Ecology Flashcards
Ecosystem
a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.
Biotic factor
any living component that affects the population of another organism, or the environment.
Abiotic factor
a nonliving condition or thing, as climate or habitat, that influences or affects an ecosystem and the organisms in it.
Organism
an individual animal, plant, or single-celled life form.
Species
a set of organisms adapted to a particular set of resources, called a niche, in the environment.
Population
a particular section, group, or type of people or animals living in an area or country.
Community
the study of the interactions between species
Habitat
an ecological or environmental area that is inhabited by a particular species of animal, plant, or other type of organism.
Natural selection
strictly ecological processes that operate on a species’ inherited traits without reference to mating or secondary sex characteristics.
Evolution
it examines how interactions between and within species evolve and change.
Autotrophs
an organism that serves as a primary producer in a food chain.
Heterotrophs
they are unable to produce organic substances from inorganic ones.
Primary consumers
herbivores, feeding on plants.
Secondary consumers
on the other hand, are carnivores, and prey on other animals.
Tertiary consumers
a carnivore at the topmost level in a food chain that feeds on other carnivores; an animal that feeds only on secondary consumers.
Herbivores
any organism that eats only plants
Carnivores
any organism that eats only meat or any other living organism
Omnivores
a kind of animal that eats either other animals or plants.
Decomposers
An organism whose ecological function involves the recycling of nutrients by performing the natural process of decomposition as it feeds on decaying organisms.
Food chain
A feeding hierarchy in which organisms in an ecosystem are grouped into trophic (nutritional) levels and are shown in a succession to represent the flow of food energy and the feeding relationships between them.
Food web
A graphical model showing the interconnecting food chains in an ecological community.
Energy pyramid
a graphical model of energy flow in a community.
Carbon cycle
The combined processes, including photosynthesis, decomposition, and respiration, by which carbon as a component of various compounds cycles between its major reservoirs—the atmosphere, oceans, and living organisms.
Nitrogen cycle
a continuous series of natural processes by which nitrogen passes successively from air to soil to organisms and back to air or soil involving principally nitrogen fixation, nitrification, decay, and denitrification.
Ecological succession
the process by which the structure of a biological community evolves over time.
Primary succession
occurring in an environment in which new substrate devoid of vegetation and other organisms usually lacking soil, such as a lava flow or area left from retreated glacier, is deposited.
Secondary succession
the series of community changes which take place on a previously colonized, but disturbed or damaged habitat.
Pioneer species
are hardy species which are the first to colonize previously disrupted or damaged ecosystems, beginning a chain of ecological succession that ultimately leads to a more biodiverse steady-state ecosystem.
Climax community
populations of plants or animals remain stable and exist in balance with each other and their environment
Ecosystem
a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.
