vocab

Question 1

a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.

Answer 1

Ecosystem

Question 2

factors are the living components of an ecosystem. They are sorted into three groups: producers or autotrophs, consumers or heterotrophs, and decomposers or detritivores.

Answer 2

Biotic factor

Question 3

components or abiotic factors are non-living chemical and physical parts of the environment that affect living organisms and the functioning of ecosystems.

Answer 3

Abiotic factor

Question 4

an individual animal, plant, or single-celled life form.

Answer 4

Organism

Question 5

a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding. The species is the principal natural taxonomic unit, ranking below a genus and denoted

Answer 5

Species

Question 6

all the inhabitants of a particular town, area, or country.

Answer 6

Population

Question 7

a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.

Answer 7

Community

Question 8

the natural home or environment of an animal, plant, or other organism.

Answer 8

Habitat

Question 9

he process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. The theory of its action was first fully expounded by Charles Darwin and is now believed to be the main process that brings about evolution.

Answer 9

Natural selection

Question 10

the process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth.

Answer 10

Evolution

Question 11

An organism capable of synthesizing its own food from inorganic substances using light or chemical energy. Green plants, algae, and certain bacteria are autotrophs.

Answer 11

Producers / autotrophs

Question 12

An organism that cannot manufacture its own food and instead obtains its food and energy by taking in organic substances, usually plant or animal matter. All animals, protozoans, fungi, and most bacteria are heterotrophs. Compare autotroph.

Answer 12

Consumers / heterotrophs

Question 13

is an organism that feeds on primary producers

Answer 13

Primary consumer

Question 14

is a consumer in the second position on the food chain.

Answer 14

. Secondary consumer

Question 15

Word Origin. noun Ecology. a carnivore at the topmost level in a food chain that feeds on other carnivores

Answer 15

Tertiary consumer

Question 16

an animal that feeds on plants.

Answer 16

Herbivores

Question 17

an animal that feeds on flesh.

Answer 17

Carnivores

Question 18

an animal or person that eats food of both plant and animal origin.

Answer 18

Omnivores

Question 19

an organism, especially a soil bacterium, fungus, or invertebrate, that decomposes organic material.

Answer 19

Decomposers

Question 20

a hierarchical series of organisms each dependent on the next as a source of food.

Answer 20

Food chain

Question 21

a system of interlocking and interdependent food chains.

Answer 21

Food web

Question 22

is a graphical model of energy flow in a community.

Answer 22

Energy pyramid

Question 23

the series of processes by which carbon compounds are interconverted in the environment, chiefly involving the incorporation of carbon dioxide into living tissue by photosynthesis and its return to the atmosphere through respiration, the decay of dead organisms, and the burning of fossil fuels.

Answer 23

Carbon cycle

Question 24

the series of processes by which nitrogen and its compounds are interconverted in the environment and in living organisms, including nitrogen fixation and decomposition.

Answer 24

Nitrogen cycle

Question 25

is the process of change in the species structure of an ecological community over time

Answer 25

Ecological succession

Question 26

Primary succession is one of two types of biological and ecological succession of plant life, occurring in an environment in which new substrate devoid of vegetation and other organisms usually lacking soil, such as a lava flow or area left from retreated glacier, is deposited.

Answer 26

Primary succession

Question 27

Secondary succession is one of the two types of ecological succession of plant life.

Answer 27

Secondary succession

Question 28

are hardy species which are the first to colonize previously biodiverse steady-state ecosystems. Some lichens grow on rocks without soil, so may be among the first of life forms, and break down the rocks into soil for plants.

Answer 28

Pioneer species

Question 29

In ecology, climax community, or climatic climax community, is a historic term for a biological community of plants, animals, and fungi which, through the process of ecological succession in the development of vegetation in an area over time, have reached a steady state.

Answer 29

Climax community

Question 30

a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.

Answer 30

Ecosystem