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Definition
| decrease in the quality of an area due to human activities |
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| conversion or transformation of a natural area into a wholly human occupied area of little or no use to wild species |
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| habitat transformation/conversion |
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Definition
| can signify either degradation or loss (most often), depends on degree, referring to processes of change |
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Definition
| slow aging process where lake/estuary/bay evolves into bog/marsh then disappears when water body choked by plants due to higher N/P levels, human activities can accelerate |
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| disruption of extensive habitats into isolated/small patches, result of development in large area where habitat is now fragmented into separate units, often applied ot forested habitats that have been fragmented by agricultural development/logging |
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| intervening area among a set of habitat fragments, spatial array of habitats across a landscape |
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| form of habitat fragmentation in which the fragments often remain as strips or "shreds" in ravines or other inaccessible areas |
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| refers to how organisms perceive spatial heterogeneity, more time that an organism spends in any particular kind of environment, the more coarsely grained that environment is said to be |
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Definition
| network of semi-isolated populations with some level of regular or intermittent migration and gene flow among them, in which individual populations may go extinct but can then be recolonized from other populations |
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Definition
| broad class of statistical models that are applied to data that have an explicit spatial distribution |
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Definition
| form of spatial statistics originally created for analyzing irregular geological features, now used in ecology to create probability maps from a limited set of location-specific data points |
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Definition
| medium-sized predators, such as raccoons and foxes, that often increase in abundance when larger predators are eliminated |
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Definition
| pattern of species biogeographic distribution in which larger habitats contain the same subset of species in smaller habitats, plus new species found only in the larger habitat, common species are found in all habitat sizes, but some species are found only in progressively larger habitats |
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Definition
| collecting any natural resource, usually biological, for exploitation |
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Definition
| consumptive use of any natural resource |
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| meat from animals, including edible invertebrates, that is harvested in the wild |
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Term
| biotic resistance hypothesis |
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Definition
| species-rich systems were more stable and therefore less susceptible to species outbreaks and invasions, in species-rich communities the greater overall use of resources reduces the available niche space for prospective invaders |
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Term
| global climate models (GCMs) |
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Definition
| predict future climate based on processes by which atmospheric greenhouse gases affect global climate |
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Definition
| snapshot analyses of current relationships between climate contours and species distribution, predict how ecological systems/species behave in response to climate change |
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Term
| Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection |
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Definition
| basic theorem of population genetics, states that rate of evolutionary change in a population is proportional to the amount of genetic diversity (additive genetic variance) available in the population |
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| neutral genetic variation |
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Definition
| genetic variation (alleles or genotypes) that is not or appears not to be subject to natural selection |
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Definition
| possession by two or more species or groups of a similar or identical trait that has not been derived by both species or groups from their common ancestor, could result from convergence, parallel evolution or character reversal |
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| polymerase chain reaction (PCR) |
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Definition
| process in which a particular DNA segment fro ma mixture of DNA chains is rapidly replicated, producing a large, readily analyzed sample of a piece of DNA |
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Definition
| individuals returning to the same area to breed |
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| proportion of observed variation in phenotype that can be attributed to differences in genotype |
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Definition
| interactions among alleles at two or more loci that affect the state of a single trait, where the combined effects different from the sum of the individual locus effects |
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Definition
| one gene affects two or more traits |
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Definition
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Definition
| mating of individuals who are more closely related than by chance alone, such as relatives, the correlation of genes within individuals relative to that expected if individuals had mated at random |
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Term
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Definition
| group of interbreeding adults and progeny that collectively represent the bank of genetic material available in the population for future adaptation |
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Definition
| random changes in population allele frequency and levels of genetic diversity due to the finite number of individuals contributing genes to the next generation |
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Term
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Definition
| uni or bidirectional exchange of genes between populations due to migration of individuals and subsequent successful reproduction in the new population |
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Definition
| significant, usually temporary, reduction in genetically effective population size, either from a population crash or a colonization event by a few founders |
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Definition
| relative contribution of an individual's genotype to the next generation in the context of the population's gene pool, relative reproductive success |
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Definition
| concept in which particular genes from multiple loci have coevolved to collectively enhance fitness under a given set of environmental conditions |
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| genetically effective population size |
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Definition
| number of individuals that would result in the same level of inbreeding, or decrease in genetic diversity through drift, if the population behaved in the manner of an idealized and randomly mating population, functional size of a population, in a genetic sense, based on numbers of actual breeding individuals and the distribution of offspring among families, Ne is typically smaller than the census size of the population |
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Definition
| all individuals in the population are identically homozygous for a locus |
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Definition
| decline in reproductive rate and downward spiral towards extinction due to chance fixation of new mildly deleterious mutations in small populations |
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Definition
| founders of a new population carry only a random fraction of the genetic diversity found in the larger parent population, change in the genetic composition of a population due to founding or origin from a small number of individuals |
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Definition
| reduction in fitness and vigor of individuals as a result of increased homozygosity through inbreeding in a normally outbreeding population |
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Definition
| hybrid vigor or superior performance of hybrid genotypes, usually based on comparison to parental genotypes, often results from the masking of deleterious alleles that occur in a homozygous state in high frequency in populations |
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Definition
| reduction in reproductive fitness due to crossing of individuals from two genetically differentiated populations |
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Definition
| use of multigenerational charts of parent-offspring relationships in conservation planning, particularly for captive propagation, to avoid inbreeding and maximize genetic diversity |
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Term
| high polymorphic information count (PIC) |
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Definition
| high allelic diversity and heterozygosity |
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Definition
| condition in which a heterozygote at a given locus has higher fitness than either homozygote, (heterozygote superiority) |
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Definition
| evolutionary relatedness of species present in an area |
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| enhanced greenhouse effect |
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Definition
| any temperature increase attributable to human activity |
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