Ch 4. Key Terms Flashcards
Ecosystem
A community of organisms and their abiotic environment.
Biotic Factor
An environmental factor that is associated with or results from the activities of living organisms.
Abiotic Factor
Describes the nonliving part of the environment, including water, rocks, lights, and temperature.
Organism
A living thing; anything that can carry out life processes independently.
Species
A group of organisms that are closely related and can mate to produce fertile offspring; also the level of classification below genus and above subspecies.
Population
A group of organisms of the same species that live in a specific geographical area and interbreed.
Community
A group of various species that live in the same habitat and interact with each other.
Habitat
The place where an organism usually lives.
Natural Selection
The process by which individuals that are better adapted to their environment survive and reproduce more successfully than less well adapted individuals do; a theory to explain the mechanism of evolution.
Evolution
A heritable change in the characteristics within a population from one generation to the next; the development of new types of organisms from preexisting types of organisms over time.
Adaptation
The process of becoming adapted to an environment; an anatomical, physiological, or behavioral change that improves a populations ability to survive.
Artificial Selection
The selective breeding of organisms for specific desirable characteristics.
Resistance
In biology, the ability of an organism to tolerate a chemical or disease causing agent.
Archaea
Prokaryotes that are distinguished from other prokaryotes by differences in their genetics and in the makeup of their cell wall; members of the domain Archaea.
Bacteria
Extremely small, single-celled organisms that usually have a cell wall and reproduce by cell division.
