Population Ecology
This term represents the maximum number of individuals of a specific species that a given environment can sustainably support over a long period.
This term describes the relatively stable internal physical and chemical conditions that organisms must actively maintain to survive, such as body temperature or blood sugar levels.
What is homeostasis?
Water is known as this type of molecule because it features an uneven distribution of electrical charge, with a partial negative charge near the oxygen atom and partial positive charges near the hydrogens.
What is a polar molecule?
These macromolecules, which include sugars and starches, serve as the primary short-term energy source for living organisms and are built from monosaccharide monomers.
What are carbohydrates?
In the water cycle, this specific process occurs when liquid water changes into water vapor and leaves the leaves of plants, entering the atmosphere.
What is transpiration?
This type of population growth produces a distinct J-shaped curve on a graph and occurs when a population has abundant resources, low predation, and minimal disease.
What is exponential growth?
All living things use this specific molecule—a double-stranded nucleic acid—to store and transmit their genetic instructions from one generation to the next.
What is DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid)?
This property, driven by strong hydrogen bonding between water molecules, creates a high surface tension that allows certain insects to walk across a pond.
What is cohesion?
Because they are hydrophobic and insoluble in water, this diverse class of macromolecules is ideal for long-term energy storage, cell membrane structure, and waterproof coatings.
What are lipids?
Photosynthesis removes this greenhouse gas directly from the atmosphere and fixes it into organic molecules, while cellular respiration and combustion release it back.
What is carbon dioxide (\(CO_{2}\))?
Environmental factors like wildfires, hurricanes, and severe winters affect a population's size regardless of how crowded that population happens to be, classifying them by this ecological term.
What are density-independent factors?
The sum total of all chemical reactions that occur within a living organism to break down nutrients and build up cellular components.
What is metabolism?
Unlike most substances, water does this when it freezes, making ice less dense than liquid water and allowing aquatic life to survive underneath frozen lake surfaces.
What is expands?
Amino acids are held together by this specific type of covalent bond to form long polypeptide chains, which then fold into complex three-dimensional shapes.
What is a peptide bond?
Because atmospheric nitrogen gas (\(N_{2}\)) cannot be used directly by plants, this specialized group of soil-dwelling organisms must convert it into ammonia and nitrates first.
What are nitrogen-fixing bacteria?
When a population experiences logistic growth, its growth rate begins to slow down and stabilize as it nears carrying capacity, resulting in this specific letter-shaped curve.
What is an S-shaped curve?
This specific type of stimulus-response loop amplifies a biological reaction, moving the organism further away from its initial state, as seen during childbirth oxytocin release.
What is a positive feedback loop?
Because water has a high value for this specific thermal property, it absorbs large amounts of heat before its temperature rises, helping to regulate global climates and coastal weather.
What is specific heat capacity?
Enzymes act as biological catalysts by lowering this specific energy barrier, allowing chemical reactions inside the cell to proceed at a much faster rate.
What is activation energy?
Unlike the carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles, the phosphorus cycle is unique because it does not involve this major environmental reservoir.
What is the atmosphere (or air)?
This type of survivorship curve is characteristic of species like humans or elephants, which produce few offspring but invest heavily in parental care to ensure high survival rates early in life.
What is a Type I survivorship curve?
While individuals adapt to their environment, only whole populations can undergo this characteristic of life over multiple generations as allele frequencies change.
What is evolution (or evolving)?
This phenomenon explains how plants draw water upward from their roots against gravity, using a combination of cohesion, adhesion, and tube-like xylem vessels.
What is capillary action?
The structural variations of this specific functional group differentiate the 20 distinct amino acids that build all proteins in living things.
What is the R-group (or side chain)?
This ecological problem occurs when excess nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers run off into bodies of water, causing massive algal blooms that deplete dissolved oxygen and suffocate aquatic life.
What is eutrophication?