COMPLETE notbook lm flashcards

Flashcard 1

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Front: What is a biome?

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Back: A large naturally occurring community of flora and fauna occupying a major habitat, e.g., forest or tundra.1 Climate shapes the nature and distribution of biomes.1

Flashcard 2

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Front: What causes the temperature to drop with increased elevation?

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Back: Temperature tends to drop about 6.5°C per kilometre in elevation due to the decreasing density of the atmosphere and the reduced ability to retain heat.1

Flashcard 3

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Front: What primarily causes seasons?

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Back: Seasons are caused by the Earth's tilt on its axis, not by its elliptical orbit or varying distance from the sun.2

Flashcard 4

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Front: What is the Coriolis effect?

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Back: The Coriolis effect is the deflection of moving objects when they are viewed from a rotating frame of reference, like the Earth. This affects wind patterns and ocean currents.3

Flashcard 5

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Front: What is evapotranspiration?

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Back: Evapotranspiration is the sum of evaporation from soils and water bodies plus the amount of water transpired by plants.4 The ratio of evapotranspiration and precipitation determines biomes.4

Flashcard 6

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Front: What is convergent evolution?

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Back: Convergent evolution is the independent evolution of similar structures in unrelated organisms due to similar environmental pressures.5

Flashcard 7

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Front: Describe the tundra biome.

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Back: Tundra is the coldest biome, located near the North Pole, with short days in winter limiting the growing season.5

Flashcard 8

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Front: Describe a deciduous forest.

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Back: Deciduous forests have trees that lose their leaves at the end of the growing season, and feature moderate temperatures and precipitation all year round.6

Flashcard 9

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Front: Describe the savanna biome.

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Back: Savannas are dominated by tall grasses, have seasonal rainfall and are found in eastern Africa, southern South America, and Australia.7

Flashcard 10

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Front: What is a key factor influencing aquatic biomes?

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Back: The depth to which sunlight penetrates water, influencing primary producers and food webs.8

Flashcard 11

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Front: What are the main types of aquatic biomes?

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Back: Freshwater, estuary, and saltwater biomes.8

Flashcard 12

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Front: What are the characteristics of a river biome?

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Back: Rivers and streams are freshwater biomes characterised by moving water.9

Flashcard 13

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Front: What is an estuary?

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Back: An estuary is an ecotone between freshwater and saltwater environments.9

Flashcard 14

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Front: What is the intertidal zone?

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Back: The intertidal zone lies along coastlines between high and low tides.9

Flashcard 15

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Front: Where do nutrients primarily come from in deeper waters?

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Back: Detritus sinking from more productive surface waters.1011

Flashcard 16

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Front: What determines global patterns of primary production?

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Back: Climate and nutrient availability.12

Flashcard 17

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Front: What is a species interaction?

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Back: How species affect each other's survival and reproduction, such as competition, mutualism and predation.1314

Flashcard 18

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Front: Define competition between species.

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Back: A species interaction where both species are negatively impacted (-/-), often involving the struggle for limited resources like space and food.14

Flashcard 19

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Front: What is competitive exclusion?

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Back: When two species with very similar niches cannot coexist, and one will outcompete the other and exclude it.15

Flashcard 20

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Front: What is mutualism?

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Back: A species interaction where both species benefit (+/+) from the interaction.14 An example of this includes aphids and bacteria.16

Flashcard 21

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Front: Define predation.

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Back: A species interaction where one species benefits and the other is harmed (+/-), typically where a predator kills and consumes its prey.14

Flashcard 22

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Front: Define commensalism.

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Back: A species interaction where one species benefits and the other is neither harmed nor helped (+/0).14

Flashcard 23

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Front: What is a keystone species?

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Back: A species that has a disproportionately large impact on its ecosystem, relative to its abundance, with their removal resulting in significant changes in the community.14

Flashcard 24

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Front: What is facilitation?

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Back: A species interaction where one species makes the environment more suitable for another species.17

Flashcard 25

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Front: What is a metapopulation?

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Back: A group of spatially separated populations of the same species that interact at some level.18

Flashcard 26

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Front: What is population ecology?

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Back: The study of how populations of organisms interact with their environment and how population sizes change over time.1920

Flashcard 27

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Front: What is exponential population growth?

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Back: Population growth that occurs at a constant rate, leading to a J-shaped curve when plotted on a graph.21

Flashcard 28

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Front: What is logistic population growth?

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Back: Population growth that slows down as it approaches the carrying capacity of the environment, resulting in an S-shaped curve.22

Flashcard 29

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Front: What is carrying capacity?

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Back: The maximum population size that an environment can sustain indefinitely given the available resources.22

Flashcard 30

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Front: What are density-dependent factors?

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Back: Factors that regulate population size and become more intense as population density increases, e.g., competition, disease.22

Flashcard 31

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Front: What are density-independent factors?

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Back: Factors that regulate population size regardless of population density, e.g., temperature, natural disasters.22

Flashcard 32

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Front: What is a cohort?

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Back: A group of individuals in a population that are born around the same time.22

Flashcard 33

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Front: What is survivorship?

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Back: The proportion of individuals that survive to a given age.18

Flashcard 34

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Front: What is an ecosystem?

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Back: A community of living organisms (biotic factors) interacting with their non-living environment (abiotic factors).23

Flashcard 35

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Front: What is the Anthropocene?

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Back: A proposed geological epoch in which humans have become a significant planetary force.24

Flashcard 36

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Front: What is assisted migration?

