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| Ecology is the study of how organisms interact with their environment. One of ecology’s central goals is to understand the distribution and abundance of organisms. |
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A landscape is a mosaic of connected ecosystems
Landscape ecology deals with arrays of ecosystems and how they are arranged in a geographic region |
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The biosphere is the global ecosystem, the sum of all the planet’s ecosystems
Global ecology examines the influence of energy and materials on organisms across the biosphere |
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| Dispersal_ is movement of individuals away from centers of high population density or from their area of origin |
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| Biomes are the major ecological associations that occupy broad geographic regions of land or water |
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An intertidal zone is periodically submerged and exposed by the tides
Intertidal organisms are challenged by variations in temperature and salinity and by the mechanical forces of wave action
Many animals of rocky intertidal environments have structural adaptations that enable them to attach to the hard substrate |
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| Population ecology is the study of how and why the number of individuals in a population changes over time. |
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Dispersion
Is the pattern of spacing among individuals |
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