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.
What is a carbon cycle?
Definition: a natural cycle in which carbon compounds, mainly carbon dioxide, are incorporated into living tissue through photosynthesis and returned to the atmosphere by respiration, decay of dead organisms, and the burning of fossil fuels.
What is a predator?
Definition: an animal that hunts and eats other animals.
What is prey?
Definition: an animal that is hunted and eaten by another animal.
What is succession?
Definition: the sequence of communities that developed in an area.
