Biogeography (4: 1-12)

Climate and Plant Communities

 Plant communities in similar climates all looked similar, even though they contained
completely different species.
Differential Energy Input from the Sun
 The Earth tends to be warmer near the Equator than near the poles because the
intensity of solar energy in equatorial regions is greater. (Rays hit @ direct angle @
Equator vs. indirect angle @ poles)
 2 Factors that cause the Equator to be heated more strongly by the Sun, both on land
and water
o Incoming light intercepts a larger surface area near the poles, so the same
amount of incoming radiation is spread over a larger area of land or water.
o Light reaching the poles hits at an angle rather than from directly overhead, the
rays must travel through more atmosphere, which tends to dissipate more of
their energy, leaving less to reach the surface.
 Solar radiation striking directly at the Equator covers a smaller area on Earth’s surface
than the same amount of radiation striking at an oblique angle near the poles.
The Tilt and Orbit of the Earth Create Seasons

 The tilt of Earth’s axis is responsible for the seasons. As Earth traces its orbit around the
Sun, the angle between the orbital plane and Earth’s axis of rotation remains fixed. The
Northern Hemisphere therefore receives more sunlight in May, June, and July while the
Southern Hemisphere receives more sunlight in November, December, and January.
Atmospheric Circulation
 Hadley Cell: a largest and steadiest convection cell that circulates air and determines
large-scale patterns of precipitation and moisture as well
1. Hadley Cell Formation: Intense solar heating at the equator warms air near the
surface, allowing it to absorb substantial amounts of moisture.
 2. Warm Air Rises: As the air warms, it expands, causing it to rise.
3. Expanding Air Cools: As the air expands, it not only rises, but cools, allowing
clouds to form.
4. Moisture condenses: Cold air can hold less moisture, so the moisture condenses
and falls as rain over tropical regions.
5. Dry Air Pushed Poleward: As more air rises, it pushes the now dry air towards the
poles.
6. Dry Air Falls: As this dry air continues to cool, it grows denser, eventually sinking
near 30 N and 30 S. This dry air creates bands of deserts at these latitudes.
7. Return to Equator: The dry, dense air flows back towards the Equator, where it is
once again warmed.
8. Warm Wet Air Rises: The warm air picks up moisture and begins to rise,
competing the cell.
 Intertropical convergence zone: where two Hadley cells converge; lush green vegetation
 Earth’s topography affects how air flows across its surface (mountains and continental
coasts). The rotation of the Earth also affects circulation patterns, causing winds to be
deflected to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern
Hemisphere.
Biomes
 Biome: a community of plants and animals that have common characteristics for the
environment they exist in; characterized chiefly by its prevailing climate and vegetation.
Habitat Conservation
 Detailed maps of biomes and ecoregions are useful for conservation planning because
they help conservation biologists identify areas of outstanding biological diversity and
help conservation biologists determine which areas are representative, unique, or
redundant.
Section Summary:
 Because the Earth is round, the intensity of solar radiation is lower in the poles than
near the Equator.
 The tile of the Earth’s axis relative to its orbital plane creates seasonality.
 Differential heating from the Sun across the globe creates air and water currents, such
as Hadley cells.
 Large-scale air circulation patterns tend to create a band of wet areas near the Equator
and deserts to the north and south of the Equator.
 Differences in climate and geography give rise to a variety of biomes around the world.
 Biomes serve as one important way of organizing conservation priorities.
Ecosystem Ecology (1:8-11, 2:1-11, 16-21, 4:1-13)
What are Ecosystems?
 Ecosystem: biotic + abiotic components
Photosynthesis Powers Most Ecosystems
 Autotroph: synthesize organic molecules from inorganic building blocks through the
process of primary production
 Primary Production: creation of new biomass from inorganic molecules; plants are
responsible for the bulk of primary production by using photosynthesis
o Gross primary production: rate at which photosynthesis occurs
o Net primary production: rate at which biomass accumulates; the rate at which
energy is captured during photosynthesis and the rate at which energy is lost as
heat.
o GPP-Ra (autotrophic respiration)=NPP
 Process
o Some energy is absorbed by the tree; some is reflected.
o Some absorbed energy is re-radiated as heat; the rest powers GPP (Gross
Primary Production)
o The plant consumes some GPP to produce energy during respiration. This energy
