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Hong Ecology
Honors Biology
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What is the goal of science? | The goal of science is to investigate and understand the natural world, to explain events in the natural world, and use those explanations to make useful predictions. |
| What is Ecology? | Ecology is the scientific study of interactions among organisms and beweeen organisms and their enviroment, or surroundings. |
| Biosphere | Part of Earth in which life exists including land, water, and air or atmosphere. |
| species | a group of similar organisms that can breed and produce fertile offspring. |
| population | a group of individuals of the same species that live in the same area. |
| community | assemblage of different populations that live together in a defined area. |
| ecosystem | a collection of all of the organsims that live in a particular place, together with their nonliving enviroment. |
| autotroph | organism that can capture energy from sunlight or chemicals and use it to produce its own food from inorganic compounds; also called a producer. |
| heterotroph | organism that obtains energy from the foods it consumes; also called a consumer. |
| food web | network of complex interactions formed by the feeding relationships among the various organisms in an ecosystem. |
| trophic level | a step in a food chain or food web |
| biomass | total amount of living tissue within a given trophic level. |
| biogeochemical cycle | process in which elements, chemical compounds, and other forms of matter are passed from one organism to another and from one part of the biospher to another. |
| limiting nutrient | single nutrient that either is scarce or cycles very slowly, limiting the growth of organisms in an ecosystem |
| weather | condition of Earth's atmosphere at a particluar time and place. |
| climate | average, year- after- year conditions of temperature and precipitation in a particular region. |
| green house effect | natural situation in which heat is retained in the Earth's atmosphere by carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and other gases. |
| biotic factor | biological influence on organisms within an ecosystem. |
| Abiotic factor | physical, or nonliving, factor that shapes an ecosystem |
| niche | full range of physical and biological conditions in which an organism lives and the way in which the organism uses those conditions |
| logistic growth | growth pattern in which a population's growth rate slows or stops following a period of exponential growth |
| carrying capacity | largest number of individuals of a population that a given enviroment can support. |
| demography | scientific study of human populations |
| demographic transition | change in population fron high and death rates to low birth and death rates |
| green revolution | the developoment of highly productive crop strains and the use of modern agrcultural techniques to increase yields of food crops |
| renewable resource | resource that that can regenerate quickly and that is replaceable |
| pollutant | harmful material that can enter the biosphere through land, air, or water. |
| biodiversity | the sum total of the variety of organisms in the biosphere |
| biological magnification | increasing concetration of a harmful substance in organisms at higher trophic levels in a food chain or food web. |