Ecology
The study of organisms and their interaction among the environment.
What is ecology?
Two factors that regulate the growth of populations.
What are carrying capacity and limiting resources?
Interaction that results when a resource is in short supply and one organism uses the resource at the expense of another.
What is competition?
Term used to describe organisms that live on or are buried at the bottom of the ocean.
What is benthic or benthos?
Organisms that are capable of photosynthesis.
What are autotrophs or primary producers?
The non-living factors such as physical or chemical features.
What is abiotic?
Resources that are in short supply which can decrease the rate of growth for a population (i.e. food, nutrients, and living space).
What are limiting resources?
Type of interaction that occurs when members of the same species compete.
What is intraspecific competition?
Term used to describe organisms that live in the water column.
What is pelagic?
Dead organic matter in solid form.
What is detritus?
A collection or group of different populations living in the same geographical area at the same time.
What is community?
The largest size a population can be sustained with the given number of resources.
What is carrying capacity?
Type of relationship that occurs when one species benefits while the other is unaffected.
What is commensalism?
Two categories of pelagic organisms.
What are plankton and nekton?
Process of recycling nutrients back to primary producers by decomposers.
What is nutrient regeneration?
An organism's ecological role within the ecosystem.
What is a niche?
Reduction of resources due to overcrowding can ____ the rate at which a population grows.
What is slow or decrease?
Term used to describe how an effect on one species may flow through an ecosystem.
What is trophic cascade?
Give an example of Nekton.
What are Dolphins, fishes, sea turtles, sharks, squids, etc.
______ energy is available at each level in a trophic pyramid.
What is less?
Changes that result from natural selection and are passed on genetically.
What are evolutionary adaptations?
Type of growth that occurs when conditions are just right for a population (rapid, unchecked).
What is exponential growth?
Type of selection that occurs when individuals that are too far from the optimal balance are weeded out.
What is stabilizing selection?
What differentiates Nekton from Plankton?
What is the ability to swim against the currents?
The difference between gross primary production of primary producers and the energy used for respiration for their own energy needs.
What is net primary productivity?