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Chapter 13
Principles of Ecology
Term | Definition |
---|---|
ecology | study of the interactions among living things and their surroundings |
community | collection of all of the different populations that live in one area |
ecosystem | collection of organisms and nonliving things, such as climate, oil, water, and rocks, in an area |
biome | regional or global community of organisms characterized by the climate conditions and plant communities that thrive there |
biotic | living things, such as plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria |
abiotic | nonliving factor in an ecosystem, such as moisture, temperature, wind, sunlight, soil, and minerals |
biodiversity | variety of life within an area |
keystone species | organism that has an unusually large effect on its ecosystem |
producer | organism that obtains its energy from abiotic sources, such as sunlight or inorganic chemicals |
autotroph | organism that obtains its energy form abiotic sources, such as sunlight or inorganic chemicals |
consumer | organism that obtains its energy and nutrient by eating other organisms |
heterotroph | organism that obtains its energy and nutrients by consuming other organisms |
chemosynthesis | process by which ATP is synthesized by using chemicals as an energy source instead of light |
food chain | model that links organisms by their feeding relationships |
herbivore | organism that eats only plants |
carnivore | organism that obtains energy by eating only animals |
omnivore | organism that eats both plants and animals |
detritivore | organism that eats dead organic matter |
decomposer | detritivore that breaks down organic matter into simpler compounds, returning nutrients back into an ecosystem |
specialist | consumer that eats only one type of an organism |
generalist | species that does not rely on a single source of prey |
trophic level | level of nourishment in a food chain |
food web | model that shows the complex network of feeding relationships within an ecosystem |
hydrologic cycle | pathway of water from the atmosphere to Earth's surface, below ground, and back |
biogeochemical cycle | movement of a chemical through the biological and geological, or living and nonliving, parts of an ecosystem |
nitrogen fixation | process by which certain types of bacteria convert gaseous nitrogen into nitrogen compounds |
biomass | total dry mass of all organisms in a given area |
energy pyramid | diagram that compares energy used by producers, primary consumers, and other trophic levels |