Key Vocabulary
The variety of life on Earth.
What is Biodiversity?
Happens with relative frequency.
What are Periodic Events?
An environmental condition that limits the growth, distribution, or abundance of an organism or population within an ecosystem.
What is a Limiting Factor?
These are the tangible goods and resources directly obtained from ecosystems.
What are Provisioning Services?
The variety of genes or traits found in a population
What is Genetic Biodiversity?
The home of an animal, plant, or other organism.
What is a Habitat?
The category under which hurricanes and dry seasons fall.
What are Periodic Events?
The limits within which an organism can survive, reproduce, and thrive in its environment.
What is the Range of Tolerance?
These are the fundamental processes that maintain the health and functioning of ecosystems and are necessary for all other ecosystem services.
What are Supporting Services?
The diversity of different types of organisms.
What is Species Diversity?
The biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.
What is an Ecosystem?
Happens with no frequency whatsoever.
What are Random Events?
The process by which an ecosystem develops on a newly exposed or created surface, like bare rock, that has never previously been colonized by life.
What is Primary Succession?
The service type that photosynthesis and the Water Cycle would be a part of.
What are Supporting Services?
A change in the genetic composition of a population over time, the mechanism underlying biodiversity.
What is Evolution?
A change or the process of change by which an organism or species becomes better suited to its environment.
What is Adaptation?
The category under which volcanic eruptions occur.
What are Random Events?
A process where organisms with advantageous traits are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing those traits on to their offspring.
What is Natural Selection?
These are the benefits derived from the natural processes and functioning of ecosystems, which regulate environmental conditions.
What are Regulating Services?
The total number of different species found in an ecosystem.
What is Species Richness?
Consists of provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services that are performed by or through the environment.
What are Ecosystem Services?
Less regular than periodic events but still happen frequently.
What are Episodic Events?
The process by which an existing ecosystem is restored after a disturbance, such as a fire, flood, or human activity, that has removed or altered the original plant and animal life but leaves the soil intact.
What is Secondary Succession?
These are the non-material benefits that people derive from ecosystems, including recreational, aesthetic, spiritual, and educational values.
What are Cultural Services?
How similar the population sizes of the different species of an ecosystem are.
What is Species Evenness?