Chapter 24 Part 1 Flashcards
What is microbial ecology?
The study of microbes in their natural habitats
What is bioremediation?
The use of microbes to breakdown harmful chemicals
What is ecology?
The study of living things and their interaction with the non-living environment
What is the difference between biotic and abiotic factors?
Biotic refers to living things or their dead remains and abiotic factors refer to non-living factors such as gases, minerals, water, temperatures and light
What is the broadest level of organization on earth?
Biosphere
What are the terms for the physical locations on earth?
Water________
Soil_________
Air________
Hydrosphere
Lithosphere
Atmosphere
Terrestrial biomes are characterized by what 3 factors?
1) dominant plant species
2) temperature
3) precipitation
What are communities and populations?
Communities: groups of many species living in the same habitat
Populations: groups of the same species
What is an organism’s habitat and niche?
Habitat: the physical location of the environment to which an organism has adapted
Niche: the overall role that an organism serves in the community
How might the micro environment vary from the macro environment?
A microenvirontment determines the habits of microbes and is defined by the environmental conditions in the immediate area around microbes. Macroenvironments are much larger ecosystems
What is satellitism?
A condition in which one species provides nutritional or protective factors needed by another species
Why do most species of microbes depend on a community of microbes for survival?
One species on its own is not capable of producing all the organic and inorganic factors required for its own growth and metabolism
What is unique about the species Desukforudis audaxviator?
It is able to metabolize using inorganic nutrients that it leaches from rocks
What does an energy pyramid represent?
The energy and nutritional relationships between organisms
What does the relative size of the blocks at each trophic level indicate?
The # of individual organisms
What do the arrows indicate in an energy pyramid?
The direction, or flow, of energy
Why are primary producers essential to all ecosystems?
They are the only organisms in and ecosystem that can produce organic carbon compounds by assimilating inorganic compounds from the atmosphere. Without them the would be no energy for other organisms in the ecosystem.
Which type of producer makes up the vast majority on earth?
Photosynthesizers
What is the relationship between quaternary, tertiary, secondary, and primary consumers, to one another?
Secondary tertiary, and quaternary consumers feed on other consumers below them in the pyramid. Indirectly, they are feeding off the primary consumers whom initially created the energy
Which of the consumers have the largest population size in their given ecosystem?
Primary consumers
What do decomposers feed on?
Dead organic matter from plants, animals, and other microbes
Why are decomposers important to their ecosystems?
They revert organic matter back into inorganic matter
Why are there always fewer organisms at the top of the food pyramid, compared to the base?
Energy gets lost or used as it moves up the pyramid so there is always fewer organisms high on the food pyramid than there is in the bottom of the pyramid.
What is the purpose of a food web and how are they different from food pyramids?
They more accurately describe the dynamic interactions among producer, consumers, and decomposers in specific ecosystems
