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Bio103lizard
Envionmental Biology
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Extinction | The disappearance of a population or species from a given habitat. |
| Megareserve | Owing to their size, megareserves can potentially maintain the full suite of processes required for the long-term persistence of biodiversity. |
| Conservation Biology | A new, intergrated science that attempts to conserve biodiversity, developed in response to the human-induced, worldwide wave of habitat destruction and extinction. |
| Biodiversity | 1. The Genetic variation within organisms. 2. The The range of species in an enviornment. 3. The full spectrum of the world's ecological communities and their associations with the physical environment. |
| Keystone Species | Species present in small numbers, but essential for the persistence of many other species in the community. |
| Biome | A climatically determined group of plants and animals spread over a wide area. |
| River continuum concept | The concept that, as water flows rapidly from shady headwater streams with much coarse plant debris and passes through reaches of higher order to become sluggish lowland streams, there is a change in the functional feeding groups of invertebrates. |
| Stream order | The numbering of the reches of a river in which each headwater stream is numb 1 and when it joins another stream is designated to numb 2 and so on... |
| Functional feeding groups | Groups of organisms that carry out similar functions in feeding groups. |
| Grazing Food Chain | A food chain based on the consumption of primary producers by grazing animals. |
| Detrital Food Chain | A food chain in which bacteria of decay are consumed by other organisms, such as protozoa and zooplankton, which use the organic molecules found in detritus as a source of energy and nutrients. (Small fish, consumed by large fish). |
| River continuum concept stratification | The seperation of the water column into 'layers' of differing densities due to differences in salinity and/or temperature. |
| Epiphyte | Plants or animals which live attached to plants, eg.green algae, bryozoans attached to leaves of seagrass, and orchids attached to stems of tropical trees. |
| Biofilm | A layer of living bacteria and other organisims adhearing to an inert support such as stone, gravel, wood or plastic, and which affects the properties of the water with which it is in contact. (eg. aquatic systems, septic tanks and sewage treatment plants |
| Nekton | Organisms that swim in open water. |
| Plankton | Small plants (phytoplankton), and animals (zooplankton) and protists suspended in open water. |
| Benthos | Organisms living on or near the bottom of the sea, river or lake. |
| Lotic | Flowing systems, at least during parts of the annual hydrologic cycle (eg. permanent and intermittently flowing rivers). |
| Lentic | Non flowing. (Compared with lotic.) |
| Limnetic zone | The open water of a shallow wetland (divided into euphotic and profundal). |
| Littoral zone | The edge or shore region of a wetland where light penetrates to the substratum. |
| Trophogenic (euphotic) zone | Upper part of the water coloumn, sufficiently well illuminated that oxygen production by photosynthesis exceeds oxygen consumption in respiration during a 24 hour period. |
| Tropholytic zone | The deep zone of a lake where food can be used faster than it is produced. |
| Supralittoral zone (Splash zone) | Also known as the splash zone,is the area above the spring high tide line, on coastlines and estuaries, that is regularly splashed, but not submerged by ocean water. Seawater penetrates these elevated areas only during storms with high tides. |
| Eulittoral (intertidal) zone aka foreshore/seashore | is the area that is above water at low tide and under water at high tide (in other words, the area between tide marks). |
| Sublittoral (infralittoral) zone | This zone is permanently covered with seawater. |
| Osmosis | Diffusin of water across a differentially permeable membrane; takes place from a region of greater water potential to one of lesser water potential. |
| Salinity | The total amount of dissolved ions in water, dominated by sodium and chloride in marine and esturine waters, and in Australian salt lakes. |
| Density | The number of individuals per unit area or volume. |
| Waves | Oscillations that travel through space and matter, accompanied by a transfer of energy. |
| Stratification | The separation of the water column into 'layers' of differing densities due to differences in salinity (can be chemical or thermal). |
| Astronomic tide | The tidal levels and character which would result from gravitational effects, e.g. of the Earth, Sun and Moon, without any atmospheric influences. |
| Barometric tide | A daily variation in atmospheric pressure due to the gravitational attraction of the sun and moon. |
