Ecosystem Vocabulary

Question 1

Producers

Answer 1

An organism that makes its own food; an organism that does not consume other plants or animals

Question 2

consumers

Answer 2

an organism that eats other living things to get energy; an organism that does not produce its own food (related word: consume)

Question 3

Predator

Answer 3

An animal that hunts and eats another animal

Question 4

Prey

Answer 4

An animal that is hunted and eaten by another animal

Question 5

Species

Answer 5

A group of organisms that share similar characteristics and can mate with each other to produce offspring

Question 6

Populations

Answer 6

A population is all of the people who live in a certain region, city, or nation. The study of population is called demography. This field examines a wide range of statistics related to the inhabitants of a place. Human populations change constantly. Many factors affect the size of human populations, including supplies of food and water, climate and environment, life expectancy, and reproductive and mortality rates. Demographers study such factors in order to forecast future population increases or decreases.

Question 7

Community

Answer 7

A group of different populations that live together and interact in an environment

Question 8

Biodiversity

Answer 8

The many different types of life that exist in an environment

Question 9

Biosphere

Answer 9

The part of Earth in which life can exist

Question 10

Food Chain

Answer 10

A model that shows one set of feeding relationships among living things

Question 11

Food Web

Answer 11

A model that shows one set of feeding relationships among living things

Question 12

Habitat

Answer 12

The location in which an organism lives

Question 13

Biome

Answer 13

A major ecological community such as grassland, tropical rain forest, or desert

Question 14

Ecosystem

Answer 14

All the living and nonliving things in an area that interact with each other

Question 15

Niche

Answer 15

The place or role that an organism has in its habitat

Question 16

Mutualism

Answer 16

A relationship between two species of a plant, animal, or fungus in which one lives off the other and both organisms

Question 17

Commensalism

Answer 17

In ecology, is a class of relationships between two organisms where one organism benefits from the other without affecting it.

Question 18

Parasitism

Answer 18

A certain type of non mutual relationship found between two different species in which one organismknown as the parasitebenefits at the expense of the other organism

Question 19

Bacteria Fixing-Nitrogen

Answer 19

Fixing bacteria are microorganisms present in the soil or in plant roots that change nitrogen gases from the atmosphere into solid nitrogen compounds that plants can use in the soil. That’s a mouthful! Let’s break this concept down.

Question 20

Lightning Fixing

Answer 20

A process in which nitrogen (N2) in the atmosphere is converted into ammonia (NH3).[1] Atmospheric nitrogen or molecular dinitrogen (N2) is relatively inert: it does not easily react with other chemicals to form new compounds. The fixation process frees nitrogen atoms from their triply bonded diatomic form, N≡N, to be used in other ways.Nitrogen fixation, natural and synthetic, is essential for all forms of life because nitrogen is required to biosynthesize basic building blocks of plants, animals and other life forms, e.g., nucleotides for DNA and RNA, the coenzyme nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide for its role in metabolism (transferring electrons between molecules), and amino acids for proteins. Therefore, as part of the nitrogen cycle, it is essential for agriculture and the manufacture of fertilizer. It is also an important process in the manufacture of explosives (e.g. gunpowder, dynamite, TNT, etc.). Nitrogen fixation occurs naturally in the soil by nitrogen fixing bacteria affiliated with some plants (for example, Azotobacter and legumes). Some nitrogen-fixing bacteria have very close relationships with plants, referred to as symbiotic nitrogen fixation. Looser relationships between nitrogen-fixing bacteria and plants are often referred to as associative or non-symbiotic, as seen in nitrogen fixation occurring on rice roots. It also occurs naturally in the air by means of lightning.[2][3]All biological nitrogen fixation is done by way of nitrogenase metalloenzymes which contain iron, molybdenum, or vanadium. Microorganisms that can fix nitrogen are prokaryotes (both bacteria and archaea, distributed throughout their respective kingdoms) called diazotrophs. Some higher plants, and some animals (termites), have formed associations (symbiosis) with diazotrophs.