AP Biology Pre-Discussion Questions: Interactions 3- Community Interactions

Instructions:

Topic Presentation:

Textbook Reading:

Principles of Life:

OpenStax Biology:

Biozone Pages:

Supplementary Resources:

Crashcourse Biology Videos::

Videos by Paul Andersen:

Questions to answer:

Things you should make sure you understand:

Instructions:  

• Open the presentation.
• Interact with it.  Take notes as you wish.
• Self-Quiz 1: Answer the “Questions to answer”.
• Self- Quiz 2: Make sure you understand the “Things you should make sure you understand”.
• Feel free to view the “Supplementary Resources”.
• Write down any other questions that you have about the material.

Topic Presentation:  

click here

Textbook Reading:

Principles of Life:

• Chapter 44 (whole chapter)

OpenStax Biology:

• Chapter 44- All Sections
• Chapter 45- Section 45.6

Biozone Pages:

Volume 2:

• pp. 266 - 293

Supplementary Resources:

Crashcourse Biology Videos::

Community Ecology: Feel the Love - Crash Course Ecology #4

Community Ecology II: Predators - Crash Course Ecology #5

Ecological Succession: Change is Good - Crash Course Ecology #6

Videos by Paul Andersen:

“Niche”

“Communities”

“Coevolution”

“Ecological Succession”

“Biodiversity”

Questions to answer:

1. Explain how competition contributes to competitive exclusion, resource partitioning, and character displacement.
2. Explain how predation contributes to changes in coloration (aposematic and cryptic) and the evolution of mimicry (batesian and mullerian).
3. Provide examples of mutualism and parasitism, and explain how your examples fit those definitions.
4. Why are ecologists unsettled on whether or not there are any truly commensal interactions among organisms?
5. Explain the concept of facilitation.  Provide an example facilitator species and why it fits that definition.
6. What is biodiversity?  How is it measured?
7. Explain how tropic structure can be understood in terms of food chains and food webs.
8. How do keystone species and energetic considerations contribute to the tropic structure of an ecosystem?  Provide examples of the effects of each.
9. Describe the phenomena of disturbance and succession.
10. How do climate, area, and the island-like nature of an environment contribute to the structure of the community?

Things you should make sure you understand:

(feel free to ask questions about them in class)

• The details of all interactions discussed in this presentation and examples of each.
• How the interactions among members of a community can contribute to emergent properties in the ecosystem.
• How to calculate biodiversity of a community in terms of the shannon diversity index.
• The effects of community interactions on the trophic structure of a community.
• The effects of energetic and environmental factors on the trophic structure and the diversity of a community.
• How disturbance and succession specifically function to structure a community.
• How island-biogeographical theory can be used to analyze the trophic structure and diversity of a community.