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Ecology

Definitions

TermDefinition
Competition The fight for limited resources.
Predation Where one organism hunts, kills and eats another to obtain its nutrition.
Predator The animal that does the hunting.
Prey The animal that is hunted.
Trophic Level The level at which an organism gains its nutrition.
Parasitism A form of nutrition where one organism gains its nutrition by feeding directly on the other organism, causing it harm.
Interdependence Where two or more organisms depend on one another within an ecosystem.
Biosphere That part of the planet containing living organisms.
Ecosystem A group of clearly distinguished organisms that interact with their environment as a unit.
Habitat The place where an organism lives.
Population All the members of the same species living in an area.
Community All the different populations in an area.
Abiotic factors Non-living factors.
Biotic factors Living factors.
Climatic factors Refer to weather over a long period of time.
Edaphic factors Relating to soil.
Producers Organisms that can make their own food.
Flora The plant life in an ecosystem.
Consumers Organisms that take in food made by other organisms.
Fauna All the animal life in an ecosystem.
Decomposers Organisms that feed on dead organic matter
Detritus feeders Organisms that feed on small pieces of dead organic matter.
Food web Consists of two or more interlinked food chains.
Pyramid of numbers Represents the number of organisms at each trophic level in a food chain.
Niche The functional role that an organism plays in the community.
Nutrient recycling The way in which elements are exchanged between the living and the non-living components of an ecosystem.
Nitrogen fixation The conversion of nitrogen gas into ammonia, ammonium or nitrate.
Nitrification The conversion of ammonia and ammonium compounds to nitrite and then to nitrate.
Denitrification The conversion of nitrates to nitrogen gas.
Pollution Any harmful addition to the environment that makes it less able to sustain life.
Pollutants Harmful additions to the environment.
Conservation The wise management of the existing natural resources in an ecosystem in order to maintain a wide range of habitats and prevent the death and extinction of organisms.
Intra-specific competition Takes place between members of the same species.
Inter-specific competition Takes place between members of different species.
Contest competition An active physical contest between two individual organisms where one organism gets the resource and the other is left without it.
Scramble competition All of the competing organisms get some of the resource.
Symbiosis Occurs when two organisms of different species live (or may have to live) in close association and at least one of them benefits.
Qualitative study Records the presence or absence of organisms.
Quantitative study Records the numbers of organisms that are present.
Adaptation Any alteration that improves an organism's chances of survival and reproduction
Key A means of naming organisms by answering a series of questions with alternative answers.
Percentage cover An estimate of the amount of ground in a quadrat covered by each species
Created by: J Glennon
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