Unit Test 1 Flashcards
What is ecology?
-The study of living organisms and their interactions with the environment.
What is environment?
-Everything that surrounds an organism
What do you call a scientist who studies ecology?
-Ecologist
What do organisms get from their environment?
-Everything they need to live; nutrients, water oxygen, energy, sunlight, shelter
What do all organisms in an environment do?
-Interact-they affect each other
What are some examples of interaction?
- Animals eat plants and other animals-(predation)
- Mating
Symbiosis
- Relation of two organisms ex. Parasitism
What is a population?
-Group of the same kind of organism (plant or animal) living in a certain place
What is a community?
-All the populations living in a certain place
What is an ecosystem?
- A complex self-regulating system. All the living and nonliving things in an environment and their interactions
What size is an ecosystem?
-All the sizes-small as a puddle (drop of water, Large as an ocean)
What are the four processes that make ecosystems self-regulating?-extra
- Production of energy
- Transfer of energy
- Breaking down materials
- Recycling
What is a habitat?
-Place where an organism lives (condition necessary for the survival of a species)
Ex. food, water, shelter and place to reproduce
What is a niche
-An organism’s role in a habitat, the ways it survives
What are limiting factors?
-Conditions in the environment that put restrictions on where an organism can live
What are limiting factors for animals?
- Temperature
- food
- Water supply
What is a range?
- The area where a type of animal or plant is found
- It is determined by limiting factor
Why do plants and animals need nitrogen?
- It builds protein
- DNA
- Essential nutrient
What allows animals and plants to use nitrogen?-Nitrogen cycle on test-word bank-the one with the cow and tree
- Lighniting
- Nitrifying bacteria-Found on the roots of legumes also found in the soil
What is a consumer?
-Organisms that obtain food by eating other organisms
What is a producer?
-Organisms that makes their own food ex.green plants
What is a scavenger?
-Animal that eats only dead animals ex. Vultures, raccoons, eagles and bears
What is a decomposer?
-Organisms that break down the wastes or remains of other organisms
Ex. mushrooms, fungus, maggots
What does a primary consumer eat?
-Plants or Producers
What does a secondary consumer eat?
- Animals that eat plants
- Primary consumers
What does a tertiary consumer eat?
- Animals that eat other animals
- Secondary consumers
What is a food chain?
- A way of showing the food relations between groups of organisms
- Linear feeding relationships
What are some examples of food chains
-seeds—-mouse—-snake—-hawk
What is a food web?
- A way of showing how food chains are related interconnected set food chains.
- shows the feeding relationships in a community
What is an energy pyramid?
-A way of showing how energy moves through a food chain
What is always found at the beginning of a food chain?
-plants or producers
What is the source of all energy on earth?
-Sun
What is a herbivore?
-An organism that eats only plants
-A primary consumer, autotroph
Ex. mice, rabbits, cows
What is an carnivore?
-An organism that eats plants only meat
What is an omnivore?
-An organism that eats both plants and animals
What are natural resources?
-Materials found in nature that are used by living things
What are renewable resources?
-Natural resources that can be replaced in our lifetime
Ex. soil, air, living things
What are non-renewable resources?
-Natural resources that cannot be replaced in our lifetime
Ex. oil, coal
What is pollution?
-Release of harmful materials into the environment
What are endangered species?
-Organisms that are in danger or dying out
What are examples of natural disturbances?
- Volcanoes
- Forest fires
What are examples of people caused disturbances?
- Pollution
- Destroying habits
- Overpopulation
- Overexploitation
How is acid rain formed? Which chemicals are involved?
-Caused by emissions sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides that react with water molecules to form acid precipitation
Know your soil types?
-Litter—–Topsoil——–Subsoil——–Bedrock
Know the Joseph priestley experiment
Review it-Relationship between photosynthesis and cellular respiration
If the top predators were competing in an ecosystems and one of them dead. What could the benefits to the surviving top predator be?
-Not as much competition for food, shelter, mates possible better health
You should be able to label a food chain
Grass—–Grasshopper—–Spider—–Bird
Autotrophe Producer 1st trophic level 2nd trophic level Consumer Heterotrophe Heterotrophe Consumer 3rd trophic level Consumer Top Carnivore Fourth trophic level
Ecotone
-The boundary between two intersecting (overlap) ecosystems-We usually find more biodiversity.
