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Biology Martin
BIology flash cards
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What is ecology? | The scientific study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their environment. |
| What is a biosphere? | Part of Earth in which life exists including land, water, and air or atmosphere. |
| What is a species? | A group of similar organisms that can breed and produce fertile offspring. |
| Define population. | A group of individuals of the same species that live in the same area. |
| What is a community? | An assemblage of different populations that live together in a defined area. |
| What is an ecosystem? | A cfollection of all the organisms that live in a particular place, together with their non-living environment. |
| Define 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. |
| Heterotroph. | An organism that contains energy from the foods it consumes; also called a consumer. |
| Food web. | A network of complex interactions formed by the feeding relationships among the various organisms in an ecosystem. |
| Trophic level. | A step in a food chain of food web. |
| Biomass. | The total amount of living tissue withing a given trophic level. |
| Biogeochemical Cycle. | A process 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. |
| Limiting Nutrient. | A single nutrient that either is scarce or cycles very slowly, limiting the growth of organisms in an ecosystem. |
| Weather. | The condition of earth's atmosphere at a particular time and place. |
| Climate. | The average, year-after-year conditions of temperature and precipitation in a particular region. |
| Green House Effect. | The natural situation in which heat is retained in Earth's atmosphere by carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and other gasses. |
| 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. | A growth pattern in which a population's growth rate slows or stops following a period of exponential growth. |