Chap. 3 Ecology Flashcards
Habitat
natural home/environment of a living organism
Niche
an organism’s position/role in a community and how it interacts with physical/environmental conditions/other species
Competitive exclusion principle
Species that compete for the same resource cannot coexist
Keystone species
An important species in an ecosystem that has a large effect on the ecosystem as a whole
Heterotroph
Organisms that eat other organisms
Autotroph
Organisms that produce its own food
Food chain
Relationship between organisms showing what consumes/what they consume
Food web
lots of food chain
1st trophic level
Producers/Autotrophs, organisms that make their own food. photosynthesis/chemosynthesis
2nd trophic level
Primary consumers/heterotrophs: eat plants/herbivores
3rd trophic level
Secondary consumer/heterotroph: eat consumers/produces of second level
4th trophic level and up
Tertiary consumer/Apex predator: eat all below
Energy pyramid
Shows amount of energy at each level. Only 10% of energy is passed to the next trophic level
Biomass pyramid
Shows biomass(biomass: total amount of living tissue within a trophic level
) in each level
Pyramid of numbers
Number of organisms in each trophic level
Water cycle
Evaporation -> Condensation -> Precipitation -> Seepage -> Runoff -> Storage
Carbon reservoir
parts of Earth that store carbon e.g. ocean, land, atmosphere
Carbon
building block of all living things, organic molecules have:lipid,protein,cars,nucleic acids
Nitrogen Fixation
process of making atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia
Nitrification
process where ammonia become nitrite/nitrate
Denitrification
process of making nitrite/nitrate into gas nitrogen
limiting nutrients
when an ecosystem is limited by a single nutrient that’s scarce. if more limiting nutrient is brought into ecosystem, ecosystem will go bonkers
algal bloom
Rapid increase in algae caused by increase nutrients/warmer temps, steals resources/nutrients from species and is toxic
population
group of same species living in same area
