Questions for Lecture 15:  Communities:  Species Interactions

•  By the end of your preparation for this topic, you should be able to:

    © 1. Explain the different types of competition (resource competition; interference competition)
               between the various species.
 
    © 2. Discuss an experiment that supports the competitive exclusion principle.

    © 3. Discuss the concepts of niche, niche breadth, resource partitioning and specialization
               that are used to explain how several species can exist in a community.

    © 4. Discuss the different forms of predation and how the natural prey population is
               regulated by predation.

    © 5. Discuss ³Why is the world green?² when there are so many animals eating away plants.
               Please consider in your answer the means plants adopt to defend themselves
               mechanically, or by chemicals, or by mutualistic associations.

    © 6. Discuss a well-known mutualistic relationship between fungi and plant roots
               (mycorrhizae), see pp. 715-717, Raven and Johnson, 4th ed..
 
    © 7. In addition to those already discussed above, define the following concepts and terms:
               allelopathy; herbivory; insect parasitism; cannibalism; secondary metabolism;
               mutualism;  and compensatory growth.

Outline of presentation :
            For outline of presentation and for the legends of figures, see  the Handbook for the course "Biology 121 Notes, Spring, 1998, University of Illinois, Plant Biology: Ecology and Organismic Plant Biology" by Govindjee, Stipes  Publishing, Champaign,IL.
 
    © Slides used in the class are to be found elsewhere on these Web pages.