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Ecology Alese:D
biological flash card thingys
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Ecology | The scientific study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their enviornment |
| Biosphere | Part of earth in which life exists including land, water, and air or atmosphere |
| Species | group of similar organisms that can be breed and produce fertile offspring |
| Population | 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 | Collection of all the organisms that live in a particular place, together with their nonliving enviornment |
| 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 food int 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 | Step in 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 opne organism to another and from one part of the biosphere to another |
| Limiting nutrient | Single nutrient that either is scarce or cycles very low;, limiting the growth of organisms in an ecosystem |
| Weather | Condition of earths atmosphere at a particular time and place |
| Climate | Average, year-after-year conditionbs of temperature and precipitation in a particular region |
| Green house effect | Natural situation in which heat is retained in earths atmosphere by carbon dioxide, methane, wate 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 organisms lives and the way in which the organisms uses those conditions |
| logistic growth | Growth pattern in which a populations growth rate slows or stops following a period of exponential growth |
| Carrying capacity | Largest number of individuals of a population that a given enviornment can support |
| Demography | Scientific study of human populations |
| Demographic transition | Change in a population from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates |
| Green Revolution | The development of highly productive crop strains and the use of modern agricultural techniques to increase yields of food crops |
| renewable resource | Resource that can regenerate quickly and that is replaceble |
| Pollutant | Harmful material that can enter the biospohere through the land, air, or water |
| Biodiversity | Biological diversity; the sum total of the variety of organisms in the biosphere |
| Biological magnification | Increasing concentration of a harmful substance in organisms at higher trophic levels in a food chain or food web |