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Ecology Part 1
biology notecards sections 3-1 to 4-2
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Ecology | The scientific study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their environment, or surroundings. |
| Biosphere | part of Earth in which life exists including, land, water, adn air or atmosphere. |
| Species | a group of organisms so similar to one another that they can breed and produce fertile offspring. |
| Population | groups of individuals that belong to the same species and live in the same area. |
| Community | assemblages of different populations that live together in a defined area. |
| Ecosystem | a collection of all the organisms that live in a particular place, together with their nonliving, or physical, environment |
| Autotroph | plants, some algae, and certain bacteria that can capture energy from sunlight or chemicals and use that energy to produce food. |
| Heterotroph | organisms that rely on other organisms for their energy and food sipply. |
| Food Web | when the feeding relationships among the various organisms in an ecosustem form a network of complex interactions. |
| Trophic Level | each step in a food chain or food web |
| Biomass | the total amount of living tissue within a given trophic level |
| 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 |
| Limiting Nutrient | when an ecosystem is imited by a single nutrient that is scarce or cycles very slowly |
| Weather | the day-to-day condition of Earth's atmosphere at a particular time and place. |
| Climate | refers to the average, year-after-year conditions of temperature and precipitaion in a particular region. |
| Green House Effect | the natural situation in which heat is retained by this layer of greenhouse gases. |
| Biotic Factor | the biological influences on organisms within an ecosystem. |
| Abiotic Factor | physical, or nonliving, factors that shape ecosystems. |
| Niche | the full range of physical and biological conditions in which an organism livs and the way in which the organism uses those conditions. |