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Unit 2 Flashcards Bi
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What is ecology? | is the scientific study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their enviroment, or surroundings. |
| What is a biosphere? | contains the combined portions of the planet in which all of life exists, including land, water, and air, or atmosphere. |
| What is a species? | is a group of organisms so similar to one another that they can breeed and produce fertile offspring. |
| What is a population? | groups of individuals that belong to the same species and live in the same area. |
| What is a communtitiy? | assemblages of different populations that live together in a defined area. |
| What is a ecosystem? | is a collection of all the organisms that live in a particular place, toghether with their nonliving, or physical, enviroment. |
| What is a autotroph? | use energy from the environment to fuel the assembly of simple inorganic compounds into complex organic molecules. |
| What is a heterotroph? | organisms that rely on other organisms for their energy and food supply. |
| What is a food web? | When the feeding relationships among the various organisms in an ecosystem form a network of complex interactions, ecologists describe these relationships as a food web. |
| What is a trophic level? | each step in a food chain or food web. |
| What is a biomass? | The total amount of living tissue within a given trophic level. ` |
| Wha tis a biogeochemical cycle? | Elements, chemical compounds, and other forms of matter are passed from one organism to another and from one part of the biosphere to another through... |
| What is a limiting nutrient? | when an ecosystem is limited by a single nutrient that is scarce or cycles very slowly, this substance is a limiting nutrient. |
| What is weather? | is the day-to-day condition of Earth's atmosphere at a particular time and place. |
| What is climate? | refers to the average, year-after-year conditions of temperature and precipitation in a particular region. |
| What is the greenhouse effect? | The natural sutuation in which heat is retained by this layer of greenhouse gases. |
| What is a biotic factor? | The biological influences on organisms within an ecosytem. |
| What is a abiotic factor? | physical, or nonliving, factors that shape ecosystems. |
| What is a niche? | is the full range of physical and biological conditions in which an organism lives and the way in which the organism uses those conditions. |
| What is logistic growth? | occurs when a population's growth slows or stops following a period or exponential growth. |
| What is a carrying capacity? | the largest number of individuals that a given enviroment can support. |
| What is demography? | the scientific study of human populations. |
| What is a demographic tranistion? | a dramatic change in birth and death rates. |
| What is the green revolution? | When goverments and scientists began a major effort to increase food productions in those countries that were not producing enough food. |
| What are renewable sources? | can regenerate if they are alive or can be replenished by biochemical cycles if they are nonliving. |
| What is a pollutant? | is a harmful material that can enter the biosphere through the land, air, and water. |
| What is biodiversity? | the sum total of the genetically based variety of all organisms in the biosphere. |
| What is biological magnification? | concentrations of a harmful substance increase in organisms at higher trophic levels in a food chain or food web. |