Question | Answer |
All of the nonliving factors in an organism's environment | abiotic |
The _________ is the portion of earth that supports life. | biosphere |
Each step in a food chain or food web is a(n) | trophic level |
________ is the total mass of living matter at each trophic level | biomass |
______ is a biological community and all of the abiotic factors that affect it. | ecosystem |
The act of one organism consuming another organism for food is __________. | predation |
A(n) ________ _______ is a simplified model representing the transfer of energy from organism to organism. | food chain |
The close relationship that exists when two or more species live together is ______. | symbiosis |
____ is the scientific discipline in which the relationships among living organisms and the interaction the organisms have with their environments are studied. | Ecology |
Eats both plants and animals | omnivore |
Eats fragments of dead matter and returns nutrients to the soil, air, and water | detritivore |
heterotroph that eats only plants | herbivore |
Heterotroph that preys on other heterotrophs (eats meat) | carnivore |
organism that collects energy from sunlight or inorganic substances to produce food | autotroph |
organism that gets its energy by consuming other organisms | heterotroph |
relationship between 2 or more organisms that live closely together and benefit from each other | mutualism |
relationship where one organism benefits at the expense of another organism | parasitism |
one organism benefits and the other is neither helped nor harmed | commensalism |
made up of individual organisms of the same species | population |
all living organisms in an environment | biotic factors |
portion of earth that supports life | biosphere |
made up of the organisms and nonliving (abiotic) things in an area | ecosystem |
______ is part of all organic compounds, which make up living things. | carbon |
________ is a nutrient that organisms need to produce proteins | Nitrogen |
What is the role or position that an organism has in its environment? | niche |
All of the biomes on earth combine to form the highest level of organization, the __________ | biosphere |
anything that has mass or takes up space | matter |
individual organisms of a single species that share the same geographical location at the same time | population |
Energy for most ecosystems originates from the _____ | sun |
The largest concentration of nitrogen is found ___________ | in the atmosphere |
In a process called ______, some soil bacteria is converts fixed nitrogen back into nitrogen gas, which returns it to the atmosphere. | denitrification |
This type organism captures atmospheric nitrogen for the purpose of nitrogen fixation | bacteria |
During predation, the organism being pursued is known as the ____ | prey |
A ______ is the place in which an organism lives | habitat |
The close relationship that exists when two or more species live together is _____________ | symbiosis |
A __________ is a chemical substance that an organism must obtain from its environment to sustain life and undergo life processes | nutrient |
The exchange of matter through the biosphere is called the __________ __________. | Biogeochemical cycle |
_______ _________ represent that many interconnected food chains and pathways in which energy flows through a group of organisms | Food webs |
The ecological levels of organization in order (smallest to largest) | Organism, population, biological community, ecosystem, biome, biosphere |
Two major life processes that involve carbon and oxygen | Photosynthesis and respiration |
_______ occurs when more than one organism uses a resource at the same time. | Competition |
About _____ of all freshwater is found in ice caps and glaciers, making it unavailable for use by living organisms. | 69% |