Populations are groups of individuals of the same species that inhabit a shared environment. Communities include multiple co-existing, interacting…

To understand intra-specific interactions in populations, scientists measure the spatial arrangement of species individuals. This geographic…

Constrained by limited energy and resources, organisms must compromise between offspring quantity and parental investment. This trade-off is…

Organisms must balance energy intake with the energy required for growth, maintenance and reproduction. These trade-offs result in a variety of…

Population size is dynamic, increasing with birth rates and immigration, and decreasing with death rates and emigration. In ideal conditions with…

All organisms have a position within an ecosystem. The complete set of living and nonliving factors—including food resources, climate, and…

Ecological succession is influenced by the processes of facilitation, inhibition, and toleration. Facilitation occurs when early successional species…

Measures of species biodiversity, such as richness (i.e., the number of species present) and evenness (i.e., their relative abundance), describe an…

Symbiotic relationships are long-term, close interactions between individuals of different species that affect the distribution and abundance of…

When organisms require the same limited resources within an environment, they may have to compete for them. Competition is a net-negative…

Predators consume prey for energy. Predators that acquire prey and prey that avoid predation both increase their chances of survival and reproduction…

An ecological disturbance is a temporary disruption in the environment resulting from abiotic, biotic, or anthropogenic factors, causing a pronounced…

Coexistence theory has often treated environmental heterogeneity as being independent of the community composition; however biotic feedbacks such as…

The development of microbial communities depends on a combination of complex deterministic and stochastic factors that can dramatically alter the…

Growers often use fungicide sprays during bloom to protect crops against disease, which exposes bees to fungicide residues. Although considered…