Ecology Notes – Chapter 6

Water Availability Affects Organismal Abundance

 The availability of water has an important effect on the abundance of plants.
o Hydric – plants that have increased H2O requirement
 e.g. tall cypresses
 **cypress knees – buttress/ support trees (new research shows it could be
used for gas exchange)
o mesic – intermediate H2O requirement
 e.g. most plants
o xeric – very low H2O requirement
 e.g. cacti
 When going up a mountain, wind and precipitation increase, but temperatures decrease. This
causes a line on the mountain, above which trees cannot grow (called the tree line)
o this is because water above the tree line is largely unavailable to the plants (as ice)because
of the cold temps at this altitude
 The water content of plant cells depends on osmosis and turgor pressure.
o Osmosis is the movement of water across membranes to balance solute concentrations.
Water diffuses from a solution that is hypotonic (lower solute concentration) into a solution
that is hypertonic (higher solute concentration).
o Turgor pressure is the hydrostatic pressure that increases as water enters plant cells.

 Relative water content =

 The abundance of many animals, from buffalo to ducks and deer are limited directly and indirectly,
by rainfall.
 Animals need water for a variety of activities, including eliminating wastes.
 Desert animals have many adaptations to reduce water loss.
o E.g. increased urea production to decrease need for water waste or living nocturnally to
take advantage of cooler temperatures
 El Niño weather conditions can greatly affect global rainfall distribution and hence organismal
distributions.
o Rainfall can be an important factor, directly affecting the survival of small insects.
o Global warming is changing global rainfall patterns and threatens to alter organismal
distribution patterns.
 Wind – especially important because of effect on moisture content
 as wind increases, moisture decreases
 wind pollenated species need enough wind to pollenate
 some plants are too fragile to exist at windy climates

Salt Concentrations in Soil and Water Can Be Critical

 Many organisms have special adaptations to live in saline conditions.
o E.g. salt glands to remove excess,
 Halophytes – plant species that can tolerate higher salt concentrations in their cell sap than regular
plants.

Soil and Water pH Affect the Distribution of Organisms

 The pH of water, and other liquids, can vary over a wide scale.
 The hydrogen ion concentration is expressed as the solution’s pH, which is defined as the negative
logarithm to the base 10 of the hydrogen ion concentration:
pH = –log10 [H+]
 A solution where the pH is near 7.0 is said to be neutral because [H+] and [OH–] are nearly
equal. An acidic solution (acid) has a pH that is below pH 7.0, while an alkaline solution (base)
has a pH above 7.0.
• Soil pH can drastically alter the types of plants growing in a region.
 Acid rain (precipitation with a pH of less than 5.6) has greatly affected the abundance of both
aquatic and terrestrial organisms.
 Acid rain results from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil, which releases
sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere.