Ocnquiz11 Flashcards
Define Primary Productivity
The rate at which energy is stored by an organism through the formation of organic material using energy derived from solar and chemical reactions.
Define Biomass
The total mass of defined organisms or a defined group with in a specific community or the ocean as a whole
Give the percentage of Earth’s biomass that depends on photosynthesis to create organic material
99.9 percent
Explain how scientist measure primary production through satellites
satellites can detect the change in color of the sea water based on the amount of chlorophyll that varies with photosynthesis productivity
Define eutrophic and oligotrophic
Eutrophic are generally high in chlorophyll and are located in shallow waters or along the coastal regions, areas of up-welling and high latitude
Oligotrophic - has a low chlorophyll concentration and are generally found in the open oceans of the tropics
Explain why coastal regions generally are eutrophic while open waters are generally oligotrophic
Water depth in coastal regions are shallower than open areas and contain more biomass, allowing for more photosynthesis productivity
Define ecosystem
All organisms in a biotic community and the abiotic environmental factors which they interact with
Give two important commodities in an ecosystem
Energy and nutrients
Explain why energy in an ecosystem is not recycled
the flow of nutrients depend of biogeochemical cycle, where energy does not dissipate but is transferred from one chemical form to another.
List three basic categories of organisms in an ecosystem
producers
decomposers
consumers
Define producers, decomposers, consumers
producers are the autotrophic component of an ecosystem that produces food
Consumers are the herbivores, carnivores, and the omnivores that eat other organisms
Decomposers are mostly bacteria that feed and decompose organic compounds that comprise of detritus
Define herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores and bacterivores
Herbivores eat plants
carnivores eat other animals
and omnivores eat both plants and animals
bacteriavores feed only on bacteria
detritus
detritus are the decaying organic matter or fecal waste
Describe the cycling of nutrients
Components of organic matter enter the ocean through photosynthesis. these organic matters are then dated and taken in as energy for other organisms. the detritus feed the organisms below. nutrients are then returned back to the surface through upwelling
Explain why the producers’ biomass is much greater than the consumers’ biomass
Only a percentage of energy is passed onto the next trophic level because energy is consumed and lost at each level
Describe suspension feeding, carnivorous feeding, and deposit feeding
Suspension feeding is also referred to as filter feeding, where an organism uses specific structures to filter out plankton from the water
Carnivorous feeding is when one organism feeds on another animal
deposit feeding is where organisms feed on deposits such as detritus.
Define trophic level
Herbivores are consumed by carnivores and carnivores are eaten by other predators. each level is called a trophic level feeding stages
Define gross ecological efficiency
the ratio of energy passed on to the next higher trophic level divided by the energy received from the trophic level below
Explain why the average ecological transfer efficiency is only 10 percent
Of the assimilated energy, much of it is consumed through kinetic energy such as respiration, growth, maintaining life, and producing offsprings
Explain the advantage of feeding in the first or second trophic level
food is much more abundant and the ecological efficiency is much higher than a higher trophic level, allowing the organism to produce more
. Explain how low ecological transfer efficiencies limit the number of trophic levels in an ecosystem.
If there were too many trophic levels, then there wouldn’t be enough energy to support the higher trophic levels
Define food chain
a food chain is a sequence of organisms through which energy is transferred
Define food web
a group of interrelated food chains
Explain why food webs general are more realistic feeding models, compared to a food chains.
food webs are generally more realistic for it shows more options an organism receives its energy from. if a prey is killed off or goes extinct, the predator can always consume energy from another source; whereas food chains only show one prey per predator.
Define biomass pyramid
a biomass pyramid show that for each of the large marine organisms, levels of progressively smaller organisms must have larger populations for the larger organisms to survive.
