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chapter 5
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| evolution | any net directional change or any cumulative change in the characteristics of organisms or populations over many generations |
| gene | the basic physical and functional unit of heredity |
| mutation | Any change in the DNA sequence of a cell |
| genetic drift | the change in frequency of an existing gene variant in the population due to random chance |
| natural selection | a mechanism of evolution |
| fitness | reproductive success and reflects how well an organism is adapted to its environment |
| adaptation | a heritable trait that increases the likelihood of an individual's survival and reproduction |
| artificial selection | a human controlled process to produce individuals with certain traits |
| speciation | the process by which new species form |
| extinction | the dying out of a species |
| niche | the role an organism plays in a community |
| tolerance | the niche breadth, or the range of conditions that an organism can withstand |
| resource partitioning | he niche breadth, or the range of conditions that an organism can withstand |
| predation | an interaction in which one organism, the predator, eats all or part of the body of another organism, the pre |
| coevolution | the process of reciprocal evolutionary change that occurs between pairs of species or among groups of species as they interact with one another. |
| parasitism | relationship between two species of plants or animals in which one benefits at the expense of the other, sometimes without killing the host |
| symbiosis | a close, prolonged association between two or more different biological species |
| herbivory | a form of consumption in which an organism principally eats autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria |
| mutualism | the ecological interaction between two or more species where each species has a net benefit |
| commensalism | the interaction between two species in which one gains a fitness advantage while the other neither benefits nor is harmed |
| primary producer | the gateway for energy to enter food webs |
| photosynthesis | the process by which plants use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to create oxygen and energy in the form of sugar |
| chemosynthesis | the process by which food is made by bacteria or other living things using chemicals as the energy source, typically in the absence of sunlight |
| consumer | ;a living creature that eats organisms from a different population |
| cellular respiration | uses organic molecules from food (for example, the sugar glucose) and oxygen to produce energy that is stored in the molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP), as well as hea |
| herbivore | an organism that feeds mostly on plants. |
| carnivore | animals that eat other animals, or meat |
| omnivore | an organism that eats plants and animals |
| detrivore | an organism that survives on a diet of dead and decaying plant and animal matter |
| decomposer | An organism, often a bacterium, fungus, or invertebrate that feeds on and breaks down dead plant or animal matter, making organic nutrients available to the ecosystem |
| trophic level | the position it occupies in a food web |
| biomass | the total amount of living tissue in a trophic level |
| food web | the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation of what-eats-what in an ecological community |
| keystone species | an organism that helps hold the system together |
| succession | the change in either species composition, structure, or architecture of vegetation through time |
| primary succession | when a new patch of land is created or exposed for the first time |
| pioneer species | species that are the first to colonize newly created environments or recently disturbed environments during the processes of primary succession and secondary succession |
| secondary succession | the colonization of sites that previously had a community established, where a disturbance has removed a portion or all of that community over a limited area |
| invasive species | An invasive species is an introduced, nonnative organism (disease, parasite, plant, or animal) that begins to spread or expand |
| food chain | a linear series of feeding relationships |
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