| Term | Definition |
|---|
| ecology | the scientific study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their environment or surroundings (hint: study of the creek life) |
| biosphere | It contains the combined portions of the planet in which all of life exists, including land, water, and air or atmosphere. |
| species | a group of organisms so similar to one another that they can breed and produce fertile offspring |
| populations | groups of individuals that belong to the same species and live in the same area |
| communities | different populations that live together in a defined area |
| biome | a group of ecosystems that have the same climate and dominant communities. |
| autotrophs | use energy from their environments to fuel the assembly of simple inorganic compounds into complex organic molecules |
| producers | they make their own food |
| heterotrophs | consumers, they rely on other organisms for their energy and food supply |
| photosynthesis | the process by which plants and some other organisms use light energy to power chemical reactions that convert water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and high energy carbohydrates such as sugars and starches |
| chemosynthesis | when organisms use chemical energy to produce carbohydrates |
| herbivores | obtain energy from eating only plants |
| carnivores | obtain energy from eating only meat |
| omnivores | obtain energy from eating plants and meat |
| detritivore | obtain energy from plant and animal remains and other dead matter |
| food chain | a series of steps in which organisms transfer energy by eating and being eaten |
| food web | when the feeding relationships among the various organisms in an ecosystem form a network of complex interactions |
| trophic level | each step in a food chain or food web |
| ecological pyramid | a diagram that shows the relative amounts of energy or matter contained within each trophic types of ecological pyramids: energy pyramids, biomass pyramids, and pyramids of numbers |
| biomass | the total amount of living tissue within a given trophic level |
| evaporation | the process by which water changes from liquid form to an atmospheric gas |
| transpiration | water can enter and the atmosphere by evaporating from the leaves of plants |
| nutrients | the body's building blocks |
| nitrogen fixation | process of converting nitrogen gas into ammonia |
| dentrification | soil bacteria convert nitrates into nitrogen gas |
| primary productivity | the rate at which organic matter is created by producers |
| limiting nutrient | when an ecosystem is limited by a single nutrient that is scarce or cycles very slowly |
| algal bloom | an immediate increase in the amount of algae and other producers that result from a large input of a limiting nutrient |
Combine with other sets
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