Vocab
Diet style of a consumer that only eats plants.
What is a Herbivore?
The smallest unit of life.
What is a cell?
Only a certain amount of the energy at one trophic level is passed to the next trophic level.
What is the 10% Rule?
This shows a single pathway of energy flow in an ecosystem.
What is a food chain?
This cycle involves the movement of carbon through the atmosphere, oceans, and living organisms via processes like photosynthesis and respiration.
What is the Carbon Cycle?
A group of organisms that share the same physical identity and have the ability to breed.
What is a species?
Multiple families/ groups of the same species.
What is a population?
As energy moves from one trophic level to the next, most of it is lost as this.
What is heat energy?
Multiple food chains combine to form this type of feeding relationship in an ecosystem.
What is a food web?
Process responsible for converting ammonia back into atmospheric oxygen.
What is denitrification?
Process used by producers when converting energy.
What is Photosynthesis?
The smallest unit of matter.
What is an atom?
This is what each level in a trophic pyramid can be quantified by.
What is energy?
This type of organism makes its own food and forms the base of all food chains.
What is a producer?
Nutrient, which supply limits productivity.
What is a Limiting Nutrient?
Classification of energy consumption for a producer; another word for producer.
What is an Autotroph?
The two components (factors) of an ecosystem.
What are biotic and abiotic factors?
To construct a pyramid for an ecosystem, an ecologist must measure this at each trophic level.
What is biomass?
In a food chain or food web, arrows represent this.
What is the transfer of energy?
The process responsible for converting atmospheric nitrogen into usable nitrogen (ammonia).
What is nitrogen fixation?
This type of cycle describes how matter, not energy, moves repeatedly through ecosystems and the Earth.
What is a Biogeochemical Cycle?
All of the living factors on Earth are are contained within this area.
What is the biosphere?
If a top predator is removed from a food web, this type of effect can cause major changes throughout the ecosystem.
What is a trophic cascade?
This is what all food chains within a food web ultimately begin with.
What is the sun?
Unlike energy, this is recycled within ecosystems through biogeochemical cycles.
What is matter?