Key Terms
This is the name for a place where a species or community of species live.
What is a habitat?
This is the term for a species in a food chain that makes its own food, with energy from the sun and nutrients from the soil.
What is a producer?
This effect of climate change is having a huge impact on arctic ecosystems.
What are melting glaciers?
This type of relationship is when one organism benefits, while another organism is not harmed or helped in any way.
Example: a tree frog hiding behind a plant.
What is commenalism?
What is genetic variation?
A singular living thing (plant or animal).
What is an organism?
This type of organism only eats producers.
What is a primary consumer (or herbivore)
This effect of climate change is caused by slowing ocean currents due to melting glaciers. Hint: they are natural, but are occurring more frequently.
Extreme weather events (hurricanes, typhoons, flooding)
This type of relationship occurs when both organisms benefit from each other.
For example, oxpeckers who eat ticks from the backs of zebras.
What is a mutualistic relationship?
Because organisms are different from each other, certain organisms may have these features which allow them to survive easier in their environment.
What are adaptations?
This is the term for a group of the same organism.
What is a species?
This type of organism will eat primary consumers. Example: a snake eats mice (a primary consumer)
What is a secondary consumer?
Hotter and drier climates can increase the risk of these events, which can destroy ecosystems.
What are forest fires?
This type of relationship only benefits one organism, while the other organism is harmed (but not killed).
Example: a deer tick drinks the blood from a deer.
What is parasitism?
This is the process where certain organisms with adaptations that allow them to survive in their environment can reproduce and pass on their genes.
What is natural selection?
This is the term for the diversity (many different kinds) of living things in a given area.
What is biodiversity?
This is the term for a species that does not have any natural predators.
What is an apex predator?
Coral bleaching (when coral expel their algae due to stress, turning white) is a direct result of this effect of climate change.
What are rising ocean temperatures?
This phenomenon occurs when a food chain is altered dramatically (DDT is sprayed in Borneo)
What is a trophic cascade?
Over time, natural selection results in all living things changing. This is the name for that process.
What is evolution?
This theory explains why there is the most biodiversity at the Earth's equator, and the least amount of biodiversity at the Earth's poles.
What is the latitudinal biodiversity gradient?
Bacteria and fungi are both examples of this type of organism.
What are decomposers?
We need coral reefs, because they act as a natural _____________ that protect shorelines from storms and soil erosion.
What is a barrier?
This was the solution to the overpopulation of rats (and the plague) in Borneo, after DDT was sprayed.
What is operation cat drop?
This is the location where Charles Darwin studied finches (a species of bird) and discovered his theory of evolution.
What are the Galapagos Islands?