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EcologyBio
Ecology Flashcards
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Ecology | Science study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their environment |
| Biosphere | part of earth in which life exists including land, water, and air or atmosphere |
| Species | group of 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 environment |
| 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 it consumes; also called a consumer |
| Food Web | network of complex interactions formed by the feeding relationships among the various organisms in the 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 from one part of the biosphere 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 particular time and place |
| Climate | average, year-after-year conditions of temperature and precipitation in a particular region |
| Greenhouse 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 organisms lives and the way in which the organism uses these 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 environment 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 replaceable |
| pollutant | harmful material that can enter the biosphere throught 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 level in a food chain or food web |