Chapter 1 Flashcards
Of or referring to the physical or nonliving environment.
Abiotic
A physiological, morphological, or behavioral trait with an underlying genetic basis that enhances the survival and reproduction of its bearers in their environment.
Adaptation
The highest level of biological organization, consisting of all living organisms on Earth plus the environments in which they live; located between the lithosphere and the troposphere.
Biosphere
Of or referring to the living components of an environment.
Biotic
Directional change in climate over a period of three decades or longer.
Climate Change
A group of interacting species that occur together at the same place and time.
Community
An organism that obtains its energy by eating other organisms or their remains.
Consumer
A standard scientific approach in which an experimental group (that has the factor being tested) is compared with a control group (that lacks the factor being tested).
Controlled Experiment
The scientific study of interactions between organisms and their environment.
Ecology
All the organisms in a given area as well as the physical environment in which they live; can include one or more communities.
Ecosystem
An interdisciplinary field of study that incorporates concepts from the natural sciences (including ecology) and the social sciences (e.g., politics, economics, ethics), focused on how people affect the environment and how we can address environmental problems.
Environmental Science
(1) Change in allele frequencies in a population over time. (2) Descent with modification; the process by which organisms gradually accumulate differences from their ancestors.
Evolution
A possible answer to a question developed using previous knowledge or intuition.
Hypothesis
An area that is spatially heterogeneous in one or more features of the environment, such as the number or arrangement of different habitat types; typically includes multiple ecosystems.
Landscape
The process by which individuals with certain heritable characteristics tend to survive and reproduce more successfully than other individuals because of those characteristics.
Natural Selection
The amount of energy per unit of time that producers capture by photosynthesis and chemosynthesis, minus the amount they use in cellular respiration.
Net Primary Production (NPP)
The cyclic movement of nutrients between organisms and the physical environment.
Nutrient Cycle
A group of individuals of the same species that live within a particular area and interact with one another.
Population
An organism that can produce its own food by photosynthesis or chemosynthesis; also called a primary producer or autotroph.
Producer
The performance of each treatment of a controlled experiment, including the control, more than once.
Replication
The spatial or temporal dimension at which ecological observations are collected.
Scale
An iterative and self-correcting process by which scientists learn about the natural world, consisting of four steps: (1) observe nature and ask a question about those observations; (2) develop possible answers to that question (hypotheses); (3) evaluate competing hypotheses with experiments, observations, or quantitative models; (4) use the results of those experiments, observations, or models to modify the hypotheses, pose new questions, or draw conclusions.
Scientific Method
