AP Biology Baldwyn Chapter 55
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19 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 • Primary producers | Photosynthetic organisms that use light to synthesize sugars and other organic compounds to use as fuel. |
| • Primary consumers | Herbivores that eat plants and other primary producers. |
| • Secondary consumers | Carnivores that eat herbivores |
| • Tertiary consumers | Carnivores that eat other carnivores |
| • Detritivores (decomposer) | heterotroph consumers that obtain theirenergy from detritus, which is nonliving organic material (feces, fallen leaves, wood). |
| • Detritus | nonliving organic material |
| • Primary production | the amount of light energy converted into chemical energy by autotrophs in a given time period |
| • Limiting nutrient | element that must be added for production to increase |
| • Eutrophication | the process in which cyanobacteria and algae grow rapidly, thus reducing oxygen concentration and clarity of the water |
| • Actual evapotranspiration | Contrasts between different ecosystems (dry - desert, cold/dry - arctic tundra). |
| • Secondary production | Amount of chemical energy in consumers' food that is converted to their own new biomass during a given time period. |
| • Production efficiency | the percentage of energy stored in assimilated food that is not used for respiration. |
| • Trophic efficiency | percentage of production transferred from one trophic level to the next |
| • Turnover time | small standing crop compared to their production |
| • Green world hypothesis | The conjecture that terrestrial herbivores consume relatively little plant biomass because they are held incheck by a variety of factors, including predators, parasites, and disease |
| • Biogeochemical cycles | A cycle in which decomposition replenishes the pools of inorganic nutrients which plants/other autotrophs can use to build new organic matter. (nutrient cycle that involves both biotic and abiotic components) |
| • Critical load | amount of added nutrient that can be absorbed by plants without damaging the ecosystems' integrity |
| • Biological magnification | concentration in successive trophic levels of a food web |
| • Greenhouse effect | warming of Earth due to the atmospheric of carbon dioxide and certain and other gases, which absorb reflected infrared radiation and reradiate some of it back toward earth. |
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