Ecology Basics
This term refers to the study of interactions between organisms and their environment.
What is ecology?
This is the smallest level of organization — one individual organism.
What is a species?
The four characteristics used to study populations.
Density, dispersion, size, and growth rate.
The maximum number of organisms an environment can support.
What is carrying capacity?
The feeding position of an organism in a food chain.
What is a trophic level?
These are the living components of an ecosystem.
What are biotic factors?
This term refers to a group of individuals of the same species in one area.
What is a population?
Clumped, uniform, and random describe this.
What is dispersion?
Limiting factors that increase in effect as population density increases.
What are density-dependent factors?
The diagram showing many overlapping food chains.
What is a food web?
These are the nonliving components of an ecosystem.
What are abiotic factors?
This level includes all populations living together in one place.
What is a community?
Births + immigration vs deaths + emigration control this population statistic.
What is population size?
Limiting factors like natural disasters, which affect populations regardless of size.
What are density-independent factors?
Energy pyramids, biomass pyramids, and numbers pyramids all show this general idea.
How energy, mass, or organism count change across trophic levels.
This term describes the role an organism plays in its environment — including how it gets resources.
What is a niche?
This level includes all organisms AND their physical environment.
What is an ecosystem?
A J-shaped curve on a graph shows this type of population growth.
What is exponential growth?
In a predator–prey graph, which population typically rises first?
The prey population.
A species that has an unusually large effect on its ecosystem (example: wolves in Yellowstone).
What is a keystone species?
This is the physical place where an organism lives.
What is a habitat?
This level includes multiple ecosystems with the same climate and organisms.
What is a biome?
The growth pattern where a population slows as it nears carrying capacity — forming an S-curve.
What is logistic growth?
Explain why predator and prey curves are offset from each other.
Predator numbers change after prey numbers change, because predators depend on prey availability.
The process in which species divide resources so they can live together without intense competition.
What is niche partitioning?