Ecosystems & Biomes
What is an ecosystem?
All the living and nonliving things in a specific area.
What is salinity?
The amount of salt dissolved in water.
What is heredity?
The passing of traits from parents to offspring.
What is a dominant trait?
A trait that blocks another trait.
What are variations?
Slight differences in inherited traits among individuals in a population.
What is a biome?
A large geographic area with similar biotic and abiotic features.
What are wetlands?
Ecosystems with shallow water that filter pollution and support high biodiversity.
What are alleles?
Different forms of a gene.
The ratio Mendel observed in the second generation of pea plants.
3:1
What is a mutation?
A permanent change in DNA sequence.
Describe the tundra biome
The biome that is cold, dry, treeless, and contains permafrost.
What are coral reefs?
The underwater structures made from the skeletons of tiny animals in shallow tropical waters.
What is phenotype?
The physical expression of a trait.
What is codominance?
When both alleles are expressed equally, like blood type AB.
What is natural selection?
The process where individuals with helpful traits survive and reproduce more.
What is the biome with cone-bearing evergreen trees, long cold winters, and thin acidic soil?
Taiga Biome
What freshwater ecosystems formed when streams join together?
Rivers
What is meant by "homozygous alleles"?
When two identical alleles are present for a trait.
What is incomplete dominance?
When offspring show a blended phenotype because neither allele is dominant.
What type of adaptation shown when birds migrate south for winter?
Behavioural adaptation
The biome near the equator with warm, wet weather and extremely high biodiversity
Tropical Rainforest
Three important abiotic factors in aquatic ecosystems.
temperature, sunlight, and dissolved oxygen
The combination of alleles that controls a trait.
Genotype
Why white flowers reappeared in Mendel’s second generation.
because the recessive allele was still present and combined in some offspring
How did the average beak size of Galapagos finches change after drought.
birds with large beaks survived and reproduced more, increasing the frequency of large-beak genes