國防大學生命科學研究所生態學特論上課講義

生態圈範疇、不同群落介紹及群落自
然演化

龍世俊 副研 究員
中央研 究院環 境變 遷研究 中心
Research Center for Environmental Changes

1.
 Ecology
 The study of how organisms interact with
each other and their physical
environment
 Nowadays, ecology has taken on new
meanings in social rather than scientific
contexts
 “environmentalist” vs. “ecologist”

2.
 Galaxies

Stars

Planets

Earth

Biosphere

Ecosystems
Biological
Communities
entities

Populations

Organisms

Organ systems

Organs

Tissues

Cells

Molecules

Atoms

Subatomic particles

3.
 Population
 a group of individuals of the same
species living in the same area
 there is no limit on the size of the area
 All populations undergo three distinct
phases during their existence:
 Growth, stability and decline

4.
 Definitions
 Intrinsic rate of increase = birth rate-
death rate
 Carry capacity: maximum population
size that can be sustained by an
environment for a long time, the
carrying capacity is usually briefly
exceeded by an “overshoot” phase
before the population levels off in the
stability phase
5.
 Four Basic Abundance Controls
 Physical environment
 Physical limitations
 Biological environment
 Competition
 Predation
 Symbiosis: mutualism, parasitism,
commensalism, amensalism

6.
7.
 Population decline
 Density-independent regulation vs.
density-dependent regulation
 Interaction of the factors
 Law of the minimum: growth is limited
by the resource in the shortest supply

8.
9.
 Population range
 Population maximum occurs where the
physical and biological factors that control
abundance are the most favorable
 Endemic species: localized and may have
just one population that inhabits only a small
area; this pattern is especially common in
tropical organisms and in organisms that are
highly specialized to live on resources with
limited distribution or that have narrow
environmental tolerances

10.
 Community
 A community consists of all population
that inhabit a certain area
 An ecosystem is that community plus
its physical environment
 Community structure: open vs. closed
 A closed community was a discrete unit
with sharp boundaries called ecotones;
an open community has populations
distributed randomly
11.
12.
 Community structure
 Most communities are open and most
species are rare in communities
 Terrestrial: tundra, grassland, desert,
taiga, temperate forest, tropical forest
 Aquatic: marine, freshwater

13.
14.
15.
 Community diversity
 Latitudinal diversity gradient describes
how species richness in most groups
steadily decreases going away from
the equator
 Depth diversity gradient shows how
species richness increases with water
depth, down to about 2000m
 Four interrelated factors: environmental
stability, community age, length of
growing season, nutrients
16.
 Community change through time
 Community succession is the
sequential replacement of species in a
community by immigration of new
species and the local extinction of old
ones
 Biomass, the total weight of living
tissue in a community, increases in
later stages because living tissue
accumulates
17.
Community change through time (2)
 Pioneering plants tend to be smaller in
size and exhibit rapid growth that
maximizes productivity; in later stages,
as more specialized, slower-growing
species begin to migrate in, productivity
declines
 In later stages, diversity increases with
more species with larger size and
longer life cycles
18.
19.