Vocabulary
Living organisms in an environment
Biotic factors
Biome characterized by deep, nutrient-rich soil that supports many grass species.
Temperate Grassland
A community of organisms where there are several interrelated food chains
Definition of food web
The movement of water through the living and nonliving parts of the ecosystem.
Hydrologic cycle
Relationship in which two species live closely together
Definition of symbiosis
Nonliving components of an environment.
Abiotic factors
A broadleaf evergreen forest found in wet and hot regions near the equator.
Tropical rainforest
Each step in a food chain or food web
Trophic Level
Process of converting nitrogen gas into nitrogen compounds that plants can absorb and use
Nitrogen fixation
A flea connects itself on a human and feeds off of its blood, possibly causing disease and death for the person.
Parasitism
A group of ecosystems that shares similar climates, geography, latitude and altitude, nutrient availability, and soil.
Biome
An extremely dry area with little water and few plants
Desert
Only 10% of the total energy produced at each trophic level is available to the next level. The amount to the next level. The amount of energy passed up to the levels of the food pyramid reduces as you go up.
10% rule
Element that is essential for all life - no gas phase and cycles through ecosystems very slowly through the breakdown of rocks.
Phosphorous
A bee pollinates a flower, the bee feeds off the pollen, and the pollen of the flower is carried onto other flowers by the bee.
Mutualism
Hypoxia
A vast, flat, treeless Arctic region of Europe, Asia, and North America in which the subsoil is permanently frozen.
Tundra
The division of environmental resources by coexisting species such that the niche of each species differs by one or more significant factors from the niches of all coexisting species.
Resource Partitioning
Conversion of nitrates into nitrogen gas
Denitrification
A whale barnacle connects to a whale, the whale barnacle is able to successfully migrate, while the whale is unaffected
Commensalism
The energy captured by producers in an ecosystem minus the energy producers respire
Net primary productivity
A biome with long cold winters and a few months of warm weather; dominated by coniferous evergreens; also called boreal forests
Taiga
A series of changes in the population sizes of organisms at different trophic levels in a food chain, occurring when predators at high trophic levels indirectly promote populations of organisms at low trophic levels by keeping species at intermediate trophic levels in check.
Trophic cascade
Excessive richness of nutrients(nitrogen and phosphorous) in a lake or other body of water, frequently due to runoff from the land, which causes a dense growth of plant life and death of animal life from lack of oxygen.
Eutrophication
Mutualism in which at least one species can't survive without its partner
Obligate Mutualism