Throughout this book, we have emphasized the role that climate plays in ecological processes, including the distributions and physiological performance of organisms, the rates of resource supply, and the outcomes of biological interactions such as competition.
Thus, changes in climate—particularly changes in the frequency of extreme events such as extensive droughts, violent storms, or extreme high and low temperatures—have profound effects on ecological patterns and processes.
Because they are disturbances that result in significant mortality within populations, these extreme events are often critical in determining the geographic ranges of species.As we learned in Concept 2.1, weather is the current state of the atmosphere around us at any given time. Climate is the long-term description of weather, including both average conditions and the full range of variation. Climate variation occurs at a multitude of time scales, from the daily changes associated with daytime solar heating and nighttime cooling, to seasonal changes associated with the tilt of Earth's axis, to decadal changes associated with interactions between ocean currents and the atmosphere (such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, described in the Case Study Revisited in Chapter 2). Climate change, on the other hand, refers to directional change in climate.
More on the topic Throughout this book, we have emphasized the role that climate plays in ecological processes, including the distributions and physiological performance of organisms, the rates of resource supply, and the outcomes of biological interactions such as competition.:
- A general theme that runs through this book is that ecological interactions can affect the distributions and abundances of species, affecting communities and ecosystems.
- CONCEPT 15.3 Positive interactions affect the abundances and distributions of populations as well as the structure of ecological communities.
- In this book, ecology is defined as the scientific study of interactions between organisms and their environment.
- CONCEPT 19.3 Processes such as disturbance, stress, predation, and positive interactions can mediate resource availability, thus promoting species diversity.
- Explain how interactions between organisms and their environment can affect other organisms and potentially lead to unexpected consequences.
- Species distributions reflect environmental influences on energy acquisition and physiological tolerances
- Climate controls where and how organisms live
- Reasons for including resource dynamics
- Positive interactions influence the abundances and distributions of populations
- Ecological interactions can cause evolutionary change
- Landscape patterns affect ecological processes