Evolution
If layers of sedimentary rock are not disturbed or deformed, the oldest layer lies on the bottom, with younger layers on top.
What is the principle of superposition?
Physical components that make up parts of an ecosystem.
What is abiotic?
The chemical, biological and physical status of a body of water.
What is water quality?
Name for elements on the periodic table with similar properties that appear in vertical columns.
What are groups or families?
Classification for single-celled organisms that lack a nucleus.
What is prokaryotic?
Using radioactive isotopes to determine the age of fossils.
What is radioactive (radiocarbon) dating?
Relationship when two or more organisms need the same resource at the same time.
What is competition?
Water that gathers in aquifers and is often used for drinking water.
What is groundwater?
Name for the large number of elements that are found on the right side of the periodic table.
What are non-metals?
Bacteria that cause disease.
What are pathogens?
Events that separate Eras in the geologic time scale.
What are mass extinction events?
Symbiotic relationship that helps one organism, but doesn't harm the other.
What is commensalism?
Pollution that cannot be traced to one source.
What is non-point source pollution?
The number of protons or electrons for an element.
What is the atomic number?
A non-living disease vector that cannot be cured with antibiotics.
What is a virus?
Characteristics that are similar in function but have different evolutionary or developmental origins (insect wing, bird wing, bat wing).
What are analogous structures?
A symbiotic relationship in which one organism benefits at the expense of another organism.
What is parasitism?
A gently sloping area of the ocean floor that extends outward from the edge of a continent.
What is the continental shelf?
Elements that are malleable, ductile, and good conductors.
What are metals?
The body's ability to resist certain disease, due to antibodies.
What is immunity?
Characteristics that have similar structures but different functions (Arm of a human, foreleg of a dog, flipper of a whale)
What are homologous structures?
The maximum number of organisms that an ecosystem can support.
What is the carrying capacity?
Tiny algae and animals that float in the water and are carried by waves and currents.
What are plankton?
Elements that occur in the far right column of the periodic table and are considered inert.
What are the noble gases?
A global outbreak of a disease.
What is a pandemic?