Biodiversity Basics
It describes the variety of life across levels of ecological organization.
What is biodiversity?
A larger number of plant species means a greater variety of these for human consumption.
What are crops?
This prefix means "life."
What is bio?
This prefix means "not or without."
What is A?
An individual form of life, such as a plant, animal, bacterium, protist, or a fungus.
What is an organism?
A distinguishing characteristic or quality.
What is a trait?
In nature, all biotic and abiotic factors are described by this word, meaning that if one factor is changed or removed, it impacts the availability of other resources within the system.
What is interrelated?
Tropical rainforests comprise only 6% of all land on Earth yet are home to nearly this percentage of all species.
What is 50%?
Healthy ecosystems can better withstand and recover from a variety of these catastrophic events.
What are disasters?
These are living or once-living organisms in an ecosystem, such as plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria.
What are biotic factors?
Soil is comprised of these two non-living elements.
What are rocks and minerals?
Comprised of all the individuals of the same species in an area at a certain time.
What is a population?
A genetic change that causes new and different characteristics.
What is a mutation?
Darwin termed the process where organisms with a large gene pool have a greater chance of surviving and flourishing.
What is natural selection?
Research, education, monitoring, recreation, and tourism all fall under this category of biodiversity benefits.
What are social benefits?
A relationship where an organism lives off of a host organism, sometimes killing the host.
What are predators?
The availability of this abiotic factor increases photosynthesis, causing plants to compete by growing taller.
What is the sun (or sunlight)?
The populations of organisms of different species in a specific area at a given time.
What is a community?
Occurring quickly and affecting organisms immediately, these types of impacts usually last 5 years or less.
What are short term impacts?
This specific type of diversity refers to the variation in genes that exist within a species.
What is genetic diversity?
Ecosystem services include the formation and protection of this ground-level resource.
What is soil?
In predator-prey relationships, a greater number of prey means a greater number of these.
What are predators?
Nutrient-rich soils produce more carbon, nitrogen, and this specific element.
What is phosphorus?
All the living (biotic) and nonliving (abiotic) factors in an area.
What is an ecosystem?
Long term impacts occur slowly over subsequent generations and cause physical changes in this within the organism.
What is DNA?
The hottest spots for species diversity are located near this geographic line.
What is the equator?
Food, medicinal resources, pharmaceutical drugs, and wood products are examples of these resources provided by biodiversity.
What are biological resources?
Human activities like development, damming rivers, and clear cutting of forests destroy these.
What are animal habitats?
Changing water conditions can reduce populations through events like droughts, floods, earthquakes, and these eruptions.
What are volcanic eruptions?
Ecosystems can only support a certain number of individuals; this is the largest number of individuals that an area can support.
What is carrying capacity?
This term describes the range of conditions an organism can withstand.
What is tolerance?