Review: Food, Energy, Raw Materials

A set of vocabulary flashcards based on key concepts from the lecture notes on food, energy, and raw materials.

Requirements for Life

The basic needs for survival, including the interaction of atoms to form molecules and ultimately cells.

Biological Molecules

Four major types of molecules essential for life: carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids.

Ecosystem

A community of living organisms and their interactions with their environment, including energy flow and chemical cycling.

Producers

Organisms capable of photosynthesis or chemosynthesis that convert energy into organic compounds.

Primary Consumers

Herbivores that eat producers to obtain energy.

Secondary Consumers

Carnivores that eat primary consumers.

Decomposers

Organisms that break down dead producers and consumers, releasing nutrients back into the ecosystem.

Energy Flow

The transfer of energy through trophic levels in an ecosystem, typically from producers to primary consumers and so on.

Food Web

A complex network of feeding relationships among organisms in an ecosystem, showing how various food chains are interconnected.

Pyramid of Energy

A graphical representation that shows the amount of energy available at each trophic level in an ecosystem.

Biological Magnification

The process where certain non-degradable pollutants become more concentrated in the tissues of organisms as they move up the food chain.

Greenhouse Effect

A natural process where certain gases trap heat in the atmosphere, potentially leading to global warming.

Food Chain

A linear sequence of organisms through which nutrients and energy pass as one organism eats another.

Detritivores

Organisms that consume non-living organic matter, differentiating them from decomposers.

10% Energy Rule

The principle that roughly 10% of energy is transferred from one trophic level to the next, limiting the number of levels in an ecosystem.

Photosynthesis

The process by which producers convert light energy into chemical energy in the form of sugars.

Chemosynthesis

The process by which certain organisms create energy from chemical reactions, typically found in extreme environments.