Ecosystems / Food Chains / Food Webs Flashcards
Producers
organisms that make their own food; they are also known as autotrophs
Autotrophs
an organism that can produce its own food using light, water, carbon dioxide, or other chemicals
Photosynthetic
an organism capabale of doing photosynthesis
Chemoautotrophs
microorganisms that use inorganic chemicals as their energy source and convert them into organic compounds
Consumers
An organism that generally obtains food by feeding on other organisms or organic matter
Heterotrophs
organisms that consume other organisms for energy
Herbivores
an animal anatomically and physiologically evolved to feed on plants, especially upon vascular tissues such as foliage, fruits or seeds, as the main component of its diet
Carnivores
an organism that eats meat, or the flesh of other animals
Omnivores
an organism that regularly consumes a variety of material, including plants, animals, algae, and fungi
Decomposers
An organism, often a bacterium, fungus, or invertebrate that feeds on and breaks down dead plant or animal matter, making organic nutrients available to the ecosystem
Saprotrophs
Any organism that feeds by absorbing dead organic matter
Detritivores
organisms that break-down and feed on dead and decaying organic material
Scavengers
animals that consume dead organisms that have died from causes other than predation or have been killed by other predators
Carcass
the decaying flesh of dead animals
Food chain
the order of events in an ecosystem, where one living organism eats another organism, and later that organism is consumed by another larger organism
Trophic levels
The position of an organism in a food chain, food web or pyramid
Food web
a complex network of interconnecting and overlapping food chains showing feeding relationships within a community
Ecological pyramid
a diagram that shows the relationships between organisms in an ecosystem by organising them into trophic levels based on how much energy they consume
Pyramid of energy
a diagram that shows the flow of energy through an ecosystem’s food chain, from one trophic level to the next; uses units of kg/m2/yr
Pyramid of numbers
shows the total number of individual organisms at each level in the food chain of an ecosystem
Pyramid of biomass
a diagram that shows the amount of organic material, or biomass, in each trophic level of a food chain; uses units of g/m2 or kg/m2
10% rule
a fundamental principle that describes how energy flows through ecosystems and food chains. It states that at each trophic level in an energy pyramid, only 10% of the energy is passed on to the next level, while the remaining 90% is lost as heat or used for metabolic activities.
