Sunshine & Snack Chains
The original source of energy for most ecosystems.
What is the Sun?
A group of the same species living in the same area.
What is a population?
The process plants use to move water vapor into the atmosphere.
What is transpiration?
The variety of life in an ecosystem
What is biodiversity?
An organism that cannot make its own food and must consume other organisms.
What is a heterotroph?
Organisms that make their own food through photosynthesis.
What are producers (autotrophs)?
The largest population size an environment can support long term.
What is carrying capacity?
The cycling of carbon through photosynthesis and respiration is called this cycle.
What is the carbon cycle
Organisms at greatest risk of extinction are placed into this category.
What is an endangered species?
The specific area where an organism lives.
What is a habitat?
A model that shows feeding relationships and energy transfer in an ecosystem.
What is a food web?
When more individuals are born than die in a population
What is population growth
Bacteria in the soil convert nitrogen gas into usable forms through this process.
What is nitrogen fixation
Pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change are examples of these.
What is human impacts on the environment?
The combined living and nonliving parts of an environment.
What is an ecosystem?
Only about this percentage of energy transfers from one trophic level to the next.
What is 10%?
Moving into a population from another area.
This cycle does not have a major atmospheric component.
What is the phosphorus cycle
A species introduced to an area that causes harm to native species.
What is an invasive species?
Organisms that are active during the night are described with this term.
What is nocturnal?
These organisms break down dead matter and recycle nutrients back into ecosystems.
What are decomposers?
The two main resources organisms often compete for in ecosystems.
What is food and space?
Burning fossil fuels most directly increases this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
What is carbon dioxide?
When humans burn fossil fuels, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can lead to this large-scale environmental change.
What is climate change?
A phenomenon in which a body of water becomes rich in nutrients
What is eutrophication?