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Ecology St. Geme
Ecology St. Gemme
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Ecology | The scientific study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their environmnent, or surroundings.(pg. 63) |
| Biosphere | contains the combined portions of the planet in which all of life exists, including land, water, and air, or atmosphere. (pg. 63) |
| Species | a group of organisms so similar to one another that they can breed and produce fertile offspring. (pg. 64) |
| Population | groups of individuals that belong to the saem species and live in the same area. (pg. 64) |
| Community | assemblages of different populations that live together in a defined area. (pg. 64) |
| Ecosystem | a collection of organisms that live in a particular place, together with their nonliving, or physical, environment. (pg. 64) |
| Autotroph | organisms that can capture energy from sunlight or chemicals and use that energy to produce food. (pg. 67) |
| Heterotroph | organisms that rely on other organisms for their energy and food supplies. (pg. 68) |
| Food Web | when the feeding relationships among the various organisms in an ecosystem form a network of complex interactions. (pg. 70) |
| Trophic Level | each step in a food chain or food web. (pg. 70) |
| Biomass | the total amount of living tissue within a given trophic level. (pg.72) |
| 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 through this. (pg. 74) |
| Limiting Nutrient | when an ecosystem is limited by a single nutrient that is scarce or cycles very slowly,this substance is called limiting nutrient. (pg. 80) |
| Weather | the day-to-day condition of Earth's atmosphere at particular time and place. (pg. 87) |
| Climate | the average, year-after-year conditions of temperature and precipitation in a particular region. (pg. 87) |
| Green House Effect | the natural situation in which heat is retained by this layer of greenhouse gases. (pg. 87) |
| Biotic Factor | the biological influences on organisms within an ecosystem. (pg. 90) |
| Abiotic Factor | phyisical, or nonliving, factors that shape ecosystems. (pg. 90) |
| Niche | the full range of physical and biological conditions in which and organism lives and the way in which the organism uses those conditions. (pg. 91) |
| Logistic Growth | occurs when a population's growth slows or stops following a period of exponential growth. (pg. 122) |
| Carrying Capacity | the largest number of individuals that a given environment can support. (pg. 122) |
| Demography | the scientific study of human populations. (pg. 130) |
| Demographic Transition | a dramatic change in birth and death rates. (pg. 130) |
| Green Revolution | the effort that greatly increased the world's food supplies. (pg. 142) |
| Renewable Resource | they can regenerate if they are alive or can be replenished by biochemical cycles if they are nonliving. (pg. 144) |
| Pollutant | a harmful material that can enter the biosphere through land, air, or water. (pg. 148) |
| Biodiversity | biological diversity that is the sum total of the genetically based variety of all the organisms in the biosphere. (pg. 150) |
| Biological Magnification | concentrations of a harmful substance increase in organisms at a higher substance increase in organisms at higher trophic levels in a food chain or food web. (pg. 152) |