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Ecology
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Autotroph | an organism that can produce its own food using light, water, carbon dioxide, or other chemicals. |
| Heterotroph | an organism that consumes other organisms in a food chain. |
| Organism | a living thing made up of one or more cells and able to carry on the activities of life |
| Habitat | the natural home or environment of an animal, plant, or other organism. |
| Biotic factor | a living organism that shapes its environment. |
| Abiotic factor | a non-living part of an ecosystem that shapes its environment. |
| Species | a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding. |
| Population | a group of individuals of the same species living and interbreeding within a given area. |
| Community | an interacting group of various species in a common location |
| Ecosystem | A system that includes all living organisms (biotic factors) in an area as well as its physical environment (abiotic factors) functioning together |
| Ecology | the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings. |
| Immigration | the act or process of moving to another region with the intent of residing to it |
| Emigration | The act of leaving a habitat or place with the intent of moving to a different habitat or place |
| Population density | the concentration of individuals within a species in a specific geographic locale |
| Limiting factor | anything that constrains a population's size and slows or stops it from growing |
| Carrying capacity | a species' average population size in a particular habitat. |
| Natural selection | the process through which populations of living organisms adapt and change |
| Adaptation | the biological mechanism by which organisms adjust to new environments or to changes in their current environment. |
| Niche | the role an organism plays in a community. |
| Competition | the direct or indirect interaction of organisms that leads to a change in fitness when the organisms share the same resource. |
| Predation | one organism kills and consumes another. |
| Mutualism | association between organisms of two different species in which each benefits. |
| Commensalism | a relationship between individuals of two species in which one species obtains food or other benefits from the other without either harming or benefiting the latter |
| Parasitism | relationship between two species of plants or animals in which one benefits at the expense of the other, sometimes without killing the host organism. |
| Parasite | an organism that lives on or in a host organism and gets its food from or at the expense of its host |
| Host | an organism that harbours a parasite and supplies it with nutrients. |
| Succession | the change in either species composition, structure, or architecture of vegetation through time. |
| Primary succession | type of ecological succession (the evolution of a biological community's ecological structure) in which plants and animals first colonize a barren, lifeless habitat. |
| Pioneer species | Species that arrive first in a newly created environment |
| Secondary succession | type of ecological succession (the evolution of a biological community's ecological structure) in which plants and animals recolonize a habitat after a major disturbance |
| Producer | any kind of green plant. |
| Consumer | a living creature that eats organisms from a different population. |
| Herbivore | an organism that feeds mostly on plants. |
| Carnivore | an organism that eats mostly meat, or the flesh of animals. |
| Omnivore | an organism that eats plants and animals. |
| Scavenger | an organism that consumes mostly decaying biomass, such as meat or rotting plant matter |
| Decomposer | organism that breaks down dead organic material |
| Food chain | the sequence of transfers of matter and energy in the form of food from organism to organism. |
| Food web | consists of all the food chains in a single ecosystem. |
| Energy pyramid | a graphical representation of the energy found within the trophic levels of an ecosystem |
| Nitrogen fixation | any natural or industrial process that causes free nitrogento combine chemically with other elements to form more-reactive nitrogen compounds |
| Biome | a large naturally occurring community of flora and fauna occupying a major habitat, e.g. forest or tundra. |
| Climate | average weather |
| Desert | an area of land that receives no more than 25 centimeters (10 inches) of precipitation a year. |
| Rain forest | an area of tall, mostly evergreen trees and a high amount of rainfall |
| Emergent layer | The top layer of a rainforest |
| Canopy | the above-ground portion of vegetation in forests consisting of the tops of trees forming a kind of ceiling |
| Understory | an underlying layer of vegetation |
| Grassland | area in which the vegetation is dominated by a nearly continuous cover of grasses. |
| Savanna | vegetation type that grows under hot, seasonally dry climatic conditions and is characterized by an open tree canopy (i.e., scattered trees) above a continuous tall grass understory |
| Deciduous tree | Trees and shrubs that, unlike evergreens, lose their leaves and become dormant during the winter. |
| Boreal forest | A forest that grows in regions of the northern hemisphere with cold temperatures |
| Coniferous tree | any gymnosperm tree or shrub of the phylum Coniferophyta, typically bearing cones and evergreen leaves. |
| Tundra | treeless plain |
| Permafrost | a permanently frozen layer below Earth's surface |
| Estuary | a partially enclosed, coastal water body where freshwater from rivers and streams mixes with salt water from the ocean |
| Intertidal zone | the area where the ocean meets the land between high and low tides. |
| Neritic zone | shallow marine environment extending from mean low water down to 200-metre (660-foot) depths, generally corresponding to the continental shelf. |
| Biogeography | the branch of biology that deals with the geographical distribution of plants and animals. |
| Continental drift | the movement of continents resulting from the motion of tectonic plates. |
| Dispersal | an ecological process that involves the movement of an individual or multiple individuals away from the population in which they were born to another location, or population, where they will settle and reproduce. |
| Exotic species | any nonnative species that significantly modifies or disrupts the ecosystems it colonizes. |
| Point source | a source of radiation (such as light) that is concentrated at a point and considered as having no spatial extension |
| Nonpoint source | diffuse contamination (or pollution) of water or air that does not originate from a single discrete source |
| Biodegradable | the capacity for biological degradation of organic materials by living organisms down to the base substances such as water, carbon dioxide, methane, basic elements and biomass. |
| Natural resource | materials or substances such as minerals, forests, water, and fertile land that occur in nature and can be used for economic gain. |
| Soil conservation | the protection of soil from erosion and other types of deterioration, so as to maintain soil fertility and productivity |
| Crop rotation | the successive cultivation of different crops in a specified order on the same fields |
| Contour plowing | the practice of plowing horizontally along the contours of the land. |
| Conservation plowing | a method used by farmers to reduce soil erosion between crop harvesting and next crop planting. |
| Biodiversity | the variety of life found in a place on Earth or, often, the total variety of life on Earth. |
| Keystone species | an organism that helps define an entire ecosystem. |
| Endangered species | A species considered to be facing a very high risk of extinction in the wild. |
| Threatened species | any species which is likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range |
| Extinction | the dying out of a species |
| Habitat destruction | the elimination or alteration of the conditions necessary for animals and plants to survive, |
| habitat fragmentation | the process during which a large expanse of habitat is transformed into a number of smaller patches of smaller total area isolated from each other by a matrix of habitats unlike the original |
| Poaching | the illegal shooting, trapping, or taking of game, fish, or plants from private property or from a place where such practices are specially reserved or forbidden |
| Captive breading | the process of breeding animals outside of their natural environment in restricted conditions in farms, zoos or other closed facilities |
Created by:
Shox
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