Ecological Relationships

Question 1

What is an organism?

Answer 1

an individual animal, plant, or single-celled life form.

Question 2

Define habitat:

Answer 2

the natural home or environment of an animal, plant, or other organism.

Question 3

Define adaptation:

Answer 3

the process of change by which an organism or species becomes better suited to its environment.

Question 4

Define nocturnal:

Answer 4

done, occurring, or active at night.

Question 5

What is a carnivore?

Answer 5

an animal whose food and energy requirements derive solely from animal products

Question 6

What is a herbivore?

Answer 6

an animal that feeds on plants.

Question 7

What is an omnivore?

Answer 7

an animal that eats a variety of food of both plant and animal origin.

Question 8

What is it called when a plant or animal’s behaviour is characterized by activity during daytime, with a period of sleeping or other inactivity at night?

Answer 8

Diurnal/ diurnality

Question 9

Define diurnality?

Answer 9

A form of plant or animal behaviour characterized by activity during daytime, with a period of sleeping or other inactivity at night.

Question 10

What are producers?

Answer 10

organisms that make their own organic nutrients

Question 11

Define a consumer:

Answer 11

An organism that generally obtains food by feeding on other organisms or organic matter due to lack of the ability to manufacture own food from inorganic sources

Question 12

What is a predator?

Answer 12

An animal that hunts, kills and eats other animals for food.

Question 13

What is prey?

Answer 13

organisms that predators kill for food.

Question 14

Define interdependence:

Answer 14

All organisms in an ecosystem depend upon each other. If the population of one organism rises or falls, then this can affect the rest of the ecosystem.

Question 15

What is it called when all the organisms in an ecosystem are dependent upon each other?

Answer 15

Interdependence

Question 16

What is a vertebrate?

Answer 16

an animal that has possession of a backbone or spinal column

Question 17

What is an invertebrate?

Answer 17

animals that doesn’t have a backbone

Question 18

Define abundance:

Answer 18

The total number of individuals of a taxon or taxa in an area, population, or community.

Question 19

Define bioaccumulation:

Answer 19

the gradual accumulation of substances, such as pesticides or other chemicals, in an organism.

Question 20

What occurs when an organism absorbs a substance at a rate faster than that at which the substance is lost or eliminated by catabolism and excretion?

Answer 20

Bioaccumulation

Question 21

What is a quadrat?

Answer 21

A plot of land used to mark off at random a physical area to isolate a sample and determine the percentage of vegetation and animals occurring within the marked area.

Question 22

Define distribution:

Answer 22

The specific location or arrangement of continuing or successive objects or events in space or time.

Question 23

What does a food chain show?

Answer 23

The flow of energy and materials from one organism to the next, beginning with a producer

Question 24

What is sampling?

Answer 24

When scientists look at part of a population to draw conclusions about the whole

Question 25

What is hibernation?

Answer 25

A state of greatly reduced metabolic activity and lowered body temperature adopted by certain mammals as an adaptation to adverse winter conditions.

Question 26

Define seasonality:

Answer 26

the regular and periodic changes of a variable on an annual timescale. Seasonal variables relevant in ecological systems include temperature and photoperiod, rainfall, wind, human activity & upwelling.

Question 27

What is a food web?

Answer 27

A food web consists of all the food chains in a single ecosystem. Each living thing in an ecosystem is part of multiple food chains. Each food chain is one possible path that energy and nutrients may take as they move through the ecosystem