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Bio Flshcards
vocab
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| ECOLOGY | 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 or similar organisms that can 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 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 | 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 form one part of the biosphere to another. |
| LIMITING NUTRIENT | Single nutrient that is either scarce or cycles very slowly, limiting the growth of organisms in an ecosystem. |
| WEATHER | Condition of Earth's atmosphere at a particular 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 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 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 developement of highly productive crop strains and the ise of modern agricultural techniques to increase yields of food crops. |
| RENEWABLE RESOURCE | Resource that can regenerate quickly and that is replaceable. |
| POPULANT | Harmfull material that can enter the biosphere 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 higher trophic levels in a food chain or food web. |