Marine Ecology

  • Abiotic - not living ex. Waves, current, water temperature, water pressure, pH, sunlight, salinity, type and size of sediment particles.  

  • Biotic - living thing ex. Fish

  • Ecosystem - a geographic area where plants, animals, and other organisms, as well as weather and landscapes, work together to form a bubble of life

  • Biosphere - all of Earths’ ecosystems taken together

  • Community - an interacting group of various species in a common location

  • Population - an assortment of organisms of a species that live in the same place at the same time and interbreed

  • Species - a group of organisms that can reproduce with one another in nature and produce fertile offspring

  • Homeostasis - A state of balance among all the body systems needed for the body to survive and function correctly. Ex of things that needs to be kept in balance: temperature, level of waste product, amount of water, salt, and nutrients. 

  • Salinity -  the saltiness or amount of salt dissolved in a body of water. Salinity can vary a lot near the shore, bays, and tide pools because extra sunlight can evaporate water and concentrate the salt, but rain would dilute the water. Organisms that live in these environments need to be able to adjust to the changing salinity. 

  • Solute -  the substance that is dissolved within the solution. Ex. when salt is dissolved in water, salt is the solute

  • Osmosis - the movement of water molecules from a solution with a high concentration of water molecules to a solution with a lower concentration of water molecules, through a cell's partially permeable membrane.

  • Habitat - place where an organism or a community of organisms lives, including all living and nonliving factors or conditions of the surrounding environment. Ex. rocky shores, coral reefs, deep sea vents, and mangrove swamps. 

  • Niche - an organism's role within an ecosystem; what an organism does in its environment. 

  • Anaerobic - without oxigen

  • Aerobic - with oxygen

  • population size - the number of individuals in a population

  • population density - the average number of individuals in a population per unit of area or volume

  • Immigration - the movement of organisms from one area to another

  • Emmigration - when a population or organism leaves its native land to pursue a new life in a non-native land

  • Fitness - how good a particular genotype is at leaving offspring in the next generation

  • Mortality - death rate

  • exponential growth - unrestricted growth of a population of organisms, occurring when resources in its habitat are unlimited

  • logistic growth - occurs when the growth rate decreases as the population reaches carrying capacity

  • carrying capacity - an ecosystem's maximum number of organisms of a species that can survive in that particular environment

  • density-dependent - a factor whose effects on the size or growth of a population vary with the population density

  • density-independent - any force that affects the size of a population of living things regardless of the density of the population

  • Competition - an interaction between organisms or species in which both require a resource that is in limited supply (such as food, water, or territory).

  • intraspecific competition - members of the same species compete for limited resources. This leads to a reduction in fitness for both individuals, but the more fit individual survives and is able to reproduce.

  • interspecific competition - individuals of different species compete for the same resources in an ecosystem

  • resource partitioning - a process where organisms divide up resources to avoid competition and coexist in the same ecosystem

  • herbivore - eat plants 

  • carnivore - eat other organisms

  • keystone species - a species that plays a critical role in an ecosystem and influences the abundance and type of other species in the habitat

  • symbiosis - a relationship or interaction between two different organisms that share similar habitat

  • mutualism - association between organisms of two different species in which each benefits

  • commensalism - a long-term biological interaction where one species benefits while the other is not affected

  • autotroph - an organism that can produce its own food

  • heterotroph - an organism that depend on other organisms for food (can’t produce its own food)

  • producers - any plants that gain energy from the sun

  • consumers - organisms that gain energy from other organisms

  • omnivore - eats both plants and animals

  • detrivore - eats dead and decaying organic matter 

  • food web - a diagram that shows the feeding relationships and energy transfer between organisms in an ecosystem

  • food chain - linear network of links in a food web

  • trophic level - the position an organism occupies in a food chain or food web, based on its feeding relationships

  • pelagic - part of the ocean that is not associated with the shore or the bottom

  • Neritic - relatively shallow part of the ocean above the drop-off of the continental shelf (near shore)

  • Oceanic - the area of the ocean lying beyond the continental shelf (off shore)

  • Photic - the uppermost layer of a body of water that receives sunlight, allowing phytoplanktons to photosynthesis

  • Aphotic - region of perpetual darkness that lies beneath the photic zone and includes most of the ocean waters

  • Plankton - anything that can’t swim against the current (ex. Jelly, juvenile fish, etc)

  • Nekton - organisms that can swom against the current 

  • Intertidal - area where the ocean meets the land between high and low tides.

  • Bathyal - A layer of the oceanic zone above the abyssal zone. (200-4000m)

  • abyssal - A layer of the oceanic zone between bathyal and hadal zones. (4000m-6000m)

  • Hadal - deepest region of the ocean, below the abyssal zone (6000m →)