SPECIES INTERACTION

▪ Species interaction is the organism interactions within ecological webs that include four main types of
two-way interactions.
▪ These are the mutualism, commensalism, competition, and predation such as herbivory (the state or
condition of feeding on plants) and parasitism.
▪ Because of the many linkages among species within a food chain and food web, changes to one species
can have far-reaching effects.
▪ Interaction Among Organisms
o No organisms living in a community – whether it be a patch of woodland, a pond or a coral reef –
exist in isolation. Each organism participates in a number of interactions, both with other
organisms and with the factors of the living environment.
o Five (5) major interactions: mutualism, competition, parasitism, commensalism and predation.
▪ Mutualism
o a biological interaction in which the growth and survival of both interacting species are enhanced.
It is therefore, one of the forms of symbiosis.
o In nature, neither species can survive without the other.
✓ Lichens are an outstanding example. One of the most interesting and ecologically
significant examples of mutualism concerns the interactions between fungi and algae.
✓ Another is the relationship between legumes and nitrogen fixing bacteria that live in the
root nodules.
▪ Another is the relationship between legumes and nitrogen fixing bacteria that live in the root nodules.
o Their roots form nodules in which nitrogen fixing bacteria live. The bacteria feed upon
carbohydrates produced by the legumes, and in turn the legumes obtain a usable form of nitrogen
fixed by bacteria as the legumes die and decompose the nitrogen from their organic molecules is
again released as NH3 or NH4+ and become available to other plants.
▪ Competition
o Completion is a type of interaction between two populations in which they vie for the same limited
resources.
o Unlike animals, green plants are dependent upon a single process to obtain their energy-
photosynthesis. Completion in plants is therefore, manifested largely in terms of the “struggle for
light” plants that grow in the shade of others have evolved mechanism for carrying on
photosynthesis at low intensities.
o Another kind of antagonistic relationship within a community. They compete for energy and
matter in usable forms, space, and specific sites for life activities also refer to the interaction of
two organisms striving for the same thing. Any interaction between two or more species, which
adversely affects their growth, and survival.
✓ Competition involves space, food or nutrients, light and other materials. It can result in
equilibrium and adjustments of the two species or can result in one species replacing
another or forcing it to occupy another space or another food.
✓ Intraspecific competition – between organisms of the same species, organisms are subject
to the influences of the living and non-living factors of the environment.
✓ Interspecific competition – relationships existing between two or more different species,
may be beneficial to both parties or harmful to the other or may be neutral in respect to the
other.
▪ Commensalism
 o Commensalism is a type of interaction between two species populations where one population
benefits and the other is unaffected.
o Example of this is the relationship between an orchid and a tree. Among such commensals are
epiphytes (orchids); they are plants that grow on trees.
✓ These plants depend on trees for support only, their roots draw nourishment from humid
air and does not affect the tree where they are attached to.
▪ Parasitism
o Parasitism is a type of interaction between a host and a parasite. Usually this is called a destructive
symbiosis where a parasite harms the host symbiosis of which one party benefits at the expense of
the other.
o Parasites are organisms, plants and animals or microbes that attach themselves to another
organism, the host, and feed on the host over a period of time without killing it immediately but
usually doing harm on it.
✓ Ticks are considered as parasites. They are commonly found attached to the body of
animals especially dogs; ticks drive nourishment by sucking the blood of their large host;
in addition, they lay eggs and reproduce.
✓ Typically, these parasites do not kill their host as predators do, although the host may die
from secondary infection, or suffer from stunted growth, emaciation and/or sterility.
▪ Predation
o Predation is the relationship between the prey and the predator.
o It is the feeding of free-living organisms and other organisms.
o The predator is generally larger than the prey.
✓ A fox, the predator, caught the rat, the prey, to be consumed. An example of predator-prey
relationship.
✓ Example of this relationship is the lion, the predator that consumes the bird, the prey. The
