Biodiversity
What does biodiversity encompass?
Diversity of all the genes, species, and habitats on Earth.
Zebra Mussels MOST likely entered the Great Lakes
from ballest water in ships
What term is used to describe the maximum harvest of individuals that allows a population to not go extinct?
Maximum sustainable yield
What is the process of converting atmospheric nitrogen into a biologically usable form called?
Nitrogen fixation
What is the first factor of particularly important influence on the pace of evolution by natural selection?
The rate of environmental change
30,000
What does ecology study?
The relationship between organisms and their environment
What is a food web?
The ways in which species in a community are linked by predator-prey interactions
What is the name of the cycle that describes the movement of water through the atmosphere and over the surface of the Earth?
hydrologic cycle
What happens to a populations when it is no longer adapted to its environment?
The size will decrease to zero unless it migrates
In Mendel's Pea Plant experiments, what phenotype did the first generation of offspring exhibit when smooth pea plants were crossed with wrinkled pea plants?
all smooth peas
what is habitat fragmentation?
when human activity divides a large area of land into smaller pieces
what is a keystone species?
A species that plays a vital role in its community
What is the conversion of organic matter to ammonium called?
Ammonification
What is genetic drift?
Random changes in genotypes among small populations
An individual's behavioral and physical characteristics are referred to as what?
Phenotype
What are the major conditions for a terrestrial system?
The availability of light from solar radiation, the temperature of the air and soil, the amount of precipitation, soil type, and quality of nitrogen or phosphorus
what three types of species are keystone species because of mutualistic interactions?
Irreplicable pollinators, habitat modifiers, and species whose individual biological processes play an important part in a community
Which biome is characterized by high rainfall and a high temperature year-round?
Tropical rainforest
What well-known animal has such a small genetic diversity that individuals are all essentially identical twins?
cheetah
What term describes the unique set of genes that provides the blueprint of an organisms development?
DNA
what is evapotranspiration?
The total water loss from the land by evaporation and plant transpiration, used as a single index to measure the combined amount of solar radiation and moisture in a region
What is primary succession?
Replacements that occur after an event that creates a new surface devoid of life
Which forests are primarily composed of coniferous trees and are found in colder climates?
boreal forests
lWhat is the bottleneck effect
After a rapid decrease in a population, the number of alleles present in the population is reduced, resulting in a smaller pool of genetic diversity