Ecology

Grade 9 Science Exam

Geosphere/Lithosphere

rocks,minerals,earths crust

Atmosphere

Air,gases

Hydrosphere

water

biosphere

plants,animals,living things

biotic

Are living or once were

abiotic

Non-living things that influence an ecosystem

herbivore

organism that only eats plants

carnivore

organism that eats mostly/only meat

omnivore

organism that eats both plants and animals

detrivore

organisms that eat deccaying organic material

decomposer

organism that breaks down decaying material into nutrients

producer

organisms that produce their own food

food chain

feeding relationships between organisms

food web

over lapping and interconnecting food chains

primary conumers

first to consume on the trophic level

secondary consumer

second to consume on the trophic level

teritary consumer

third to consume on a trophic level

photosynthesis

the process in which plant produce oxygen and glucose

cellular respiration

the process in which animals produce carbon dioxide and water

Primary Succesion

Newly exposed or newly exposed rock is colonized by living things for the first time

Secondary succesion

An area that has been disrupted (flood,eruption) but recolinizes after

Dissolved oxygen

The amount of oxygen available to aquatic organisms

Biological oxygen demand

The amount of oxygen needed by decomposers in an aquatic ecosystem to break up waste

Eutrophication

Inorganic enrichment of natural waters, leading to an increased production of algae and macrophytes

Oligotrophic

Healthy lake

Keystone species

typically an apex predator that regulates the population of lower trophic levels, therefore keeping ecosystems in equilibrium. Part of the food web would die off without them

Biodiversity

the number of different types of organisms (species) within an ecosystem

Carrying capacity

The carrying capacity is the maximum population size (number of individuals of the same species) that an ecosystem can maintain over a period of time

Dynamic Equillibrium

when the forward and reverse processes occur at the same rate, resulting in no observable change in the system.

Limiting factor

anything that constrains a population's size and slows or stops it from growing.

Carbon cycle

nature's way of reusing carbon atoms, which travel from the atmosphere into organisms in the Earth and then back into the atmosphere over and over again

Nitrogen cycle

a biogeochemical process through which nitrogen is converted into many forms, consecutively passing from the atmosphere to the soil to organism and back into the atmosphere

autotroph

producer

heterotroph

consumer