Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Niche construction. Beavers hold a very specific biological niche in the ecosystem: constructing dams across river systems. Niche construction is the ecological process by which an organism alters its own (or another species') local environment. These alterations can be a physical change to the organism’s environment, or it can encompass the ...
Habitat fragmentation describes the emergence of discontinuities (fragmentation) in an organism's preferred environment (habitat), causing population fragmentation and ecosystem decay. [2] Causes of habitat fragmentation include geological processes that slowly alter the layout of the physical environment [3] (suspected of being one of the ...
Human ecology is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments. The philosophy and study of human ecology has a diffuse history with advancements in ecology, geography, sociology, psychology, anthropology, zoology, epidemiology, public health, and home ...
Habitat fragmentation produces discontinuity in an organism's habitat, so that interbreeding is limited. Fragmentation can be caused by many factors, including geological processes or a human-caused events. Fragmentation may further allow genetic drift to lower local genetic diversity. Climate change is a drastic and enduring change in weather ...
Pyroptosis. Pyroptosis is a highly inflammatory form of lytic programmed cell death that occurs most frequently upon infection with intracellular pathogens and is likely to form part of the antimicrobial response. This process promotes the rapid clearance of various bacterial, viral, fungal and protozoan infections by removing intracellular ...
A subfield of genetics and evolutionary biology that studies genetic differences within and between populations of organisms. position effect. Any effect on the expression or functionality of a gene or sequence that is a consequence of its location or position within a chromosome or other DNA molecule.
Allopatric speciation (from Ancient Greek ἄλλος (állos) 'other' and πατρίς (patrís) 'fatherland') – also referred to as geographic speciation, vicariant speciation, or its earlier name the dumbbell model [1]: 86 – is a mode of speciation that occurs when biological populations become geographically isolated from each other to an extent that prevents or interferes with gene flow.
Ecological niche. The flightless dung beetle occupies an ecological niche: exploiting animal droppings as a food source. In ecology, a niche is the match of a species to a specific environmental condition. [1][2] It describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors (for example, by growing when ...