tiger is an animal that benefits at the expense of the rabbit, the prey. In its broadest sense
predation includes herbivory, parasitism and cannibalism, the latter is a special form of
intraspecific predation which is more widespread and important in the animal kingdom.
o Predation is a potent and complex influence on the population balance of communities involving
all stages of the life cycle of predator and prey species, many specialized food obtaining
mechanisms and specific prey-predator adaptations that either resist or encourage predation.
✓ In plants, predator avoidance is often accomplished with thick barks, spine thorns or
chemical defences.
✓ Animal prey may become very adept at hiding fleeing or fighting back against predators.
✓ Predators in turn, evolve mechanisms to overcome the defences of their prey. This process
in which species exert selective pressure on each other is co-evolution.
o Characteristics and Importance of Predation:
✓ If prey population increases, it will support more predators.
✓ More prey will escape the predators if there is much cover.
✓ When prey population falls below a certain level, it becomes unprofitable for the predators
to pursue the prey, it must shift to some other source or suffer decline.
✓ Predation maintains the balance of animal population.
✓ Predators selectively remove the young, old and diseased individuals from the prey
populations.
 ✓ Predation functions as a natural method of quality control by removing individuals which
are slow, weak and incapable.
✓ The alert, healthy and well-adapted animals are less likely to fall victim to the predator.
✓ Method of biological control of pest animals particularly insects and rodents.
o Predator-prey interactions, the interaction between predators and prey involve continuous
evolutionary change; as predators evolve more efficient ways of capturing prey, the prey evolve
ways of avoiding predation.
✓ Every animal that consumes another animal is called a predator and the animal eaten is the
prey. Any that consumes members of its own species is called a cannibal and one that eats
dead animals is a scavenger Any food chain is a succession of predations.
o A predator destroys its prey outright, but the parasite continues to feed on the living host. The
predator is larger than the prey while the parasite is always smaller than the host.
o Examples:
✓ 1.Warning coloration, mimicry, and cryptic coloration:
➢ (a) warning coloration – conspicuous markings of an animal that make it easily
recognizable and warn would-be predators that it is a poisonous, foul-tasting, or
dangerous species.
❖ Bright coloration in insects and other animals (typically yellow, orange, or
red) can act as signal, warning other animals that they are poisonous or
distasteful. Such color patterns are called “aposematic.”
❖ When an animal attacks, eats, or encounters such a brightly colored animal
and gets stung, bitten, or poisoned, it learns to associate these warning
colors with a bad experience.
➢ Monarch butterflies have a chemical defense toxic to many natural enemies –
they store poisonous compounds from milkweed called cardiac glycosides in their
tissues. As a result, when an animal eats a monarch and gets sick, it learns to avoid
potential prey with similar coloration.
➢ (b) mimicry – the advantageous resemblance of one species to another, often
unrelated, species or to a feature of its own environment.
➢ (c) cryptic coloration – an organism matches its background, hiding
(camouflaging) it from predators and/ or prey.
▪ Chemical defences
o Serve to repel or inhibit potential predators.
o Commonly employed by arthropods, amphibians and snakes
o Also used extensively by various types of plants
▪ Predator satiation
o timing reproduction so that a maximum number of offspring are produced in a short period of time,
thus satiating predators and allowing a greater percentage of young to survive.
o Examples of organisms that use this strategy include cicadas, caribou and lots of plants.
▪ Hunting ability of predators
o as prey evolved better ways of avoiding predators, predators necessarily evolved better ways of
hunting and capturing prey.
o These interactions between predators and prey have produced some complex adaptations.
o For example:
✓ The social hunting behaviour of lions and wolves
 ✓ The fangs of some snakes
✓ Spiders and their web
✓ The speed of many predators such as cheetahs and Peregrine
▪ Table shows the summary of the different interactions between population. Viewed as a whole, the
relationship within a community is incredibly complexity may be that the linked group of individuals and
the kinds of interaction that they have with on another determine the success of a particular organism
growing and living in a particular place.

