Exam Four: Terms

Question 1

What is a biosphere?

Answer 1

includes all the organisms on Earth, together with the environments in which they live.

Question 2

What is a lithosphere?

Answer 2

terrestrial environments such as soil, rocks, and life

Question 3

What is a atmosphere?

Answer 3

life primarily in lower atmosphere

Question 4

What is a hydrosphere?

Answer 4

aquatic environments such as oceans, lakes, and

Question 5

What is a biome?

Answer 5

categorized based on the unique climatic and ecological features of each such region

Question 6

What are the types of biomes?

Answer 6

tundra, aquatic

Question 7

What is the artic tundra biome?

Answer 7

covers 1/4 earths land surface

Question 8

What is the alpine tundra?

Answer 8

covers high-altitude areas of similar climate

Question 9

What are the tundra plants?

Answer 9

dominated by low-growing flowering plants such as grasses, sedges, moss, and lichens.

Question 10

What are tundra animals?

Answer 10

low diversity. mostly smaller, mostly visitors

Question 11

What is the intertidal zone?

Answer 11

difficult areas to live in due to problems of high tide and low tide and pounding waves.

Question 12

What is the population ecology?

Answer 12

is the study of populations in relation to the environment to understand. Variations in population size, environmental influences on population density, affects of age structure on population growth

Question 13

What is a population?

Answer 13

group of individuals of a species that live in a specific location, and breed with members of that population

Question 14

What is the fertility rate?

Answer 14

2.8

Question 15

What is the replacement-level fertility?

Answer 15

when a population will eventually stabilize if parents have just the number of children to replace themselves.

Question 16

What is a autotroph?

Answer 16

producers that use energy from external sources such as the sun to produce their own food.

Question 17

What is a heterotroph?

Answer 17

extracting energy from food created by the producers. they are decomposers, and consumers

Question 18

What is a ecosystem?

Answer 18

a small unit of the environment with more or less fixed boundaries

Question 19

What is a consumer?

Answer 19

heterotroph

Question 20

What is a decomposer?

Answer 20

an organism that breaks down dead tissues into simple chemical components, thereby returning nutrients to the physical environment.

Question 21

What is net primary productivity?

Answer 21

the amount of energy acquired through photosynthesis that is available for growth and reproduction.

Question 22

What is secondary productivity?

Answer 22

the rate of new biomass production by consumers and is highest in ecosystems with high net primary productivity

Question 23

What is bioaccumulation?

Answer 23

chemical can accumulate in an organism at concentrations higher than in the surrounding abiotic environment

Question 24

What is biomagnification?

Answer 24

increase in tissue concentrations of a chemical as organic matter is passed to higher trophic levels in a food chain

Question 25

What is “background rate” extinction?

Answer 25

extinction rates of 100-1,000 higher than background