ko definitions of the week Flashcards
Habitat
The area in which an organism lives
Individual
Single organism
Population
Collection of organisms of the same species in a habitat
Community
Collection of populations in a habitat
Ecosystem
The interaction of a community of living organisms (biotic) with the non-living (abiotic) parts of the environment.
Competition
Plants compete for light, space, water, and mineral ions.
Animals compete for food, mates, and territory.
Interdependence
Within a community each species depends on other species for food, shelter, pollination, etc.
Adaptations
A feature an organism has that allows it to survive in its ecosystem.
Biotic factors
Availability of food, new predators, new pathogens, other species outcompeting each other.
Abiotic factors
Light intensity, temperature, moisture levels, oxygen level, carbon dioxide levels, wind intensity, soil pH.
Biodiversity
The variety of all the different species of organisms in an ecosystem.
Factors that reduce biodiversity
Destruction of peat bogs, destroying habitats, releasing carbon dioxide into atmosphere (global warming), pollution, deforestation.
Maintaining biodiversity
Breeding programmes, protection and regeneration of habitats, keeping hedgerows in farmer’s fields, reduction of deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions, recycling rather than using landfill.
Use of random quadrat sampling
Used to count total number of organisms in an area.
Random quadrat sampling method
-randomly place quadrat (to avoid bias) and count organisms
-repeat 10 times and calculate a mean
-work out area of field and area of quadrat
-calculate total organisms by multiplying mean by number of quadrats that could fit in field
