Ecology Flashcards
What is an energy pyramid?
Definition: a model that shows the available amount of energy in each trophic layer in an ecosystem.
What is a food web?
Definition: a model that shows many different feeding relationships among living things in a given area.
What is a decomposer?
Definition: organisms which carry out the process of decomposition by breaking down dead or decaying organisms.
What is a food chain?
Definition: a model that shows one set of feeding relationships among living things.
What does coniferous mean?
Definition: plants that produce reproductive organs called cones.
What is a consumer?
Definition: an organism that eats other living things to get energy; an organism that does not produce its own food.
What is a biome?
Definition: a major ecological community such as grassland, tropical rain forest, or desert.
What does deciduous mean?
Definition: a forest containing trees that lose their leaves each year.
What does ecology mean?
Definition: the branch of biology that deals with the relationships of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.
What is a cycle?
Definition: a movement of a substance through different reservoirs or stages.
What is a nitrogen cycle?
Definition: a process in which nitrogen in the atmosphere enters the soil and becomes living organisms then eventually returns to the atmosphere.
What are biotic factors?
Definition: the living components in an ecosystem.
What is a water cycle?
Definition: the continual movement of water between the land, ocean, and the air through predictable physical processes.
What is a abiotic factor?
Definition: a non-living chemical and physical part of the environment that affect living organisms and the function of ecosystems.
What is a producer?
Definition: an organism that makes it’s own food; an organism that does not consume other plants or animals.
