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High School Ecology
Vocabulary
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Terrestrial Biomes | A land biome whose region is characterized by a specific kind of climate and certain kinds of plant and animal communities. |
| Aquatic ecosystems | Diverse regions in the world's bodies of water (examples: freshwater ecosystems, wetlands, estuary and marine ecosystems). |
| Ecology | The study of the relationships between organisms and their environment. |
| Abiotic factors | Nonliving components of an ecosystem (ex: sun, wind, water, precipitation). |
| Biotic factors | Living components of an ecosystem (ex: plants, animals. |
| Limiting resources | A necessary resource that is in limited supply or that must be added for production or growth of an organism to continue. |
| Organism | A living thing or anything that can carry out life processes independently. |
| Population | A group of organisms of the same species that live in a specific geographical area. |
| Community | A group of various species that live in the same habitat and interact with each other. |
| Ecosystem | A community of organisms and their abiotic environment. |
| Biosphere | The entire portion of Earth inhabited by life; the sum of all the planet's ecosystems. |
| Ecological niche | The position occupied by a species, both in terms of its physical use of its habitat and its function within an ecological community. |
| Habitat | The place where an organism usually lives. |
| Autotrophs | An organism that produces its own nutrients from inorganic substances or from the environment instead of consuming other organisms. |
| Heterotrophs | An organism that obtains organic food molecules by eating other organisms or their by products and that cannot synthesize organic compounds from in organic materials. |
| Herbivores | An organism that eats only plants. |
| Carnivores | An organism that eats animals. |
| Omnivores | An animal that regularly eats animals as well as plants or algae. |
| Decomposers | An organism that feeds by breaking down organic matter from dead organisms; examples: bacteria and fungi. |
| Detritivores | A consumer that derives its energy and nutrients from nonliving organic material such as corpses, fallen plant material, and the wastes of living organisms (example: decomposer). |
| Producers | Organisms that convert light energy into chemical energy (ex: autotrophs). |
| Consumers | An organism that eats other organisms or organic matter instead of producing its own nutrients or obtaining nutrients from inorganic sources. |
| Energy flow | The flow or transfer of energy in an ecosystem from one trophic level to another. |
| 10% rule | The energy that is stored at each link in a food web. Ninety percent of energy that is used dissipates as heat into the environment and is not recycled. |
| Food chain | The pathway of energy transfer through various stages as a result of the feeding patterns of a series of organisms. |
| Food web | A diagram that shows the feeding relationships between organisms in an ecosystem. |
| Trophic level | One of the steps in a food chain or food pyramid (examples: producers and primary, secondary and tertiary consumers). |
| Energy pyramid | A triangular diagram that shows an ecosystem's loss of energy, which results as energy passes through the ecosystem's food chain; each row in the pyramid represents a trophic (feeding) level in an ecosystem. |
| Carbon cycle | The movement of carbon from the nonliving environment into living things and back. |
| Greenhouse gas | Carbon dioxide, water vapor and other gases in the air that absorb and reradiate infrared radiation causing the warming of the surface and lower atmosphere of the Earth. |
| Carbon Dioxide | A molecule consisting of carbon and oxygen atoms and exists in the atmosphere, water, earth and living organisms. |
| Photosynthesis | The process by which plants, algae, and some bacteria use sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to produce carbohydrates and oxygen. |
| Phytoplankton | Microscopic organisms that live in watery environments (both salty and fresh). |
| Zooplankton | Tiny invertebrates that float freely throughout the seas and other bodies of water. |
| Respiration | The exchange of exygen and carbon dioxide between living cells and their environment (includes breathing and cellular respiration). |
| Decomposition | The breakdown of organic compounds into more basic units by the activity of microbes when those compounds are no longer part of a living system. |
| Fossil fuel | Combustible substances such as oil, coal, and natural gas that have formed from decomposed plants and animals over time. |
| Nitrogen cycle | The cycling of nitrogen between organisms, soil, water and the atmosphere. |
| Nitrogen fixing bacteria | Bacteria that are responsible for converting gaseous nitrogen into ammonia (a compound that organisms can use to make amino acids and other nitrogen-containing organic molecules). |
| Nitrogen fixation | The process by which gaseous nitrogen is converted into ammonia. |
| Ammonification | The formation of ammonia compounds in the soil by the action of bacteria on decaying matter. |
| Assimilation | The conversion of absorbed food into the substance of the body. |
| Nitrification | The process by which gaseous nitrogen is converted into ammonia, a compound that organisms can use to make amino acids and other nitrogen-containing organic molecules. |
| Denitrifying bacteria | Bacteria that are responsible for the liberation of nitrogen from nitrogen-containing compounds in the soil into its atmospheric gaseous form. |
| Denitrification | The liberation of nitrogen from nitrogen containing compounds by bacteria in the soil. |
| Water cycle | The continuous movement of water between the atmosphere, the land, and the oceans. |
| Evaporation | The change of state from a liquid to a gas. |
| Transpiration | The process by which plants release water vapor into the air through stomata. |
| Condensation | The change of state from a gas to a liquid. |
| Precipitation | Any form of water that falls to Earth's surface from the clouds (ex: rain, snow, sleet and hail). |
| Groundwater | Water held underground in the soil or in pores and crevices in rock. |
| Runoff | The draining away of water (or substances carried in it) from the surface of an area of land. |
| Predation | An interaction between two organisms in which one organism, the predator, kills and feeds on the other organism, the prey. |
| Competition | The struggle between individuals of the same or different species for food, space, light, etc, when these are inadequate to supply the needs of all. |
| Carrying capacity | The largest population that an environment can support at any given time. |
| Symbiosis | Interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both. |
| Parasitism | A relationship between two species in which one species, the parasite, benefits from the other species, the host, which is harmed. |
| Commensalism | A relationship between two organisms in which one organism benefits and the other is unaffected. |
| Mutualism | A relationship between two species in which both species benefit. |
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