Cycles of Matter
The process in which liquid water changes into water vapor because of added thermal energy.
A diagram that shows several connected feeding relationships within an ecosystem.
What is a food web?
Organisms at this trophic level make their own food, usually through photosynthesis.
What are producers?
A close, long-term relationship between organisms of different species.
What is symbiosis?
The number of individuals of one species living in a particular area.
What is a population?
Plants remove this atmospheric gas during photosynthesis and use its carbon atoms to build carbohydrates.
What is carbon dioxide?
The original energy source for most ecosystems on Earth.
What is the sun/sunlight?
An organism that only eats producers is classified at this trophic level.
What is a primary consumer?
In this relationship, both species benefit, such as bees receiving nectar while pollinating flowering plants.
What is mutualism?
The maximum number of organisms that an environment can support over time based on available resources.
What is carrying capacity?
Water vapor cools and changes into tiny liquid droplets that may form clouds during this process.
What is condensation?
The direction of arrows in a food web represents this.
What is the flow of energy?
In the food chain grass → rabbit → snake → hawk, the snake occupies this trophic level
What is the secondary consumer level?
In this relationship, one species benefits while the other is not significantly helped or harmed, such as barnacles attaching to a whale.
What is commensalism?
A species whose impact on its ecosystem is much greater than its population size would suggest; removing it can cause major changes in the community.
What is a keystone species?
Decomposers play a major role in returning carbon to the atmosphere and nitrogen to the soil by breaking down dead organisms and waste. This illustrates why decomposers are essential to these cycles.
What is recycling matter through decomposition?
If a pesticide greatly reduces the population of insects in a food web, organisms that eat insects may experience this immediate effect.
What is a decrease in their food supply and population size?
Only about this percentage of the energy at one trophic level is transferred to the next level; most energy is used for life processes or released as heat.
What is 10 percent?
Competition between members of the same species for resources such as food, territory, or mates.
What is intraspecific competition?
A nonnative organism that spreads rapidly and causes ecological, economic, or human-health problems in its new environment.
What is an invasive species?
This process changes atmospheric nitrogen into forms, such as ammonia or ammonium, that can enter the nitrogen cycle.
What is nitrogen fixation?
Removing one species from a complex food web can affect many other species because each organism may be connected to multiple feeding relationships. This concept is called this.
What is interconnectedness?
Food chains rarely contain many trophic levels because available energy decreases at each transfer, limiting the amount of energy available to organisms at the highest levels.
What is energy loss between trophic levels?
Competition between members of different species that need the same limited resource.
What is interspecific competition?
A population may increase rapidly when resources are abundant, but its growth slows as it approaches this limit imposed by food, space, competition, disease, and other environmental factors.
What is carrying capacity?