Ecology and Disease Flashcards
(20 cards)
What are the two main types of factors that make up an ecosystem?
Biotic and Abiotic factors
Biotic factors include living things such as plants, animals, and bacteria, while abiotic factors include non-living things like water, sun, and atmosphere.
List three examples of living things within an ecosystem.
- Plants
- Animals
- Bacteria
List three examples of non-living things in an ecosystem.
- Water
- Sun
- Atmosphere
What is an epidemic?
Regional outbreak with unusually high cases
Example: Ebola outbreak in West Africa
What characterizes a pandemic?
Global outbreak, widespread & severe
Example: COVID-19 in 2020
Define endemic.
Constant in one area, regular, expected
Example: Malaria in some African countries
What is the difference between infectious and non-infectious diseases?
Infectious spreads from one organism to another; non-infectious cannot be spread
Infectious diseases are caused by pathogens, while non-infectious diseases are caused by environmental, genetic, and lifestyle factors.
What is the first line of defense in the immune system?
Physical and chemical barriers
Examples: Skin, hair, saliva, tears
What is the second line of defense in the immune system?
Nonspecific innate response
Reacts with fever or inflammation
What is the third line of defense in the immune system?
Specific adaptive response
Involves lymphocytes - T cells and B cells, which produce antibodies.
What role do T and B cells play in immunity?
They retain information about the disease and provide immunity against it.
What do vaccines do?
Trigger the body’s adaptive response by introducing a harmless form of the disease.
What is a live attenuated vaccine?
A weaker version of the pathogen that is hard to make.
What are inactive vaccines?
Pathogens that are already dead, leading to short-lived immunity.
What do food chains represent?
How energy is transferred from producers to consumers, with only one organism on each trophic level.
What are food webs?
More complex representations that show more than one organism on each trophic level.
What is sampling in an ecosystem?
Measuring a smaller amount of a population to determine real population size.
What is representative sampling?
Samples that are assumed to accurately reflect the whole population.
What does species abundance refer to?
Number of individuals in a certain area.
What does species distribution describe?
The way in which individuals are spaced across a certain area.
