Stability & Survival
An inherited physical trait or behavior that helps an organism survive and reproduce in its specific environment.
What is an adaptation?
Organisms, mostly plants, that make their own food using sunlight.
What are producers (or autotrophs)?
The process by which water changes from a liquid to a gas, acting as a key part of the hydrologic (H) cycle.
What is evaporation?
The mass clearing of trees, which destroys habitats and increases the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
What is deforestation?
The variety of life in a particular habitat or ecosystem.
What is biodiversity?
The physical area where an organism lives, providing it with the food, water, and shelter it needs.
What is a habitat?
A complex network of interconnected food chains showing how energy moves through an ecosystem.
What is a food web?
The process plants use to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to create glucose.
What is photosynthesis?
Excess carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are known as these types of gases because they trap the sun's heat.
What are greenhouse gases?
A group of individuals of the same species living in the same area.
What is a population?
The upper and lower limits of environmental conditions (like temperature or pH) that an organism can endure before it fails to survive.
What is the range of tolerance?
The approximate percentage of energy that is successfully passed from one trophic level to the next in an energy pyramid.
What is 10 percent?
The process by which both plants and animals break down glucose to release energy, returning carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
What is cellular respiration?
A non-native species brought to a new ecosystem by humans that reproduces rapidly and outcompetes local wildlife.
What is an invasive species?
Environmental factors like food, water, space, and disease that restrict the growth of a population.
What are limiting factors?
The ability of an ecosystem to recover and return to a stable state after a major disturbance, like a flood or fire.
What is resilience?
In an energy pyramid, this trophic level contains the most biomass and the most available energy.
What is the producer level (or first trophic level)?
Soil bacteria perform this vital step in the nitrogen cycle, converting unusable nitrogen gas from the air into a form plants can absorb.
What is nitrogen fixation?
A harmful environmental consequence of burning fossil fuels, where airborne sulfur and nitrogen compounds fall back to Earth in precipitation.
What is acid rain?
The maximum number of individuals of a particular species that an environment can consistently support.
What is carrying capacity?
The predictable, step-by-step process of ecological change and species replacement that occurs in a community over time.
What is ecological succession?
Organisms like fungi and bacteria that complete the energy cycle by breaking down dead matter and returning nutrients to the soil.
What are decomposers?
This essential biochemical cycle is unique because it does not have a major atmospheric component; it cycles primarily through rocks, soil, and water.
What is the phosphorus cycle?
The process where toxins, like pesticides or heavy metals, become more concentrated in the tissues of organisms as you move higher up the food chain.
What is biomagnification (or biological magnification)?
A limiting factor, such as a hurricane or wildfire, that affects a population regardless of its density or size.
What is a density-independent factor?