Ecology Test

producer

plants and autotrophs

consumer

what heterotrophs need to eat

herbivore

only eats plants

carnivore

only eats animals (meat)

omnivore

eats plants and animals

decomposer

breaks down dead organic material and absorbs it for food (fungus)

biotic

living organisms

aboitic

nonliving (rocks)

how are food webs/chains arranged

in the direction of energy

what is the 10% rule when going up trophic levels

only 10% of biomass energy goes on each level of the pyramid (producers have the most and it decreases up the levels)

biomagnification

when things like toxins (DDT) increase up the food chain

mutualism

both benefit (bees pollinating flowers)

commensalism

when one benefits and one is unaffected (Jellyfish and fish living inside it)

parasitism

when one benefits and one is harmed (dog and fleas)

keystone species

an organism that regulates the population growth of everything else (If they are removed it affects everything else in the ecosystem)

intraspecific competition

with organisms of the SAME species

interspecific competition

with organisms of DIFFERENT species

what are things organisms compete over

EVERYTHING!

immigration

organisms coming IN to a population

emigration

organisms moving OUT of a population

density

number of organisms per area

birth rate

how many are born each year (causes pop to increase)

death rate

how many die each year (causes pop to decrease)

exponential growth

growing fast at a constant rate

How do you calculate growth rate

Birth rate - death rate / initial population size

carrying capacity

number of organisms that an environment can handle/sustain

what can change the carrying capacity

food availability, space availability and number of predators etc.

Density-dependent

growth is limited BECAUSE of the density (affects large and dense population more and causes more death)

Density-independent

growth is limited REGARDLESS of density (affects all populations equally)

Dependent

disease and competition

independent

natural disasters and human activities

what principals were gregor mendel able to work out,

the law of dominance and the law of independent assortment

gregor mendel

the father of genetics

why we use a punnett square

to predict the phenotype and genotype of the offspring

haploid cells

on the outside of the punnett square

diploid cells

on the inside of the punnett square

genotype

alleles/genes

phenotype

physical trait

incomplete dominance

heterozygous is a BLEND of the traits

codominance

both alleles are dominant and both show up in the pheotype (two different capital letters are used)

multiple alleles

3 or more possible alleles for a trait

polygenic inheritance

multiple genes cotributing to one trait

sex linked traits

males are affected more than females because they have 1 X chromosome

transcription

DNA→RNA

translation

RNA→protein

where transcription starts and ends

promoter→terminator

where translation starts and ends

start codon→stop codon

point mutation

when one nucleotide is affected but nothing shifts (silent, nonsense, substitution)

frameshift mutation

shifts the whole frame of the DNA (insertion and deletion)

chromosomal mutation

when a chromosome is affected (down syndrome)