is lost as heat.
o Net primary production is the difference between GPP and respiration.
Section Summary:
 Ecosystems are systems that include both the abiotic environment and the biotic
community within a defined area. Ecosystem ecology focuses on how energy flows
through, and materials cycle within, ecosystems.
 Primary production is the rate at which organisms capture and store energy. In most
ecosystems, plants are the principal primary producers, capturing energy via
photosynthesis.
 Respiration is the burning of sugar by an organism in order to conduct work. During
respiration, energy is lost as heat.
 Net primary production is the difference between gross primary production (the rate at
which energy is captured) and autotrophic respiration (the rate at which plants lose
energy to do work). Net primary production is the energy available for growth and
reproduction.
Measuring Net Primary Production
 When respiration is greater than primary production, CO2 increases, and when primary
production is greater than respiration, CO2 decreases.
 NEP is the difference between gross primary production and ecosystem respiration.
NEP=GPP (gross primary production) – Re (ecosystem respiration)
 The CO2 concentrations are highest at night near the forest floor. At noon, CO2
concentrations are relatively low throughout the forest canopy.
What Limits Aquatic Primary Production?
 In order to grow, phytoplankton must obtain sufficient quantities of these and other
nutrients from their environment, and primary production can be slowed if any
 required nutrient is in short supply. Because nutrients limit ocean phytoplankton, the
most productive ocean regions are near river mouths and upwelling zones where key
nutrients are plentiful.
What Limits Terrestrial Primary Production?
 While light and nutrient availability are critically important at both local and regional
scales, the two most important drivers of terrestrial NPP at larger scales are
temperature and precipitation.
 Across the globe, GPP is highest during the summer, but summer occurs at the opposite
time of the year in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. In the North, summer is
from June to August while in the South summer is from December to February. This
difference is what drives the seasonal swings. Seasonal swings in GPP are higher in the
Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere because the Northern
Hemisphere has more land.
 Seasonal variation in CO2 concentrations should be greater in the Northern Hemisphere
because its land area is greater than the Southern Hemisphere’s.
 If NEP on land drives changes in CO2, you would expect the rise and fall to be
proportional to land area, and you would expect CO2 to increase during each
hemisphere’s winter and decrease during their summers. This means the cycles in the
two hemispheres should be out of sync.
 The largest CO2 decreases were observed during the Northern’s Hemisphere’s summer
when primary production was rapid. Conversely, CO2 increased over the intervening
months when respiration exceeded GPP in the Northern Hemisphere.
Section Summary:
 Food quality affects consumption efficiencies, which in turn affects what proportion of
the energy moving through an ecosystem passes through the grazer versus the detrital
system.
 Just as heterotrophic organisms rely on other organisms to supply their energy,
heterotrophic ecosystems rely on other ecosystems for theirs.
 In all ecosystems, the amount of energy in a trophic level declines as you move from
primary producers to higher trophic levels.
 Some ecosystems, like grasslands, have biomass and numbers pyramids that resemble
those based on energy. Other ecosystems, such as forests or aquatic systems, have
biomass and numbers pyramids that are quite different from their energy pyramids.
 Residence time describes how quickly energy flows through an ecosystem. Residence
times are higher where organisms are long-lived (forests) and short where organisms
are short-lived (open ocean ecosystems).
Nutrient Cycling (1:11-18, 2:1-6,8-21, 4)
Section Summary:
 Nutrients move around an ecosystem via a series of chemical transformations.
 In the case of nitrogen, these transformations occur within a series of five identifiable
stages: fixation, immobilization, mineralization, nitrification, and denitrification.
 Microorganisms are vital to all stages of nitrogen cycling. Since microorganisms tend to
be sensitive to temperature, moisture, and other environmental conditions, the
processes of nitrogen cycling are too.
 Plants cannot utilize atmospheric nitrogen and, therefore, rely on microorganisms to fix
nitrogen and convert it into plant-useable forms, such as ammonium.
 Plants convert inorganic nitrogen into organic nitrogen compounds which can be stored
