Biodiversity
What is biodiversity?
This term refers to the breadth and variety of life on Earth—plants, animals, fungi, and micro
What is a niche?
This term describes the role or "job" an organism has within its habitat, including its resource use and interactions with others.
What is the Amazon Rainforest?
This South American biome is considered a hotspot of biodiversity, covering over 2.5 million square miles.
What are mammals?
This animal class is characterized by having hair or fur, producing milk, and self-regulating their body temperature.
What are nonvascular plants?
Plants are divided into two main groups: vascular and this type, which includes mosses and liverworts.
What is species richness?
Biodiversity is most simply measured using this term, which is defined as the number of unique species living in a given area
What is a food chain?
The path of energy flow when a plant is eaten by a rabbit, and the rabbit is eaten by a fox.
What is the tundra (or Arctic tundra)?
This cold biome is defined as a type of desert because it stays well below freezing and has very little precipitation.
What are amphibians?
Animals like frogs and newts are born with gills before undergoing a unique transformation to grow lungs, classifying them in this group.
What is the Baobab tree?
This tree, found in Africa, is well-known for storing thousands of liters of water in its incredibly thick trunk.
What is genetic diversity?
The three major scales at which biodiversity is typically studied: ecosystem, species, and this type of diversity
What are herbivores?
The most basic type of consumer, this group eats only plants and gets energy directly from producers.
What are producers (or plants)?
The Amazon can support such a complex food web because of its high primary productivity, a measure of the amount of energy created by these organisms.
What are reptiles?
This group of animals, which includes snakes, lizards, and turtles, is the closest relative of birds
What is Cacao?
This is the plant whose seeds are chewed open by monkeys, birds, and fruit bats, who then spit out the seeds to grow new trees.
What is the Latitudinal Diversity Gradient?
This phenomenon describes how biodiversity tends to increase toward the equator and decrease toward the poles.
What is a decomposer?
This type of organism, like a fungus or bacterium, breaks down dead matter, recycling nutrients back into the ecosystem.
What is remaining dark for months at a time?
The difference in primary productivity between the Arctic and the Amazon is mainly caused by temperature, rainfall, and this other Arctic condition.
What are invertebrates?
These animals lack internal skeletons and make up the vast majority of animal species on Earth, including insects, crabs, and snails
What is the Saguaro Cactus?
This desert plant provides both food for bats (nectar and pollen) and shelter for woodpeckers and hawks in the Sonoran Desert
What are invertebrates?
This taxonomic group has the highest number of described species, with over one million.
What is parasitism?
This term describes a feeding relationship where one organism benefits at the expense of another, like a mosquito biting a human
What is an ectotherm?
A reptile or amphibian, which relies on external heat to maintain its body temperature, is called this type of organism.
What is a habitat?
The fact that all living things must be able to meet their needs in a specific place is the unifying factor for animals that share this
What is food (or nutrition)?
Plants provide countless services to ecosystems, such as stabilizing soil, creating oxygen, and serving as the original source for nearly all of this.