▪ Predation and competition for

scarce resources are major
factors in evolution and
adaptation.

▪ Not all biological interactions

are competitive, however organisms also cooperate with or at least tolerate members of their own species
as well as individuals of other species in order to survive and reproduce in some cases, and different
organisms depend on each other to help acquire resources.

Ecological Succession

▪ Biological communities have a story in a given landscape. The process by which organisms occupy a site
and gradually change environmental conditions by creating soil, shade, or shelter or by increasing
humidity is called ecological succession or development.
▪ The gradual and continuous replacement of plant and animal species by other species until eventually the
community as a whole, is replaced by another type of community.
▪ It is a gradual change, and it is the organisms present which bring about this change.
▪ Involves the processes of colonization, establishment, and extinction which act on the participating
species.
▪ Occurs in stages, called serial stages that can be recognized by the collection of species that dominate at
that point in the succession.
▪ Begins when an area is made partially or completely devoid of vegetation because of a disturbance. Some
common mechanisms of disturbance are fires, windstorms, volcanic eruptions, logging, climate change,
severe flooding, disease, and pest infestation.
▪ Stops when species composition no longer changes with time, and this community is called the climax
community.
▪ Primary succession vs. Secondary Succession
o In primary succession on a terrestrial site, the new site first is colonized by a few hardy pioneer
species, often microbes, mosses and lichens that can withstand harsh conditions and lack of
resources. The community of organisms often becomes more diverse and increasingly competitive
as development continues and new niche opportunities appear.
o The pioneer species gradually disappear as the environment changes and new species
combinations replace the preceding community.
o Primary succession – occurs on area of newly exposed rock or sand or lava or any area that has
not been occupied previously by a living (biotic) community.
 o Secondary succession – takes place where a community has been removed, e.g., in a plowed field
or a clear-cut forest. This disruption may be caused by a natural catastrophe such as fore flooding,
or by human activity such as deforestation, plowing or mining. In each case organisms modify the
environment in ways that allow one species to replace another.
▪ Ecological succession is a force of nature. Ecosystems, because of the internal species dynamics and
external forces are in a constant process of change and re-structuring.
o To appreciate how ecological succession affects humans and also to begin to appreciate the
incredible time and monetary cost of ecological succession, one only has to visualize a freshly
tilled garden plot.

Ecological Niche

▪ Habitat describes the place or set of environmental conditions in which particular organisms live.
▪ Ecological niche is a description of either the role-played by a species in a biological community or the
total set of environmental factors that determine species distribution. Or simply niche is a way of making
a living.
▪ A community is composed of many species occupying different niches.
▪ Over time, niches can change as species developed new strategies to exploit resources. The law of
competitive exclusion states that no two species will occupy the same resources in the same habitat for
very long.
▪ Eventually, one group will gain a larger share of resources, while the other will neither migrate to a new
area, become extinct nor change its behavior or physiology in ways that minimize competition.
o Multidimensional niche – takes into account all dimensions of how an organism can make a
living:time of day an organism is active, food types, nesting preferences, habitat preferences,
altitude, etc.)
o Fundamental niche – all the resources an organism is capable of exploiting.
o Realized Niche – all the resources an organism is actually exploits/uses in its environment.

POPULATION ECOLOGY

▪ Every second, on average, four or five children are born, somewhere on the earth. In that same record,
two other people die. This difference between births and deaths means a net gain of roughly 2.3 more
humans per second in the world’s population.
o Humans are now the most numerous vertebrate species on the earth. We are also more widely
distributed and manifestly have a greater global environmental impact than any other species.
Many people worry that overpopulation will cause or perhaps already is causing – resource
depletion and environmental degradation that threaten the ecological life-support systems on
which we all depend.
✓ These fears often leads to the demands for immediate, worldwide birth control programs
to reduce fertility rates and to eventually stabilize or even shrink the total number of
humans.
▪ The study of populations in our ecosystem, and other questions about what factors affect population and
how and why a population changes over time. Population ecology has its deepest historic roots, and its
richest development, in the study of population growth, regulation, and or demography.
o Population Ecology deals with all individuals of a single species within the community. It also
focuses on the factors that affect the growth and regulation of population size.
 ✓ The changes in the sizes, needs, distributions, and relationships of organisms that make up
populations are the concern of population ecology.

Population

▪ is defined as all individuals of the same species occupying a given area at a given time. Population
biologists can investigate a population in various ways.
▪ To get the population size, they simply count the number of individuals contributing to the population’s
pool. However, simply counting the number of individuals in a population may not always be feasible; it
may be necessary to calculate population density instead.
o Population density refers to the number of individuals per unit area or volume. It can be calculated
efficiently only when individuals in the population are uniformly distributed.
▪ In real life, the individuals in some populations are unevenly distributed, as in Figure below. Given such
situation, population biologists try to determine where and why organisms are located in a particular place
at a particular time.
o PATTERNS OF DISTRIBUTION
✓ CLUMPED – organisms are clustered together in groups. This
may reflect a patchy distribution of resources in the
environment. This is the most common pattern of population
dispersion.
✓ RANDOM – organisms have an unpredictable distribution. This is typical of species in
which individuals do not interact strongly.
✓ UNIFORM – organisms are evenly spaced over the area they occupy. This is typical of
species in which individuals compete for a scarce environmental resource, such as water
in a desert.

