community Interactions
Species and their Niches
RED APPLE Ice plant |
Black Ants |
One invasive species in my ecosystem is gophers. They begin to destroy the plants in the ecosystem that my father maintains. In response, my father maintains equilibrium by trapping them whenever possible. However, they are also essential to churning the nutirents through out the ecosystem, helping to ensure plant growth. If they were not present the plants may decline leading to less plants and fewer animals in the ecosystem. This makes them a possible keystone species.
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The ice plant's niche is just beyond the grass in my front yard. It has an effect on existing species, such as the honey bee, by providing pollen. It also acts as home to many bugs such as ants and beetles. Its water is provided by the sprinklers from the grass and it creates energy from the sun. Its space is shared by other organism such as grass and cacti that surround it.
The black ants live and travel in cracks in the concrete in my ecosystem. They scavenge for food through out the area. This helps the decomposition process in the energy flow of the area. They often use the various plants and get their water from the sprinklers.
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An example of co-evolution in my ecosystem would be the humming bird tree and the humming birds. This would adapt to specific flower timing to have the most flowers with the most humming birds durring spring time. This is also a mutalistic relationship with the humming bird receving food and the plant spreading its pollen.
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I was unable to easily identify examples of cryptic coloration, aposematic coloration, or mimicry.
Community ecology summary
Community ecology is the study of communities' interactions with in their ecosystem. In an ecosystem every community has a niche, or a part it plays with interactions to other communities. A fundamental niche is when a community is filling the ideal niche with no competition to other organisms. A realized niche is when a community cannot have the full potential for its niche due to competition. There are six ways organisms can interact between one another. First, is neutral relationships where both organisms are not affected. Next, is commensalism where one organism benefits and the other is unaffected. Then, mutualism is where both organisms benefit from interaction. Contrary to these, in intra-specific competition is disadvantageous to both organisms. Predation is another interaction between organisms where one organism feeds on the other, but does no take residence on the prey such as parasites. Lastly, parasitism is when one benefits and the other is harmed. There is also inter and intra specific competitions between organisms. Intra-specific competition is more fierce because it is competition in the same species, meaning they compete for all the same recourses. However, in inter-specific competition, although different species may compete for some of the same resources, they will not all be the same. One way organisms divide shared resources is by resource partitioning, where competition subdivide the resources between organisms. Some organisms have coevolution between species. This is when interactions between species select for each other to adapt in a new way. Examples of this include cryptic coloration: when prey evolve to camouflage to avoid predators and aposematic coloration: when prey are colored bright to warn other organism they are dangerous. This also is the reason for mimicry such as in mullein mimicry where both species with the same pattern are dangerous and bayesian mimicry where although two species are colored the same one is poisonous and the other is not, yet the mimicry keeps it safe from predators by looking like the ones who are.