| Upwelling | Regions where cold, nutrient-rich subsurface ocean currents are forced to the surface at continental shelves. |
| Substrates | The earthy material that exists in the bottom of a marine habitat, like dirt, rocks, sand, or gravel. |
| Phytoplankton | Single-celled and filamentous algal protists and cyanobacteria suspended in the water column. |
| Zooplankton | Animal drifter, in oceans and bodies of water. |
| Mangrove | Small trees growing rooted in mud subjected to tidal inundation, with a leaf canopy in the air above. |
| Seagrass | Flowering plants rooted in sediment, and submerged in a marine or estuarine enviornment. |
| Algae | are a very large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. (main in marine enviroments- seaweed). |
| Salt marsh | The community of plants rooted in sandy or muddy sediment, and subjected to tidal or long term inundation by saline water. Dominated by shrubs, rushes and reeds. |
| Estuary | Where the river meets the sea. An estuary is a partly enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. |
| Coral | Colinial marine invertebrates in the class Anthozoa (phylum Cnidaria) with a coral colony, individual organisms live within a protective skeleton which they secrete. The calcium carbonate skelton of hard corals forms the coral reefs of tropical seas. |
| Poikilotherm | Not regulating body temperature, so that it fluctuates with the temperature of the environment. |
| Homeotherm | Having the ability to regulate its body temperature at a relatively constant value, independent of fluctations in the temperature of the enviroment. |
| Blood pigments | Coloured protein compounds that contain metal atoms; their function is to increase the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood. |
| Phylogeny | The evolutionary history or relationships of a group of organisms. |
| Taxonomy / Systematics | The field of biology that aims to infer the phylogeny of organisms, classify them into a hierarchical series of groups and name the groups so classified. |
| Cladistics | Method of determining the phylogeny or evolutionary relationships among taxa based on the occurance of shared, derived character states. |
| Hierarchical classification | is an organizational structure where every entity in the organization, except one, is subordinate to a single other entity. |
| Kingdom monera | Consists of unicellular lifeforms. These cells have no nucleus and thought to be very distantly related to other lifeforms. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Prokaryote | Uni or Multicellular organism in the domains Bacteria and Archaea, comprising small cells with the plasma membrane encased within a cell wall. The DNA exists as a coiled, circular strand. |
| Heterotrophic | Obtaining energy by ingesting autotrophs or other hetrotrophs and accessing the energy stored in the bonds of their organic molecules. |
| Autotrophic | An organisim with the capisity to make its own food. Like plants via photosynthesis. |
| Bacteria | Prokaryotic microorganisms. First forms of life, present in most habitats and found everywhere even in our digestive tracts! |
| Archaea | The Archaea constitute a domain of single-celled microorganisms. These microbes have no cell nucleus or any other membrane-bound organelles within their cells. |
| Virus | A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses can infect all types of organisms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea. |
| Kingdom Protista | include mostly unicellular organisms that do not fit into the other kingdoms. mostly unicellular, some mulitcellular (algae) |
| Eukaryote | A cell containing discrete membrane-bound organelles and with a membrane-bound nucleus in which the DNA is organised into chromosomes. |
| Saprophytic | Feeding, absorbing or growing upon decaying organic matter (e.g. dead or decaying animal or vegetable matter). |
| Commensal | Interaction between two species where one is species bebefits and the other is unaffected. |
| Mutualism | Interaction between species where both species benifit. |
| Sexual reproduction | the union of two haploid gamets to form a new diploid individual. |
| Asexual reproduction | Clonal offspring that are genetically identical to the parent and each other. |
| Lichen | are stable, self-supporting associations between fungi and photobionts. |
| Fungi | A mushroom, there's a stem, a cap and gills under the cap. |
| Gamete | a sex cell that forms with another to form a zygote. |
| Spore | Reproductive cells that can develop into a new individual without first fusing with another reproductive cell. |
| Mycelium | A mass of fungal hyphae. |
| Mycorrhizae | is a symbiotic association between a fungus and the roots of a vascular plant. |
| Kingdom plantae | All plants, multicellular, autrotrophic eukarytic, found in various habitats. Photosynthisis for food. Some live off other plants and animals. |
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