Biology Today - Chapter 1 Flashcards

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering key biological concepts, scientific approaches, taxonomy, evolution, and major themes in Chapter 1 of Essential Biology.

Biology

The scientific study of life.

Discovery Science

An approach to scientific inquiry that is primarily about describing nature through verifiable observations and measurements.

Hypothesis-Driven Science

An approach to scientific inquiry that is primarily about explaining nature by proposing and testing hypotheses.

Data

Recorded observations and items of information upon which scientific inquiry is based.

Hypothesis

A tentative answer to a question or a proposed explanation for a set of observations that leads to testable predictions.

Facts

Verifiable observations and repeatable experimental results that serve as the prerequisites of science.

Scientific Theory

A comprehensive explanation supported by abundant evidence, general enough to spin off many new testable hypotheses.

Biosignatures

Substances that provide evidence of past or present life.

Species

A group of organisms that live in the same place and time and have the potential to interbreed with one another in nature to produce healthy offspring.

Taxonomy

The branch of biology that names and classifies species into a hierarchy of broader and broader groups.

Three Domains of Life

The highest categorical level for classifying life, consisting of Domain Bacteria, Domain Archaea, and Domain Eukarya.

Kingdom Plantae

A multicellular kingdom within Domain Eukarya whose organisms produce their own sugars and other foods by photosynthesis.

Kingdom Fungi

A kingdom within Domain Eukarya whose members are mostly decomposers that digest dead organisms and organic wastes.

Kingdom Animalia

A multicellular kingdom within Domain Eukarya whose organisms obtain food by ingesting and digesting other organisms.

Protists

A catch-all group of eukaryotes that do not fit into Kingdom Plantae, Fungi, or Animalia, mostly consisting of single-celled organisms but also including some multicellular forms like seaweeds.

Evolution

The biological process of change over time; the fundamental principle of life and the core unifying theme of biology.

Natural Selection

The mechanism for evolutionary descent with modification in which the environment selects certain existing heritable traits, resulting in unequal reproductive success.

Adaptation

The accumulation of favourable variations in a population over time as a product of natural selection.

Artificial Selection

The purposeful breeding of domesticated plants and animals by humans to accentuate preferred traits.

Genes

The units of inheritance that transmit information from parent to offspring, consisting of specific sequences of DNA's four molecular building blocks (A, G, C, T).

Genome

The entire set of genetic information that an organism inherits.

Biosphere

All the environments on Earth that support life, including soil, oceans, lakes, and the lower atmosphere.

Emergent Properties

Novel properties that emerge at each new level of biological complexity due to the specific arrangement and interactions of constituent parts.

Types of Micrographs

Visual image output produced by microscopes, including Light Micrograph (LM), Scanning Electron Micrograph (SEM), and Transmission Electron Micrograph (TEM).

Tree of Life

A branching evolutionary diagram illustrating how species extend back in time through ancestral lineages to common ancestors.

Ecosystem Energy Flow and Nutrient Cycling

The process wherein energy enters an ecosystem as sunlight, is converted to chemical energy by producers, passed to consumers, and exits as heat, while nutrients are continually recycled within the system.