby members of the same species compete for limited resources. This leads to a reduction in fitness for both individuals, but the more fit individual survives and is able to reproduce. [ 1 ]
Ecological facilitation or probiosis describes species interactions that benefit at least one of the participants and cause harm to neither. [1] Facilitations can be categorized as mutualisms, in which both species benefit, or commensalisms, in which one species benefits and the other is unaffected.
Graph shows principles of intermediate disturbance hypothesis: I. at low levels of ecological disturbance species richness decreases as competitive exclusion increases, II. at intermediate levels of disturbance, diversity is maximized because species that thrive at both early and late successional stages can coexist, III. at high levels of ...