PROPERTIES OF A POPULATION

▪ Population Density
o is a population size in relation to some unit of space. It is generally expressed as the number of
individuals, or the population biomass, per unit area or volume. The formula for getting the
population density is as follows:

o For example, 200 trees per acre, 5 million diatoms per cubic meter of water, or 200 pounds of fish
per acre of water surface. A wide variety of attributes can serve as biomass units, ranging from dry
weight to DNA or RNA content.
o Sometimes it is more important to distinguish between the two types of population density, the:
✓ crude density the number (or biomass) per unit total space (Cd = biomass or
number of individuals/unit total space),
✓ specific or ecological density the number (or biomass) per unit of habitat space
(Ed = biomass or number of individuals/ units of habitat space) available area or
volume that can actually be colonized by the population.
o Often it is more important to know whether a population is changing (increasing or decreasing) to
know its size at any one moment. In such cases, indices of relative abundance are useful this maybe
time relative, as for example, the number of birds as seen per hour or they may be percentage of
various kinds, such as the percentage of sample plots occupied by species of plants.
▪ Natality
o Natality is the inherent ability of a population to increase. Natality rate is equivalent to the “birth
rate” in the terminology of human population study (demography); in fact, it is simply a broader
term covering the production of new individuals of any organism whether such new individuals
are “born”, “hatched” “germinated” or “arise by division”.
o Natality is generally expressed as a rate determined by dividing the number of new individuals
produced by time (the absolute natality rate) or as the number ofnew individuals per unit of time
per unit of population (the specific natality). The formula for natality is as follows:

o There are two types of population natality:

✓ Maximum (sometimes called absolute or physiological), natality is the theoretical maximum
production of new individuals under ideal conditions (i.e, no ecological limiting factors,
reproduction being limited only by physiological factors) and;
✓ Ecological or realized natality or just plain natality, without qualifying adjective) refers to
population increase under an actual or specific environmental condition. It is a constant for a
population, but many may vary with the size and composition of the population and the physical
environmental conditions.
▪ Mortality
o Mortality refers to death rate of individuals in the population. It is more or less the antithesis of
natality with some parallel sub-concepts.
o Mortality rate is equivalent to “death rate” in human demography. Like natality, mortality maybe
expressed as the number of individuals dying in a given period (deaths per time). The formula for
getting the mortality rate in a certain population is as follows:

o It is a specific rate in terms of units of the total population or any part thereof. A type of mortality
in a population is being considered, that is, the Ecological or realized mortality – where there is a
loss of individuals under given environmental conditions – is, like ecological natality, not a
constant but varies with population and environmental conditions.
o A picture showing a common example of how a population decreases through death. There is a
theoretical minimum mortality, a constant for a population which represents the is, even under the
best conditions individuals would die of “old age” determined by their physiological longevity,
which, of course, is often far greater than the average ecological longevity. Often it is the survival
rate that is of greater interest than the death rate. If the latter is expressed as fraction, M, then
survival rate is 1-M.
▪ Migration
o The rate of population change for certain area is affected by movement of people into
(immigration) and out of (emigration) that area. The movement of people from one place to another
to reside permanently for a certain period of time is termed as migration.
o Migration in a certain area can be known in terms of net migration rate. The net migration rate
refers to the difference between the number of people who enter the country (immigration) and the
number of people who leave (emigration), per year per 1000 persons in the population. This can
be calculated using the following formula:
 o Thus, change in population not only results from natural increase or decrease but also by means of
migration. By using the formula below, population change in a certain country can be known:

o The rate of population growth can be controlled by restricting immigration. Only a few countries allow
large members of immigrants.
o Thus, population change for many countries is determined solely by the difference between their birth
rates and death rates.
o With the increase in the number of migrants entering major urban centers of the country, the number of
urban poor also correspondingly increased. At present, there are about 14 million poor people in the
metropolis (or 22% higher than the 1985 figure of 11, 425, 621) which comprise over half or 55 percent
of the total urban population and less than a fourth or 23 percent of the total Philippine population.
o About 3 million of them are found in 618 slums or blighted areas which are characterized by congestion
and poor environmental conditions, dilapidated housing structure, inadequate community services and
low family income.
o Based on 1992 estimates of the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor, Quezon City and Makati
with an urban poor population of 733, 210 and 199,158, respectively, are the two most urban poor
populous cities.

