What is Ecology
What do you call all the combined portions of the planet in which all life exists?
Biosphere
This is the main source of energy for life on Earth.
Sunlight
Matter is passed from one organisms to another and one part of the biosphere to another through these.
Biogeochemical cycles
The element that we studied that does not enter the atmosphere as a gas is what?
Phosphorus
A series of steps in which organisms transfer energy by eating and being eaten.
Food Chains
A group of organism so similar to one another that they can breed and produce fertile offspring
Species
Organisms that can make their own food; also called producers.
Autotrophs
The process of liquid changing to gas is called what?
Evaporation
The rate at which organic matter is created by producers is called what?
Primary productivity
Each step in a food chain or food web.
Trophic level
Groups of individuals that belong to the same species and live in the same area.
Populations
Organisms that cannot make their own food; also called consumers.
The evaporation of water from the leaves of plants is called what?
Transpiration
An increase in the amount of algae and other producers in an aquatic ecosystem due to increased nutrients is called what?
Algal bloom
Only about this much energy is transferred from one level of a food web to next.
10%
Assemblages of different populations that live together in a defined area.
Community
The process that plants use to make sugar for energy.
Photosynthesis
What role do animals play in the carbon cycle?
They recycle carbon when they exhale and when they decompose, carbon can reenter the atmosphere.
What are three ways the carbon can enter the atmosphere?
Cellular respiration
Burning fossil fuels
Volcanoes/earthquakes
Decomposition
A group of ecosystems that have the same climate and similar dominant communities.
Biome
A collection of all the organisms that live in a particular place together with their nonliving, or physical environment.
Ecosystem
When organisms use chemical energy to produce carbohydrates.
Chemosynthesis
All organisms need nitrogen to make what?
Amino acids/proteins
What are three places that nitrogen is changed by bacteria?
Nitrogen fixation
Denitrification
Decomposition
Ammonification
Jane Goodall used this approach to research as she watched the chimps in Gobi.
An observational study