Ecology Flashcards
Ecosystem
a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.
Producer
a person or thing that brings something into existence.
Consumer
a person or thing that eats or uses something.
Scavenger
a person who searches for and collects discarded items.
Decomposers
an organism, especially a soil bacterium, fungus, or invertebrate, that decomposes organic material.
Food chain
a hierarchical series of organisms each dependent on the next as a source of food.
Food web
a system of interlocking and interdependent food chains.
Energy pyramid
is a graphical model of energy flow in a community.
Heterotroph
an organism deriving its nutritional requirements from complex organic substances.
Autotroph
an organism that is able to form nutritional organic substances from simple inorganic substances such as carbon dioxide.
Trophic level
each of several hierarchical levels in an ecosystem, comprising organisms that share the same function in the food chain and the same nutritional relationship to the primary sources of energy.
Biomass
the total mass of organisms in a given area or volume.
Nitrogen fixation
the chemical processes by which atmospheric nitrogen is assimilated into organic compounds, especially by certain microorganisms as part of the nitrogen cycle.
Abiotic
physical rather than biological; not derived from living organisms.
Biotic
relating to or resulting from living things, especially in their ecological relations.