Intro to Ecology
A group of the same species living in a specific area
What is a population?
The process involving evaporation, condensation and precipitation
What is the water cycle?
Population Density
What is the number of individuals of a species per unit area or volume?
The type of succesion that stars with soil
What is secondary succesion?
A relationship in which one organism hunts and eats another
What is predation?
The primary source of energy for almost all ecosystems on Earth
What is the sun?
The method by which plants intake carbon from the atmosphere
What is photosynthesis?
The three basic patterns of population dispersion
The first species to colonize an area
What is a pioneer species?
A relationship where one species benefits and the other is uneffected
What is commensalism?
A linear sequence that shows how energy and nutrients are transferred from one organism to another within an ecosystem
What is a food chain?
The percentage of Earth's atmosphere that is nitrogen
What is 78%
The type of population growth represented by a J-shaped curve
What is exponential growth?
The most common pioneer species in primary succesion
What are mosses and lichens?
The organism harmed in parasitism?
What is the host?
An organism that breaks down dead organic matter and returns it to the soil
What is a decomposer?
The term for bacteria converting atmospheric nitrogen into a form plants can absorb
What is nitrogen fixation?
Natality, Immigration, Mortality, Emmigration
What are the four ways that population changes?
What event typically triggers secondary succession?
What is a disturbance?
The type of competition between two organisms of the same species
What is intraspecific?
A species with a disproportionately large effect on it's ecosystem
What is a keystone species?
Releasing sequestered carbon intro the atmosphere faster than it can be absorbed
What are the consequences of burning fossil fuels?
High infant Mortality, followed by high survival rates for the few who reach adulthood
What is a type III survivorship curve?
A stable, mature community that undergoes little changes in species composition
What is a climax community?
The principle that states that two organisms competing for the exact same limited resource can not coexist indefinately
What is the Competative Exclusion Principle?