Ecology Flashcards
What is Ecology?
The study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their environment.
What are the Ecological levels in order?
Species - Population - Community - Ecosystem - Biome - Biosphere
What organisms captures energy from sunlight and uses it to produce food?
Autotrophs
What other word can be used for Autotrophs?
Producers
What is a Heterotroph what do they do?
Organisms that must obtain energy from other living things.
What are consumers?
They are organisms that must eat, or consume, other organisms for food.
Heterotrophs that only eat plants are called what?
Herbivores
Heterotrophs that only eat other animals are called what?
Carnivores
Carnivores that hunt and kill their own prey are called what?
Predators
What are scavengers?
Carnivores that feed on dead animals.
Heterotrophs that eat both plants and animals are called what?
Omnivores
What are decomposers?
Heterotrophs that break down organic matter and return it to the environment.
Which way does energy flow through?
Energy flows through one direction.
What is a food chain?
Series of organisms through which energy is passed.
What does a food chain start with?
(Not the sun)
It starts with the primary producer.
What is a food web?
A complex network of many different food chains and feeding interactions.
What do the arrows indicate on the a food web or food chain?
It indicates the direction of the energy flow.
What is each step in a food chain or food web called?
Trophic Level
What is the first trophic level ALWAYS made of?
Producers
What is the second trophic level made of?
Herbivores
Omnivores
Primary Consumer
(all the same)
What are the other trophic levels made of?
Secondary consumers
Tertiary consumers
Carnivores
Omnivores
What is a diagram that shows relative amounts of energy or matter found within each trophic level?
Ecological pyramid
What does trophs/troph mean?
Feeding Level
(same things as trophic level)
What shows the relative amounts of energy available at each trophic level?
Energy pyramid
What shows the amount of living organic matter, or biomass, at each trophic level?
Biomass pyramid
What shows the relative number of individual organisms at each level?
Pyramid of numbers
Unlike the one-way flow of energy what does matter do?
It is recycled within an ecosystem.
Water from the surface enters the atmosphere through evaporation and transpiration. Water returns to the surface through condensation and precipitation.
What is this called?
The Water Cycle.
Carbon(CO2) enters the atmosphere during what? What is this process called?
During human activity, cellular respiration and decomposition.
The carbon Cycle.
When does Carbon(CO2) return to the ecosystem? What is this process also called?
It returns during photosynthesis.
The Carbon Cycle.
How does nitrogen enter the amosphere?
Enters through the activity of certain types of soil bacteria.
How is nitrogen returned back to the soil?
Human Activity
Excretion
Decomposition
Nitrogen Fixation
(By certain bacteria)
What does Nitrogen Fixation convert?
Its converts atmospheric nitrogen into a form plants can use.
