Chapter 4 Flashcards
Ecosystem
a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.
Biotic factor
is any living thing that has an effect on an ecosystem. Biotic means “pertaining to life.”
Abiotic Factor
abiotic components or abiotic factors are non-living chemical and physical parts of the environment that affect living organisms and the functioning of ecosystems.
Organism
an individual animal, plant, or single-celled life form.
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 sub-species. ecology.
Population
a population consists of all the organisms of a given species that live in a particular area.
Community
also called biological community, in biology, an interacting group of various species in a common location.
Habitat
the natural home or environment of an animal, plant, or other organism.
Natural Selection
the process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring.
Evolution
is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations.
Adaptation
it is the result of natural selection’s acting upon heritable variation over several generations.
Artificial Selection
is the process by which humans choose individual organisms with certain phenotypic trait values for breeding.
Resistance
that tend to restrict the biotic potential of an organism or kind of organism and impose a limit on numerical increase.
Archaea
are a domain of single-celled microorganisms. They have no cell nucleus or any other organelles inside their cells.
Bacteria
single-celled organisms that thrive in diverse environments. These organisms can live in soil, the ocean and inside the human gut.
Fungus
Along with bacteria, fungi are important as decomposers in the soil food web.
Protist
Nearly all protists exist in some type of aquatic environment, including freshwater and marine environments, damp soil, and even snow. Several protist species are parasites that infect animals or plants.
Gymnosperm
a plant that has seeds unprotected by an ovary or fruit. Gymnosperms include the conifers, cycads, and ginkgo.
Angiosperm
a plant that has flowers and produces seeds enclosed within a carpel. The angiosperms are a large group and include herbaceous plants, shrubs, grasses, and most trees.
Invertebrate
an animal lacking a backbone, such as an arthropod, mollusk, annelid, coelenterate
Vertebrate
an animal of a large group distinguished by the possession of a backbone or spinal column, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes.
