Feinsinger et al's Framework of Ecology Themes for Schoolyard Ecology

Source: Feinsinger, P., A. Grajal and A.R. Berkowitz. or example, Eurasian weeds and house sparrows or immigrants from neighboring ecosystems).

C. Traits of organisms that enhance survival and reproduction - how to make ends meet in your home patch.

1. Finding a mate: birds do it, bees do it, even little weeds do it.

a. plants: (pollination and plant reproductive systems).

b. animals: (behavioral ecology of mating systems).

2. Finding a place to raise young: the kid thrive in some places but not others.

a. plants: (seed germination and dormancy strategies in an environment whose favorableness is patchy in space and time).

b. animals: (nesting, oviposition, host plant choice).

3. Finding food and water: there's no such thing as a free lunch.

a. plants: (e.g., leaf "tactics" with respect to light/moisture regimes, plant life forms as "tactics." Root "tactics." Mutualisms and symbioses such as nitrogen fixation and ant nutrient scroungers).

b. animals: (foraging ecology/behavior and all associated concepts).

c. microbes: ("foraging tactics" of decomposers and disease organisms).

4. Stress reduction: making do when things are tough ("strategies" of plants, animals, and microbes for dealing with stress, for example avoidance, tolerance, surviving unfavorable seasons, or fire-related traits).

D. The consequences of having babies: reproduction and population growth.

1. Changes: what makes populations grow and shrink?

2. Limits: what stops populations from growing forever?

3. Crowds and loners: how are populations patterned across the landscape? (Spatial dispersion patterns, their [proximate] causes and consequences).

4. Moving about: how do individuals, or their babies, get from one patch to another? (Immigration, emigration, dispersal, and dispersal of propagules, for example spiders, burs, and spores).

II. Interactions

A. Interactions between a hungry organism and a food organism that "doesn't want" to be eaten.

1. Animal predators and animal prey: more than just wolves and deer (ecological aspects of interactions between predators and prey interactions or insect parasites and hosts; phenotypic traits related to this interaction, such as behavior, morphology, warning coloration, crypsis, and mimicry).

2. Animal predators and plant prey (seed predation).

3. Vegetarian animals and plants: can fodder fight back? (The ecology of herbivory, particularly by insects; traits of plants that inhibit herbivory, vs. traits of herbivores that enhance fodder finding and utilization).

4. Fodder fights back with a vengeance: recruitment of mercenaries (bellicose or carnivorous insects attracted by extrafloral nectarines or lipid-rich food bodies).

5. Parasites and hosts: just hanging on, or killing me softly? (Parasitic plants such as mistletoe; or botflies, screwworms, ticks, and fleas an domestic animals).

6. Microbes and hosts: is disease just a said effect of "hungry microbes?" (Effects of disease on plants and animals at individual and population levels; the concept of epidemiology).

B. Interactions between a hungry organism and an item that "wants" to be eaten.

1. Flowers and animal flower - visitors.

2. Fleshy fruits and animal fruit eaters.

C. Interactions between a hungry organism and dead things.

1. Detritivores: making dead matter smaller (e.g. the actions and effects of earthworms and arthropod detritivores).

2. Decomposers: making dead matter different (e.g., food preferences among fungi).

D. Interactions between two "hungry" organisms who like the same things (interspecific competition among, for example, ants, flower-visiting insects, insect-visited flowering plants, light and water-seeking plants, or decomposers.

III. Communities and landscapes

A. Some kinds of organisms are more common than others: relative abundance (commonness and rarity, their proximate causes and consequences).

B. Some kinds of habitat have more kinds or organisms than others: relative species richness among sites that differ in various physical or disturbance characteristics, e.g., leaf litter in sun vs. shade, or mowed vs. un-mowed lawn, or north vs. south side of building.)

C. Some patches of the same kind of habitat have more kinds of organisms than others: the influence of size and shape (the concept of "isolates," or circumscribed patches of habitat; species-area relationships and related concepts).

1. "Natural-born patches" (e.g., grass tussocks, thistle plants, or undersides of rocks of different sizes).

2. "Created" patches (habitat fragments).

D. No patch is an island: patches can influence what goes on in each other (edge effects and other themes of landscape ecology).

E. More or less disturbed: some patches are more disturbed than others, and end up hosting different numbers and kinds of organisms (sources and effects of disturbances at various scales and of various intensities).

F. Just after the event: some patches "recover" from being disturbed but others just keep going downhill ("ecological succession" and retrogression or, better, community dynamics).

G. Long after the event: today's patches reflect yesterday's disturbance (history and long-term change with a community and landscape-level perspective).

People are part of the picture, for better or for worse (the various and variable effects of human activities on ecological processes and patterns).