BI201 General Ecology

Tutorial Week 8

Section I: Competition

The freshwater diatoms, Asterionella Formosa and Synedra ulna use dissolved silicate (a resource they
consume) to build their cell walls. The figure below shows what happens when these species are grown
separately in lab cultures where silicate is being continuously added versus what happens when they are
grown together.

Figure 1: Competition between diatoms. The upper two graphs show what happens when each species
is grown alone in lab cultures. The bottom graph shows what happens when the two diatom species are
grown together. The scale for the population densities is on the left, the scale for the silicate
concentrations is on the right.

Questions:

1. When Asterionella or Synedra are grown alone, what happens to the silicate in the water?

2. Is there a difference in what happens to silicate when Asterionella is grown alone versus when
Synedra is grown alone?

3. When Asterionella and Synedra are grown together what happens to their populations and to the
concentrations of silicate?
4. Is this evidence of competition?

5. Is this an example of the Competitive Exclusion Principle? Explain why or why not.

Section II: Interspecific interactions:

Use ‘+’, ‘-‘ or ‘0’ to indicate the effects of interspecific interaction on both species:

Contest competition

Symbiotic commensalism

Predation

Amensalism
Parasitism
Obligate mutualism

Section III: Compare these Terms

1. How does symbiosis differ from mutualism?

2. What is the difference between a parasite and a parasitoid?

3. What are the differences between a grazer and a ‘true’ predator’?

4. What do we mean by specialist predators vs generalist predators?