Ecology lab report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Ecology lab report - Essay Example This report looks at diversity of different species and draws conclusion about the findings. In community ecology, there is a study of how species interact within themselves in a given community. This study considers variables such as structure, abundance, distribution and demography. Further, some patterns of ecology like equitability, food web, productivity, and species richness and community assembly are considered in modern study of communities in ecology. Background History. In a community, species interact in different ways. There has been a cleavage on how community works in the field of ecology. There are different biotic and abiotic factors that affect the way species in a community interact. Competition, mutualism, parasitism, commensalism and predation are some of the biotic factors that affect the way a community exists. Depending on how the factors interplay, a community may change within a given time frame, thus looking different from the way it was before. Competition occurs when there are finite resources to be used by an increasing population of different species. Competition is a very important limiting factor in biomass, population size and richness of species. There exist different types of competition. Competition can happen between individuals in a direct manner, or between populations or species. Interference competition is that which happens when an individual of a species directly interferes with anothe r individual in other species. For example, if a hound makes a kill and is chased from it by a lion, this is called interference competition. (Hollar p 66). When Deers fight during a rut, this is a manifestation of competition in form of interference. This takes form of aggression between individuals. Individuals interfere with others through survival, foraging, preventing others from reproduction and physical prevention of others to establish a habitat. Exploitative