Scientific Method
A variable in an experiment that you keep the same throughout the entire process.
What is a control variable?
A type of graph used to show the relationship between two sets of data; each point on the graph represents a pair of values from the two data sets.
What is a scatter plot?
A simple way to show how energy and nutrients move through an ecosystem. It’s a sequence that shows who eats whom, starting with plants and ending with the top predator.
What is a food chain?
The level of ecology that refers to an interacting group of organisms and non-organisms functioning together in a common place.
What is an ecosystem?
Any organism that cannot produce its own food and must eat other organisms to get energy; they depend on other living things for nutrients and energy to survive. Examples are herbivores, omnivores, carnivores, and decomposers.
What is a consumer?
A statement containing the three primary words "if, then, because," sequentially stating an experiment's independent variable, prediction, and rationale.
What is a hypothesis?
The variable type on observed on the x-axis.
What is an independent variable?
The rule in ecology refers to the idea that, in a food chain, only about 10% of the energy from one trophic level (or feeding level) is passed on to the next level. The rest of the energy—around 90%—is lost as heat or used up for life processes such as movement, growth, and reproduction.
What is the 10% rule?
An example of this ecological level is a tropical rainforest.
What is a biome?
An organism that gets its energy by breaking down chemicals, rather than from sunlight like plants do.
What is a chemotroph?
A variable in an experiment that you are changing; what are you applying to the subject.
What is an independent variable?
The type of population growth observed when conditions are non-ideal (predation, death, disease, etc.)
What is logistic growth?
Any organism that cannot produce its own food and must eat other organisms to get energy; they depend on other living things for nutrients and energy to survive. Examples are herbivores, omnivores, carnivores, and decomposers.
What is a consumer?
The type of community interaction that results in one winner and one loser.
What is competition?
The name of the process that turns bio-unavailable nitrogen (N2) into bioavailable nitrate (NO3).
What is nitrogen-fixation?
Increasing the sample size and measuring/monitoring the independent variables of an experiment.
What are ways the accuracy of an experiment can be improved?
The type of population growth is not observed in nature because conditions are non-ideal (predation, death, disease, etc.); this type of growth is only observed when conditions are ideal, or "perfect."
What is exponential growth?
Organisms that eat primary consumers (herbivores) to obtain energy. They are typically carnivores (meat-eaters) or omnivores (organisms that eat both plants and animals); third level in a food chain.
What is a secondary consumer?
The name of effects that refer to the changes and impacts on the environment caused by human activities. These effects can have significant consequences for ecosystems, biodiversity, and the climate.
What are anthropogenic effects?
The Nutrient Cycle that differs from the others because its element is not abundant in the atmosphere.
What is the phosphorous cycle?