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Ecology-Schwab
Unit 2-chapters 3-6 vocabulary
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Which study is the scientific study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their environment? | Ecology |
| Which "house" of nature is the largest that contains the combined portions of the planet in which all life exists, including land, water, and air, or atmosphere? | Biosphere |
| Which level of organization includes groups of similar organisms that can breed and produce fertile offspring? | Species |
| Which level of organization includes a group of individuals of the same species that live in the same area? | Population |
| What is a community? | An assemblage of different populations that live together in a defined area |
| What is an ecosystem? | A collection of all the organisms that live in a particular place, together with their non living environment |
| What is an autotroph? | An organism that can capture energy from sunlight or chemicals and use it to produce its own food from inorganic compounds; also called a producer |
| What is a heterotroph? | An organism that optains energy from the food it consumes; also called a consumer |
| What is a food web? | A network of complex interactions formed by the feeding relations among the various organisms in an ecosystem |
| What is trophic level? | A step in a food chain or web |
| What is biomass? | The total amount of tissue within a given trophic level |
| What is the biogeoichemical cycle? | The proccess in which elements, chemical compounds, and other forms of matter are passed from one organism to another and from one part of the biosphere to another |
| What is limiting nutrients? | A single nutrients that either is scarce or cycles very slowly, limiting the growth of organisms in an ecosystem |
| What is weather? | The condition of Earth's atmosphere at a particular time and place |
| What is climate? | The average, year-after-year conditions of temperature and percipitation in a particular region |
| What is the green house effect? | The natural situation in which heat is retained in Earth's atmosphere by carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and other gases |
| What is a biotic factor? | A biological influence on organisms within an ecosystem |
| What is an abiotic factor? | A physical, or nonliving factor that shapes the ecosystem |
| What is a niche? | A full range of phsical and biological conditions in which an organism lives and the way in which the organism uses those conditions |
| What is logistic growth? | A growth pattern in which a population's growth pattern slows or stops following a period of expotential growth |
| What is carrying capacity? | The largest number of individuals of a population that a given environment can support |
| What is demography? | The scientific study of human populations |
| What is a demographic transition? | A change in population from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates |
| What is green revolution? | The development of highly productive crop strains and the use of modern agricultural techniques to increase yields of food crops |
| What is a renewable resource? | A resource that can regenerate quickly and that is replaceable |
| What is a pollutant? | Harmful material that can enter the biosphere through the land, air or water |
| What is biodiversity? | biological diversity; the sum total of the variety of organisms in the biosphere |
| What is biological magnification? | Increasing concentration of a harmful substance in organisms at higher trophic levels in a food chain or food web |