Ecology and Earth Classification

What is ecology?

The study of organisms and their interactions with their environment.

What is the biosphere?

The parts of Earth where life exists. 'Bio-' refers to life.

What is a biome?

A group of land ecosystems sharing similar climates and organisms.

What is an ecosystem?

A group of living and nonliving parts in the same environment that interact.

What is a community, in ecology?

The interaction of all populations in a given area.

What is a population?

A group of organisms of the same species living together.

Order these from largest to smallest: population, biosphere, ecosystem, community, biome.

Biosphere, biome, ecosystem, community, population.

What is a producer?

An organism capable of producing its own food, such as a plant.

What is a decomposer?

An organism that breaks down dead plants and animals.

What is a scavenger?

An organism that consumes dead material.

What is a consumer?

An organism that must eat another organism to obtain energy.

What is a primary consumer?

A herbivore — it consumes only plants.

What is a secondary consumer?

A carnivore — it consumes only meat.

What is a tertiary consumer?

A top carnivore or omnivore, capable of eating both plants and meat.

What is a food web?

A diagram showing what an animal preys on and what preys on it, representing an entire ecosystem.

What do the arrows in a food web show?

The flow of energy from one organism to another.

What is the difference between a decomposer and a scavenger?

A scavenger consumes dead material; a decomposer breaks it down.

List the taxonomic levels in order.

Domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.

Which taxonomic level is least specific?

Domain — it includes the largest number of organisms.

What happens as you move to a more specific taxonomic level?

The organisms within that level become more similar to each other.

What is a mnemonic for the taxonomic structure?

King Phillip Came Over For Great Spaghetti.

What are the three domains of life?

Eukaryota, Bacteria and Archaea.

What does the Eukaryota domain include?

Kingdoms such as plants, animals and fungi — all with a nucleus in their cells.

What do Bacteria and Archaea have in common?

Both are prokaryotes — their cells lack a nucleus and other membrane-bound organelles.

What is taxonomy?

The system of classifying living things into ordered levels.