in plant and animal tissues, soil, and sediments. This is the process of immobilization.
 Mineralization is the opposite of immobilization: organic nitrogen gets broken down
back into inorganic ammonia and ammonium.
 Free-living bacteria convert ammonia and ammonium into nitrites and nitrates in the
process of nitrification.
 Some of the nitrite and nitrate produced by nitrification is converted into gaseous forms
of nitrogen which are released back into the atmosphere. This is denitrification.
 The movement of nitrogen and other macronutrients through a terrestrial ecosystem is
closely tied to the cycling of water.
 The overall processes of nitrogen cycling are similar in aquatic and terrestrial
ecosystems. Water flow in streams and rivers create a “spiraling” pattern of cycling.
 The balance of nitrogen inputs and outputs can be greatly affected by disturbance. A
severe disturbance to a terrestrial ecosystem can lead to a net loss of nitrogen.
Physiological Ecology (2:1-17, 4:1-25)
Section Summary:
 Individuals can acclimate to changes in their environment, such as a changing
temperature, by adjusting their physiology.
 Populations can adapt to changes in their environment over several generations, as
alleles that function better in the new environment are selected for and become more
common.
 There are limits to the environmental conditions to which a species can acclimate, and
also limits to which it can adapt. However, a species can usually adapt to a larger range
of environments that it can acclimate to.
 A difference between individuals from the same species at two different temperatures
may be due to either acclimation or adaptation.
 Some forms of acclimation are reversible if the environment changes again. Others are
irreversible.
Photosynthesis:
 Water + carbon dioxide + energy -> glucose + oxygen + water
 Light reactions: sunlight hitting chlorophyll molecules energizes electrons to power
creation of first NADPH, then ATP + oxygen
 Light-independent reactions: Rubisco uses the energy stored in NADPH and ATP from
the light reactions to carry out carbon fixation. CO2->sugar
Photorespiration:
 In theory, for a photosynthesizing organism to increase its productive rate of
photosynthesis and decrease photorespiration, it would need to: adjust the
temperature, increase CO2 concentration, and/or decrease O2 concentration.
C4 Photosynthesis:
 The light and light-independent reactions operate in separate cells.
 The C3 grass grows faster at low temperatures and the C4 plant grows faster at high
temperatures.
CAM Photosynthesis:
 Carbon dioxide uptake and fixation by the light-independent reactions are carried out at
different times.
 Both C4 and CAM use extra energy to temporarily stores and then release carbon,
reducing the energy available for the dark reactions.
Section Summary:
 The light reactions of photosynthesis require sunlight and produce the energy carrying
molecules ATP and NADPH.
 The light-independent reactions of photosynthesis take the energy in ATP and NADPH
and transfer it to sugars which are a longer-term storage. These reactions do not require
sunlight.
 At high temperatures, high O2, or low CO2, the Rubisco enzyme attaches oxygen rather
than carbon to the sugar molecules in a process known as photorespiration.
Photorespiration loses the energy gained from photosynthesis.
  C4 photosynthesis is an adaptation to avoid photorespiration where the light and light-
independent reactions are separated into different compartments. C4 plants have an
advantage over C3 plants in hot, dry environments.
 CAM photosynthesis is an adaptation to avoid cavitation by capturing and storing CO2 at
night when cavitation risk is lower, and then releasing the carbon for fixation by the
light-independent reactions during the day when energy from the light reactions is
abundant.
 Species that get energy by ingesting other organisms are known as heterotrophs.
Heterotrophs that ingest food items with very different nutrient ratios to themselves
must have complex processes to deal with these differences.

Life History (2:1-16, 3:1-25)

Section Summary:
 A small set of demographic parameters can be used to predict how a population will
grow. The most important parameters are birth and death rates.
 Birth and death rates are the number of birth and deaths, respectively, per capita in a
specified amount of time.
 Fecundity is the average number of offspring per reproductive female per unit time.
 Growth rate: r=b-d; r=(total births-total deaths)/number of individuals
 High birth and death rates lead to age structures with many more young than old
individuals. Low birth and death rates lead to more uniform age structures.
 Age structure is dynamic since birth and death rates change through time in response to
environmental and social factors.

Population Growth #1 (1:1-14)

Population Growth #2(2:1-13, 3:1-16)