Community Composition What makes a biological community? How do species get memb

Question

Community Composition What makes a biological community? How do species get membership into a community? This is the big question of community ecology. Whatistheroleofcompetitionistheformationofbiologicalcommunities? Know the mechanisms of the Competition Hypothesis. 1. 2. 3. What is resource partitioning? Give examples. 4. Why is the extent of niche overlap critical? What might allow two species with extensive niche overlap to coexist in a locality? Competition/Interactions 1. Know the outcomes of competition and what factors affect those outcomes. 2. What is an ecological niche? What are the parameters in which a niche can be determined?

Explanation / Answer

1. It is an assemblage of populations of different species present in a particular geographic area and show interdependence and interaction like competition, predation, host-parasite interaction, amensalism etc make up a biological community. Membership of a species into a community depends upon the interaction of a particular species with the other species.

2. Species can compete with each other for limited resources and for the mates (partners) among the members of the same species. It is considered to be an important limiting factor of population size, biomass and species richness of a biological community.

Competition can be defined as an interaction between organisms or species in which both the organisms or species are harmed. If two species are competing for a limited resource, the species that uses the resource more efficiently will eventually eliminate the other locally. There are differnt mechanism of competitions which can generally be divided into direct and indirect or, intraspecific andinterspecific competition. Biologists typically recognize two types of competition: interference and exploitative competition.

3. Resource partitioning is the way in which species differ in their use of resources. For example warblers experience resource partitioning by their microhabitat which is the conifer tree. The species has very similar beak and body sizes. Even though they appear very similar, different warbler species forage in different parts of the tree.

4.  The niche is the distribution of a species relative to a range of environments/communities. There are certain common resources that everyone needs and thus arises competitions among the members of the same species or two different species. Because of competition and other biotic interactions, a species will be excluded from some part of its fundamental niche.

I have answered first four questions as the number of questions are more than four, if the answers of the rest questions are required, kindly frame the another question of rest part.

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