AP Environmental Science: Unit 2 & 9 Review

Vocabulary flashcards covering island biogeography, natural ecosystem disruptions, ecosystem services, evolutionary adaptations, and human threats to biodiversity based on lecture notes.

Island Biogeography

The study of the ecological relationships, distribution of organisms, and community structures on islands or isolated habitat patches.

Adaptive Radiation

The process by which a single colonizing species rapidly evolves into several distinct species that occupy different niches and utilize different resources to reduce competition.

Habitat Island

An area of natural habitat surrounded by human-developed land or unsuitable terrain, such as a national park or an urban park.

Natural Disturbance

A non-human event, such as a tornado, hurricane, asteroid impact, forest fire, or drought, that disrupts the structure or function of an ecosystem.

Periodic Time Frame

A time scale for natural disturbances that recur at regular, predictable intervals, such as seasonal dry and wet cycles.

Episodic Time Frame

A time scale for natural events that occur occasionally with irregular, unpredictable frequency, such as droughts, fires, and hurricanes.

Random Time Frame

A time scale for natural disturbances that happen with no regular pattern or frequency, such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and asteroid impacts.

Ecosystem Services

Goods provided directly by natural resources, or processes carried out by natural ecosystems, that hold measurable economic or financial value to humans.

Provisioning Services

Ecosystem services consisting of physical goods or products harvested directly from nature, such as lumber, fish, crops, paper, and medicines.

Regulating Services

Benefits provided by ecosystem processes that moderate natural environmental conditions, such as carbon sequestration by trees or air pollutant filtration.

Supporting Services

Natural ecosystem processes that assist or reduce the cost of human activities, such as wetland roots purifying groundwater or insects pollinating crops.

Cultural Services

Non-material benefits and economic revenue generated from ecosystems through recreational activities, tourism, park entry fees, and scientific discoveries.

Adaptation

A mutated or inherited genetic trait that enhances an individual organism's fitness, improving its chances of surviving and reproducing in its environment.

Fitness

An organism's relative ability to survive, reproduce, and pass its genetic traits on to the next generation.

Natural Selection

The evolutionary process wherein organisms better adapted to their environment survive environmental pressures and produce more offspring, increasing the trait's frequency over time.

Selective Pressure

An environmental factor or condition, such as predation or drought, that kills or harms individuals lacking a specific advantageous adaptation.

HIPPCO

An acronym listing the main human-driven causes of biodiversity loss: Habitat destruction, Invasive species, Population growth, Pollution, Climate change, and Overexploitation.

Habitat Fragmentation

The breaking of large, continuous natural habitats into smaller, isolated patches, often caused by roads, pipelines, agriculture, or logging.

Metapopulation

A collection of spatially separated subpopulations of the same species connected by habitat corridors that allow occasional interbreeding and gene flow.

Habitat Corridor

A strip of natural habitat or constructed passage, such as a wildlife overpass, that connects isolated habitat fragments to facilitate species movement and breeding.

Edge Effect

The distinct environmental conditions and community characteristics present where two different ecosystems meet, which can boost local biodiversity or favor edge-adapted species.

Brood Parasite

An animal, such as the brown-headed cowbird, that lays its eggs in the nests of other species so the host birds will unknowingly raise its young.