ecological competence

Examples of ecological competence in the following topics:

• Ecology, Epidemiology, and Evolution of Pathogens

  • Ecological competence is the ability of an organism, often a pathogen, to survive and compete in new habitats.
  • Optimal virulence is a concept relating to the ecology of hosts and parasites.

• Microbes and Ecosystem Niches

  • Microorganisms participate in a host of fundamental ecological processes including production, decomposition, and fixation.
  • In addition, microbial processes can be co-opted for biodegradation or bioremediation of domestic, agricultural, and industrial wastes, making the study of microbial ecology particularly important for biotechnological and environmental applications.
  • The ecological niche of a microorganism describes how it responds to the distribution of resources and competing species, as well as the ways in which it alters those same factors in turn.
  • The precise ecological niche of a microbe is primarily determined by the specific metabolic properties of that organism.
  • Thermophiles, which thrive at relatively high temperatures, occupy a unique ecological niche.

• Competition

  • People can compete over tangible resources like land, food, and mates, but also over intangible resources, such as social capital.
  • Some Social Darwinists claim that competition also serves as a mechanism for determining the best-suited group–politically, economically, and ecologically.
  • Many philosophers and psychologists have identified a trait in most living organisms that can drive the particular organism to compete.
  • Competitiveness, or the inclination to compete, has become synonymous with aggressiveness and ambition in the English language.
  • Just as advanced civilizations integrate aggressiveness and competitiveness into their interactions, as a way to distribute resources and adapt, most plants compete for higher spots on trees to receive more sunlight.

• Mutualistic Relationships with Fungi and Fungivores

  • Members of Kingdom Fungi form ecologically beneficial mutualistic relationships with cyanobateria, plants, and animals.
  • Symbiosis is the ecological interaction between two organisms that live together.
  • Lichens fulfill many ecological roles, including acting as indicator species, which allow scientists to track the health of a habitat because of their sensitivity to air pollution.
  • The insects also patrol their garden, preying on competing fungi.

• Introduction to Ecology

  • Within the discipline of ecology, researchers work at four specific levels, sometimes discretely and sometimes with overlap.
  • There are many practical applications of ecology in conservation biology, wetland management, natural resource management (agroecology, agriculture, forestry, agroforestry, fisheries), city planning (urban ecology), community health, economics, basic and applied science, and human social interaction (human ecology).
  • There are also many subcategories of ecology, such as ecosystem ecology, animal ecology, and plant ecology, which look at the differences and similarities of various plants in various climates and habitats.
  • In addition, physiological ecology, or ecophysiology, studies the responses of the individual organism to the environment, while population ecology looks at the similarities and dissimilarities of populations and how they replace each other over time.
  • Finally, it is important to note that ecology is not synonymous with environment, environmentalism, natural history, or environmental science.

• Theories of Life History

  • Modern theories of life history incorporate life and survivorship factors with ecological concepts associated with r- and K-selection theories.
  • By the time they reach adulthood, they must develop skills to compete for natural resources.
  • New demographic-based models of life history evolution have been developed which incorporate many ecological concepts included in r- and K-selection theory, as well as population age structure and mortality factors.

• Ecological Pyramids

  • Ecological pyramids, which can be inverted or upright, depict biomass, energy, and the number of organisms in each trophic level.
  • Ecological pyramids show the relative amounts of various parameters (such as number of organisms, energy, and biomass) across trophic levels.
  • Ecological pyramids can also be called trophic pyramids or energy pyramids.
  • All types of ecological pyramids are useful for characterizing ecosystem structure.
  • Ecological pyramids depict the (a) biomass, (b) number of organisms, and (c) energy in each trophic level.

• Agricultural Settlements and Chiefdoms

  • They eventually become specialized and adapted to the continent's various ecological niches: plains, mountains, deserts, woodlands, river valleys, and coastal areas.
  • The spread was so slow because the seeds and knowledge of techniques for tending them had to cross inhospitable deserts and mountains—and, possibly, because more productive varieties of maize had to be developed to compete with indigenous crops and to suit the cooler climates and shorter growing seasons of the northern regions of the continent.
  • The natives controlled fire on a regional scale to create a low-intensity fire ecology which prevented larger, catastrophic fires and sustained a low-density agriculture in loose rotation—a sort of "wild" permaculture.

• Microbiota of the Skin

  • The benefits bacteria can offer include preventing transient pathogenic organisms from colonizing the skin surface, either by competing for nutrients, secreting chemicals against them, or stimulating the skin's immune system.
  • There are three main ecological areas for skin flora: sebaceous, moist, and dry.
  • Ecologically, sebaceous areas have greater species richness than moist and dry ones.

• Logistic Equations and Population Grown

  • Letting $P$ represent population size ($N$ is often used instead in ecology) and $t$ represent time, this model is formalized by the following differential equation:
  • Later, as the population grows, the second term, which multiplied out is $\frac{−rP^2}{K}$, becomes larger than the first as some members of the population $P$ interfere with each other by competing for some critical resource, such as food or living space.