STRUCTURE OF A POPULATION

▪ Biotic Potential and Growth Rate

o Biotic potential is the ability of an organism in a population to reproduce, to migrate; the ability to
invade other habitat, and has strong defense mechanism; the ability to cope with adverse condition.
Data below illustrates the balance between population.

o Data shows a balanced population showing the effects of biotic potential and environmental
resistance.
o When the environment is unlimited (space, food, other organism not exerting a limiting effect),
the specific growth rate (i.e., the population growth rate per individual) becomes constant and
maximum for he existing microclimatic conditions.
o The value of the growth rate under these favourable population conditions is maximal, and a single
index of the inherent power of a population to grow.
✓ the overall population growth rate under unlimited environmental conditions depends on
the age composition and the specific growth due to reproduction of components of age
groups. Thus, there maybe several values for unlimited environmental conditions for a
species depending upon a population structure. When a stationary and stable age
distribution exists, the specific growth rate is called the intrinsic rate of natural increase.
 o The biotic potential of a species is its capacity for reproducing itself; in a general sense, it is the
combination of all factors that permit its kind to become more numerous.
o Reproductive rate is an obvious factor, but it is only one.
o the ability of animals to adapt, invade other habitats in other locations, and the ability to avoid and
survive adverse environmental conditions are equally important.
o Every species has biotic potential.
✓ For example, a pair of frogs has the biotic potential to reproduce several hundreds of
offspring in one season and each offspring in turn
o The difference between the maximum biotic potential and the rate of increase which occurs in
actual laboratory or field conditions is often taken as a measure of the environmental resistance,
which is the sum total of the environmental limiting factors which prevent the biotic potential from
being realized.

o A balanced population showing the effects of biotic potential and environmental resistance.
▪ Population biologists
o who are concerned with human population explosion focus on the population growth rate, or how
fast the number of individuals in a population increases.
▪ Population Growth
o The potential for a population to outgrow its resources exists in all populations. Births and deaths,
as well as, immigration and emigration, affect the size of the population.
✓ Immigration is the movement of organisms into an area occupied by an existing
population.
✓ Emigration is the movement of organisms out of an area where a population is located.
The rates of the above four processes determine a population’s overall growth rate.

Limits on Population Growth

o Any condition of the environment that limits the size of a population is called a limiting factor.
Disease, availability of water, pollution, competition for food, climate, parasitism and predation
are examples of limiting factors.
o There are two kinds of factors that limit the growth of a population: density-dependent and density-
independent limiting factors.
✓ Density-dependent limiting factors
➢ are those that limit a population only when the population reaches a certain density.
Mice in crowded conditions often neglect their young which increases the death
rate and limits the size of the population.
➢ Some density-dependent limiting factors involve interactions between members of
the same population or between members of different populations. Competition,
predation, and parasitism are examples of interactions between members of
different populations.
➢ Competition occurs when organisms try to make use of the same resources.
Animals compete for food, water, mates, and living space. Plants compete for
 water, minerals, pollinators, and sunlight. The limits of the resources define the
carrying capacity of the environment.
➢ Predation exists among all consumers. The organisms eaten by consumers are
prey. A lion that eats a deer is a predator. A large population of prey animals can
lead to an increase in the predator population. Changes in the sizes of predator prey
populations often occur in cycles.
✓ Density-independent limiting factors are those that affect all populations in the way
regardless of density. Examples are weather, seasonal cycles, natural disasters, and many
human activities.
▪ Parasitism
o is a relationship in which one organism feeds on the tissues or body fluids of another organism. In
this relationship, one member is benefited and the other is
harmed.
o the member that benefits in a parasitic relationship is the parasite,
and the other member that is harmed is the host. An increase in a
parasite population can cause a decrease in the host population.
▪ Exponential Growth
o Exponential growth assumes that a population can grow in
exponential leaps if the capacity of a population for increase (r)
is constant, and the number of reproducing individuals is
continually growing larger.
o Exponential growth is best visualized by considering a bacterium that splits into two every four
hours (see Table). At time zero (0) there is one bacterium. Four hours later, there will be two. After
eight hours, there will be four. At the end of the day, there will be 64 bacteria, and so on.
o This rate of growth in a population can be expressed in this equation:

