Ecosystems
An area where living and non-living things interact.
What is an ecosystem?
The process plants use to make food.
What is photosynthesis?
The spread of a non-native species into an ecosystem.
What is bioinvasion?
The building blocks of rocks.
What are minerals?
Preserved remains or traces of ancient life.
What are fossils?
Organisms that make their own food.
What are producers?
The plant structure that absorbs water and minerals.
What are roots?
Characteristics that help an organism survive and reproduce in its environment.
What are adaptations?
The three types of rocks.
What are igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic?
Scientists who study fossils.
What are paleontologists?
Organisms that break down dead organisms and wastes.
What are decomposers?
The movement of water through a selectively permeable membrane.
What is osmosis?
A species in danger of disappearing forever.
What is an endangered species?
Alfred Wegener's theory that continents once formed one landmass.
What is continental drift?
The type of rock where fossils are most commonly found.
What is sedimentary rock?
A series of feeding relationships showing energy transfer.
What is a food chain?
The loss of water from a plant through evaporation.
What is transpiration?
This cycle includes evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and runoff.
What is the water cycle?
The theory explaining Earth's moving plates.
What is plate tectonics?
A species that no longer exists anywhere on Earth.
What is extinct?
Only about this percentage of energy is passed from one trophic level to the next.
What is 10%?
Growing only one type of crop in a field.
What is monoculture?
During this cycle, plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.
What is the carbon cycle?
The supercontinent that existed millions of years ago.
What is Pangaea?
Scientists divide Earth's 4.6-billion-year history into these large units based on major changes in life forms.
What are eras?