What is Science?
What is Science?
It is both a process that uses the scientific method to gain new knowledge and a collection of insights about nature that have been obtained by the scientific method.
What is an autotroph?
Any organism that produces its own food
What is an independent variable? Which axis does it belong on?
A variable whose variation does not depend on that of another; x-axis
What is the difference between an ancestral trait and a derived trait?
Ancestral traits that are homologous and descended from a common ancestor. A derived trait is a trait not shared between two organisms that share a common ancestor.
What is a biome?
A naturally occurring community of flora and fauna occupying a major habitat.
What is a scientific theory?
A unified explanation of some aspect of the natural world that explains the results of experiments.
What does ecosystem resilience? What about resistance?
Ecosystem resilience is an ecosystem's ability to recover after a disaster. Resistance refers to the ability of a population to withstand a disturbance and remain unchanged.
Bonus: Is an ecosystem with higher or lower diversity more likely to withstand a disturbance?
What is a sample group in data collection? What is a population?
A sample group is a specific group of people data that will be collected from. A population is an entire group you want to draw observations about.
What is homeostasis?
An organism's ability to maintain stable conditions that are required for living. These include temperature, pH, concentration, etc.
What is a biological hotspot?
A region with a high percentage of plant life found nowhere else and have 30% or less of its natural vegetation.
What are the steps to the scientific method?
Make observations, make a hypothesis, test your hypothesis, analyze data, do more experiments and analyses, and communicate your findings. Bonus: Is this a linear or cyclic process?
What is the difference between a dominant and a keystone species?
Dominant species are the most abundance or take up the most biomass. Keystone species are low in abundance but have a large impact on their ecosystem.
Find the average!
What is a homologous trait? Analogous?
Homologous traits are similar due to shared ancestry. Analogous traits share the same function but have different structures.
Give an example of any species and its niche within the Aquatic biome
Sea-stars: Prey on mussels and if removed the mussel population will greatly increase.
What are the two underlying themes of biology?
Cell theory: The cell is the fundamental unit of life and all cells are derived from preexisting cells.
Evolution: Evolution is the source of biodiversity and species change over time.
What are the three terms of biodiversity and what do they mean?
Species richness: the number of species within a defined region
Abundance: the number of individuals per species
Evenness: description of distribution of a species within a community
What is the difference between a null and alternative hypothesis?
A null hypothesis predicts no relationship between the variables. An alternative hypothesis states your prediction of the relationship between the variables.
What are the 7 characteristics of living things?
Order, response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, homeostasis, adaptation, and energy processing.
What are ecosystem services?
Any positive benefit to humans that wildlife can provide
What are the first two laws of thermodynamics?
1) Energy is neither created or destroyed (Energy is always being transformed)
2) Entropy is always increasing (energy is lost to either heat or friction- there is no perfect machine)
What is eutrophication?
Excess richness of nutrients in a body of water due to runoff
What is a standard deviation?
A measure of how dispersed the data is relative to the mean.
What is paedomorphism?
The retention of infantile or juvenile characteristics into adulthood.
What is a species-area curve?