Biological Diversity
The study of fossils.
What is palaeontology?
The non-living factors of the environment that affect the distribution and abundance of organisms e.g. availability of water & oxygen, light intensity, temperature.
What are abiotic factors?
Technology used to magnify specimens so that cells can be studied.
What is a microscope?
Organisms made of only one cell.
What is unicellular?
The factor a scientist deliberately changes to see if it has an effect on another variable.
What is an independent variable?
The determination of the actual age of things by
measuring the residual radioactivity of certain,
naturally-occurring radio-isotopes in the rocks.
What is radiometric dating?
The term for an organism that hunts its prey
What is a predator?
A cell with no membrane-bound organelles. Name means "before nucleus".
What is a prokaryotic cell?
Openings on the surface of a leaf that allow water loss by transpiration and gas exchange.
What are stomata?
A set of columns and rows for recording data in an investigation.
What is a results table?
The mechanism that allows biological evolution whereby the environment determines who survives and who dies.
What is natural selection?
A method of sampling that involves counting abundance in a small known area, then scaling up to the entire study area.
What is quadrat sampling?
The organelle that is the site of cellular respiration.
What is a mitochondrion?
Blood vessel with a thick, muscular wall that transports blood at high pressure away from the heart.
What is an artery?
A prediction that can be tested by a scientific investigation.
What is a hypothesis?
When totally different organisms live in the same kind of environment and lead similar lifestyles they will be subject to the same sorts of selection pressures and evolve many of the same features, so they may come to resemble each other even though not closely related at all.
What is convergent evolution?
This is where 2 different species help each other to survive. BOTH gain a benefit from the relationship.
What is mutualism?
The model that explains the structure and function of cell membranes.
What is the Fluid Mosaic Model?
An organism that cannot make its own organic molecules and so consumes other organisms to obtain energy.
What is a heterotroph?
Results (from a large sample size or numerous repetitions) that are consistent.
What is reliable data?
Model that proposes many species remain the same for millions of years, then, in response to some change in the environment, the species can undergo a rapid burst of changes over a very short period of time.
What is punctuated equilibrium?
An extinct Australian megafauna related to the wombat.
What is the Diprotodon?
What is denaturation?
Small openings along the flank of an insect that allow air to enter the body.
What are spiracles?
The pattern in the data or relationship between two variables.
What is the trend?