Population Ecology
This type of population growth occurs when resources are unlimited.
What is exponential growth?
Relationship where both species benefit, one benefits/one is harmed, one benefits/one unaffected, or one eats another.
What are mutualism, parasitism, commensalism, and predation?
This process removes carbon dioxide from the air and stores it in organic matter.
What is photosynthesis?
This term describes a species at serious risk of extinction.
What is endangered?
This term describes when one species outcompetes and eliminates another.
What is competitive exclusion?
The maximum number of individuals an environment can support.
What is the carrying capacity?
This species has a major impact on its community and helps maintain structure.
What is a keystone species?
The percentage (about 10%) of production
transferred from one trophic level to the next.
What is trophic efficiency?
Long-term shifts in temperature and weather patterns
What is climate change?
These factors affect population size regardless of density.
What are density-independent factors?
This term describes factors that limit population size depending on density.
What are density-dependent factors?
This term refers to an organism’s role and position in the environment.
What is a niche?
Organisms that break down dead matter and recycle nutrients.
What are decomposers?
Three main levels of biodiversity
What are genetic, species, and ecosystem diversity?
In food chains, these organisms feed on primary consumers.
What are secondary consumers?
A graph that levels off at carrying capacity likely represents this growth type.
What is logistic growth?
This occurs when two or more species compete for limited resources.
What is interspecific competition?
Excess fertilizer can cause this oxygen-depleting event in aquatic ecosystems.
What is eutrophication?
A relatively small area with numerous endemic (found nowhere else) and many endangered and threatened species
What is a biodiversity hotspot?
The term for the number of different species in an ecosystem.
What is biodiversity?
The way individuals are spaced within their area.
What are dispersion patterns (clumped, uniform, random)?
A series of reciprocal evolutionary adaptations in two species
What is coevolution?
This process converts nitrogen gas (N₂) into ammonia (NH₃).
What is nitrogen fixation?
CO2, water vapor, and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are transparent to visible light, but intercept and absorb much of the infrared radiation Earth emits, re-reflecting some of it back toward Earth, retaining some of the solar heat.
What is the greenhouse effect?
The major factors driving increases in greenhouse gas concentrations.
What are burning fossil fuels and deforestation?