Ch. 3 Flashcards
Tertiary
Feed on the flesh of herbivores.
Omnivores
Eat both plants and animals.
Decomposers
Process of obtaining their nutrients, release nutrients from the wastes or remains of plants and animals and return those nutrients to the soil, water, and air for reuse by producers.
Detritus feeders
Feed on the wastes or dead bodies of other organisms.
Aerobic respiration
Uses of oxygen to convert glucose back into carbon dioxide and water.
Food chain
Sequence of organisms each of which serves as a source of nutrients or energy for the next.
Food web
Show how producers consumers and decomposers are connected to one another as energy flows through trophic levels in an ecosystem.
Pyramid of energy flow
Illustrates this energy loss for a simple food chain.
Gross primary productivity
Rate at which an ecosystems producers convert solar energy into chemical energy stored in compounds found in their tissues.
Net primary productivity
The rate at which producers use photosynthesis to produce and store chemical energy stored in compounds found in their tissues.
Nutrient cycles
Elements and compounds that make up nutrients move continually through air, water, soil, rock, and living organisms within ecosystems.
Water cycle
Collects, purifies, and distributes the earths fixed supply of water.
Surface runoff
Water flows into streams, rivers, lakes, wetlands, and oceans from which it can evaporate to repeat the cycle.
Aquifers
Perception also sinks through soil into under around layers of rock, sand, and gravel.
Carbon cycle
Various compounds of carbon circulate through the biosphere the atmosphere and parts of the hydrosphere.
