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Ecology Unit 2
Question | Answer |
---|---|
Producer | An organism that can make its own food. |
Consumer | An organism that obtains energy by feeding on other organisms. |
Herbivore | Consumers that eat only plants. |
Carnivore | Consumers that eat only animals. |
Omnivore | Consumers that eat both plants and animals. |
Scavenger | A carnivore that feeds on the bodies of dead organisms. |
Decomposer | Break down biotic wastes and dead organisms and return raw materials to an ecosystem. |
Food Chain | A series of events in which one organism eats another and obtains energy. |
Food Web | A more realistic way to show the flow of energy through an ecosystem. |
Energy Pyramid | Shows the amount of energy that moves from one feeding level to another in a food web. |
Evaporation | The process by which molecules of liquid water absorb energy and change to a gas. |
Condensation | The process by which a gas changes to a liquid. |
Precipitation | Any form of water falling from the sky. |
Nitrogen fixation | The process of changing free nitrogen into a usable form of nitrogen. |
Biome | A group of ecosystems with similar climates and organisms. |
Climate | The average annual conditions of temperature precipitation, winds, and clouds in an area. |
Desert | An area that receives less than 25 centimeters of rain per year. |
Rain Forest | Forests in which large amounts of rain fall year-round. |
Emergent Layer | Tallest layer of the rainforest that receives the most sunlight. |
Canopy | A leafy roof formed by tall trees in a rain forest. |
Understory | A layer of shorter trees and vines that grows in the shade of a forest canopy. |
Grassland | An area populated mostly by grasses and nonwoody plants that gets 25 to 75 centimeters of rain each year. |
Savanna | A grassland located close to the equator that may include shrubs and small trees and receives as much as 120 centimeters of rain per year. |
Deciduous tree | A tree that sheds its leaves during a particular season and grows new ones each year. |
Boreal Forest | Dense forest of evergreens located in the upper regions of the Northern Hemisphere. |
Coniferous Tree | A tree that produces its seeds in cones and that has needle-shaped leaves coated in waxy substance to reduce water loss. |
Tundra | An extremely cold dry biome climate region characterized by short cool summers and bitterly cold winters. |
Permafrost | Permanently frozen soil found in the tundra biome climate region. |
Estuary | A kind of wetland formed where fresh water from rivers mixes with salty ocean water |
Intertidal Zone | An area between the highest high-tide line on land to the point on the continental shelf exposed by the lowest low-tide line. |
Neritic Zone | The area if the ocean that extends from the low-tide line out to the edge of the continental shelf. |
Biogeography | The study of where organisms live and how they got there |
Continental Drift | The hypothesis that the continents slowly move across Earth's surface. |
Dispersal | The movement of organisms from one place to another. |
Exotic Species | Species that are carried to a new location by people. |