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Ecology
Definitions
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Competition | The fight for limited resources. |
| Predation | Where one organism hunts, kills and eats another to obtain its nutrition. |
| Predator | The animal that does the hunting. |
| Prey | The animal that is hunted. |
| Trophic Level | The level at which an organism gains its nutrition. |
| Parasitism | A form of nutrition where one organism gains its nutrition by feeding directly on the other organism, causing it harm. |
| Interdependence | Where two or more organisms depend on one another within an ecosystem. |
| Biosphere | That part of the planet containing living organisms. |
| Ecosystem | A group of clearly distinguished organisms that interact with their environment as a unit. |
| Habitat | The place where an organism lives. |
| Population | All the members of the same species living in an area. |
| Community | All the different populations in an area. |
| Abiotic factors | Non-living factors. |
| Biotic factors | Living factors. |
| Climatic factors | Refer to weather over a long period of time. |
| Edaphic factors | Relating to soil. |
| Producers | Organisms that can make their own food. |
| Flora | The plant life in an ecosystem. |
| Consumers | Organisms that take in food made by other organisms. |
| Fauna | All the animal life in an ecosystem. |
| Decomposers | Organisms that feed on dead organic matter |
| Detritus feeders | Organisms that feed on small pieces of dead organic matter. |
| Food web | Consists of two or more interlinked food chains. |
| Pyramid of numbers | Represents the number of organisms at each trophic level in a food chain. |
| Niche | The functional role that an organism plays in the community. |
| Nutrient recycling | The way in which elements are exchanged between the living and the non-living components of an ecosystem. |
| Nitrogen fixation | The conversion of nitrogen gas into ammonia, ammonium or nitrate. |
| Nitrification | The conversion of ammonia and ammonium compounds to nitrite and then to nitrate. |
| Denitrification | The conversion of nitrates to nitrogen gas. |
| Pollution | Any harmful addition to the environment that makes it less able to sustain life. |
| Pollutants | Harmful additions to the environment. |
| Conservation | The wise management of the existing natural resources in an ecosystem in order to maintain a wide range of habitats and prevent the death and extinction of organisms. |
| Intra-specific competition | Takes place between members of the same species. |
| Inter-specific competition | Takes place between members of different species. |
| Contest competition | An active physical contest between two individual organisms where one organism gets the resource and the other is left without it. |
| Scramble competition | All of the competing organisms get some of the resource. |
| Symbiosis | Occurs when two organisms of different species live (or may have to live) in close association and at least one of them benefits. |
| Qualitative study | Records the presence or absence of organisms. |
| Quantitative study | Records the numbers of organisms that are present. |
| Adaptation | Any alteration that improves an organism's chances of survival and reproduction |
| Key | A means of naming organisms by answering a series of questions with alternative answers. |
| Percentage cover | An estimate of the amount of ground in a quadrat covered by each species |
Created by:
J Glennon
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