Ecology Flashcards
(21 cards)
Ecosystem
a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.
Producer
a person or thing that brings something into existence.
Consumer
a person or thing that eats or uses something.
Scavenger
a person who searches for and collects discarded items.
Decomposers
an organism, especially a soil bacterium, fungus, or invertebrate, that decomposes organic material.
Food chain
a hierarchical series of organisms each dependent on the next as a source of food.
Food web
a system of interlocking and interdependent food chains.
Energy pyramid
is a graphical model of energy flow in a community.
Heterotroph
an organism deriving its nutritional requirements from complex organic substances.
Autotroph
an organism that is able to form nutritional organic substances from simple inorganic substances such as carbon dioxide.
Trophic level
each of several hierarchical levels in an ecosystem, comprising organisms that share the same function in the food chain and the same nutritional relationship to the primary sources of energy.
Biomass
the total mass of organisms in a given area or volume.
Nitrogen fixation
the chemical processes by which atmospheric nitrogen is assimilated into organic compounds, especially by certain microorganisms as part of the nitrogen cycle.
Abiotic
physical rather than biological; not derived from living organisms.
Biotic
relating to or resulting from living things, especially in their ecological relations.
Primary succession
Idk DescriptionPrimary 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.
Secondary succession
Secondary succession is one of the two types ecological succession of a plants life. As opposed to the first, primary succession, secondary succession is a process started by an event (e.g. forest fire, harvesting, hurricane, etc.) that reduces an already established ecosystem (e.g. a forest or a wheat field) to a smaller population of species, and as such secondary succession occurs on preexisting soil whereas primary succession usually occurs in a place lacking soil.
Pioneer species
Pioneer species are hardy species which are the first to colonize previously disrupted or damaged ecosystems, beginning a chain of ecological succession that ultimately leads to a more biodiverse steady-state ecosystem.
Weathering
wear away or change the appearance or texture of (something) by long exposure to the air.
Erosion
the process of eroding or being eroded by wind, water, or other natural agents.
Deposition
the action of deposing someone, especially a monarch.