▪ Logistic Growth
o Logistic growth assumes that as a population grows, the biotic potential decreases due to
environmental resistance.
o Environmental resistance refers to all the various effects of crowding, such as limited food supply,
increased competition, or increased emigration.
o Environmental resistance increases as population grows closer to the carrying capacity, which is
the maximum number of individuals that a habitat has the resources to support.
 o Logistic growth can be expressed using this mathematical expression:

o Take note that when N is low, the environmental resistance is low,

and the numerical value of (1-N/K) approaches 1. We can expect rapid
population growth. When N is large, environmental resistance is high, and
the value of (1-N/K) approaches 0. Then one can expect that population
growth will slow down to zero and the population will stabilize.

▪ Carrying Capacity
o The number of organisms that can be supported by the environmental resources in a given
ecosystem is called the carrying capacity of that ecosystem.
o It was observed that populations tend to remain at a stable size even when huge numbers of
offspring are produced each year. Unless something disrupts an ecosystem, a state of balance is
reached.
o Populations become limited in size because of the availability of resources. A given ecosystem
will produce enough plant biomass to support only a limited number of primary consumers. The
number of primary consumers, in turn, limits the number of secondary consumers, and so on.

HUMAN POPULATION

▪ The size of human population is also governed by the same factors that apply to other organisms. The
growth of human population worldwide is determined by the ratio between birth rate and death rate.
▪ However, the population increased because the birth rate was so high. When food production increased
and improved medical care and sanitation were discovered, death rates dropped. At the same time, the
average life expectancy, the measure of how long an organism will live, increased. This doubled the
population which will be limited again by the worldwide carrying capacity for humans.
▪ When birth rate increased during periods when there was dependable food supply, death rates decreased.
There was a time when a woman had between 10 and 15 pregnancies in her lifetime. At that time, infant
death rate was high, and women often died in childbirth from poor sanitation and inadequate medical care.
▪ Human Population Growth
 o Human population has grown since the Industrial Revolution. It is continuously growing and there
are some signs that humans may have already reached their carrying capacity, or may even be
beyond it.
o When resources are destroyed and used up, people move somewhere else. Eventually, there will
be no more place to go. The ocean floor, the moon, and other planets have been considered and
rejected as possible places for humans to live. The earth is the only home for us humans.
o This growth in human population directly affects the global ecosystem. An increasing population
places a greater demand on all resources, both renewable and non-renewable. Food and space
determine the carrying capacity in an ecosystem. In cities, living space is hard to find that people
now live literally on top of each other. Widespread pollution and malnutrition are signs of an
ecosystem under strain.
▪ Overpopulation
o Overpopulation can be defined in terms of carrying capacity or in terms of critical factors.
o A critical factor such as malnutrition indicates that there is overpopulation, regardless of the
carrying capacity of an ecosystem.
o The world is also considered overpopulated if the environment is damaged by factors like pollution
and habitat destruction on a large scale.
o The earth seems to fit all the descriptions that define overpopulation.
▪ Human Adaptation
o People are able to thrive in many different places because of their ability to adapt their behaviour
to the environment.
o Shelters and clothing are adapted for hot or cold climates.
o Humans have also developed many ways to obtain food for survival. This adaptations have led to
the growth of human populations.
o One of the many challenges of modern societies is maintaining the resources needed for survival
while ensuring that they are still available in the future. This practice is called sustainable
development. Renewable resources can be harvested over long periods of time if short-term
harvesting is controlled. Air, water, and land are renewable resources, but their quality and
cleanliness are as vital to the survival of people and other organisms, as are food and shelter.

SOME ISSUES/ ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS

▪ Most of the ecological problems now facing the earth are caused by human activities and overpopulation.
▪ For example, pesticides used in agriculture reduce insect populations and other agricultural pests.
▪ Principles of conservation must be applied to the use of fresh water, land, clean air, and energy in order
to accommodate the growing human population. These resources should be used wisely because future
generations are affected by this practice.