Title: Goals & Learning Objectives - chp 57
Course: BIO-182 RTZ > Section: week 13 - Community Structure

GOALS and LEARNING OBJECTIVES (Chapter 57:  Community Ecology)

GOALS:

- Understand the structure of communities, including food webs, trophic levels, diversity, and species interactions
- Describe factors that influence communities, including habitat, latitude, disturbances, and succession

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

1. Describe the structure of a community and explain why the boundaries of communities may be difficult to define.
2. Describe the general importance of photosynthesizers for communities. Explain why net primary production is important for a community.
3. Define ‘trophic level.’ Diagram and example community and describe the flow of energy through it.
4. Compare and contrast a food web and a biomass pyramid.
5. Explain why the numbers of individuals and amount of biomass decline as one ascends trophic levels.
6. Give an example of a keystone species and explain why that species has a disproportionate influence on its community.
7. Define ‘species richness’ and contrast that with species evenness.
8. Define ‘habitat island’ and explain why the tenets of island biogeography apply to habitat islands.
9. Give examples of small and large disturbances and summarize their consequences.
10. Compare and contrast primary and secondary succession. Define “climax community.”
11. Explain why communities with more species tend to be more stable.
12. Explain why monocultures are unstable and how polycultures might counteract the vulnerability of monocultures.

KEY TERMS:

climax community, community, cyclical succession, decomposer, detritivore, detritus, directional succession, disturbance, ecological efficiency, ecosystem engineer, evapotranspiration, facilitation, food chain, food web, gross primary productivity (GPP), habitat island, heterotrophic succession, island biogeography, keystone species, monoculture, net primary productivity (NPP), omnivore, primary consumer, primary producer, primary succession, secondary consumer, secondary succession, species evenness, species richness, species–area relationship, succession, trophic cascade, trophic level