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Back: The deliberate transplantation of populations to new locations to help them survive climate change.25

Flashcard 37

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Front: What is eutrophication?

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Back: The process where a body of water becomes overly enriched with minerals and nutrients which can lead to dead zones in aquatic environments.26

Flashcard 38

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Front: What is an invasive species?

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Back: A non-native species that spreads rapidly and causes harm to the environment, economy, or human health.27

Flashcard 39

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Front: What is a biological reserve?

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Back: An area of land set aside to protect habitats and biodiversity.28

Flashcard 40

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Front: What is sustainable development?

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Back: Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.29

Flashcard 41

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Front: What are the basic expectations of students and professors in this course?

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Back:

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Students: Arrive on time, print notes, be respectful of others, don't use computers in class.3031

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Professors: Start on time, focus on concepts, make clear what needs to be learned, be open to questions.30

Flashcard 42

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Front: What is deductive thinking in science?

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Back: Advancing hypotheses and comparing them to facts gathered from nature or experiments.32

Flashcard 43

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Front: What are the key components of a controlled experiment?

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Back: Control groups, replication, and randomization.33343536

Flashcard 44

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Front: What is a hypothesis?

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Back: A proposed explanation for a set of facts that can be tested by experiments or observations.37

Flashcard 45

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Front: What does it mean to falsify a hypothesis?

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Back: To prove a hypothesis to be false through experimentation or observation.37

Flashcard 46

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Front: What is a vestigial trait?

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Back: A structure that has no current function but is similar to functional structures in related species.38

Flashcard 47

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Front: What is a homology?

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Back: A similarity between organisms that is due to common ancestry.39

Flashcard 48

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Front: What are the key assumptions of natural selection?

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Back: Heritable variation, differential reproductive success, and selection is not random.40

Flashcard 49

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Front: What is fitness in biology?

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Back: An organism's ability to survive and reproduce, measured by average reproductive success, given heritable traits.41

Flashcard 50

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Front: What is acclimation?

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Back: An individual's physiological response to changes in environmental conditions.42

Flashcard 51

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Front: What are some reasons for a clade to contract?

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Back: Changing conditions (climate change, continents moving), competition from other clades, or from a successful member.43

Flashcard 52

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Front: What are some key characteristics of primates?

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Back: Highly developed stereoscopic vision, versatile limbs, and large brains.44

Flashcard 53

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Front: What are hominins?

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Back: Humans and our upright ancestors.45

Flashcard 54

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Front: What is phylogeny?

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Back: The evolutionary history of a group of organisms, based on their evolutionary relationships.46

Flashcard 55

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Front: What is a monophyletic group (clade or taxon)?

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Back: A group defined by a single common ancestor and all of its descendants.47

Flashcard 56

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Front: What is a synapomorphy?

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Back: A shared, derived trait that is used as evidence that two or more species are closely related.48

Flashcard 57

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Front: What is convergent evolution?

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Back: The independent evolution of similar traits in unrelated species.49

Flashcard 58

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Front: What is parsimony in phylogenetic analysis?

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Back: The principle of choosing the tree that requires the fewest evolutionary changes.50

Flashcard 59

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Front: What are the three domains of life?

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Back: Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya.51

Flashcard 60

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Front: What are the biases in the fossil record?

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Back: Habitat bias, taxonomic bias, temporal bias, and abundance bias.52

Flashcard 61

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Front: What is an adaptive radiation?

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Back: A rapid diversification of a single lineage into many descendant species with different ecological roles.53

Flashcard 62

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Front: What is a mass extinction?

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Back: A period of dramatic species loss.5455

Flashcard 63

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Front: What is a locus?

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Back: A location where a gene can occur in a genome.56

Flashcard 64

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Front: What is an allele?

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Back: A particular version of a gene.56

Flashcard 65

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Front: What does it mean to be heterozygous?

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Back: Having different alleles at a particular locus.57

Flashcard 66

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Front: What does it mean to be homozygous?

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Back: Having two copies of the same allele at a particular locus.57

Flashcard 67

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Front: What is a genotype?

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Back: The collection of an individual's genes.58

Flashcard 68

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Front: What is a phenotype?

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Back: The collection of an individual's physiological and physical traits that can be observed.58

Flashcard 69

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Front: What is the Hardy-Weinberg distribution?

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Back: The distribution of genotypes expected if alleles assort randomly and independently.59

Flashcard 70

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Front: What is genetic drift?

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Back: Change in allele frequencies due to random sampling.60

Flashcard 71

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Front: What is gene flow?

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Back: The movement of alleles from one population to another.61

Flashcard 72

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Front: What is mutation?

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Back: Heritable errors in copying DNA that provide the variation on which natural selection acts.62

Flashcard 73

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Front: What is inbreeding?

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Back: Mating between close relatives, which can lead to more homozygotes and lower survival rates in offspring.63

Flashcard 74

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Front: What is sexual selection?

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Back: A form of natural selection driven by traits related to success in obtaining mates.64

Flashcard 75

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Front: What is directional selection?

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Back: Natural selection that shifts the population in a particular direction over time.65

Flashcard 76

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Front: What is stabilizing selection?

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Back: Natural selection that keeps the population where it is, preventing change in a trait.66

Flashcard 77

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Front: What is disruptive selection?

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Back: Natural selection that favours extreme phenotypes, leading to divergence and speciation.67

Flashcard 78

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Front: What is balancing selection?

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Back: Natural selection that maintains allele diversity.68

Flashcard 79

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Front: What is speciation?

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Back: The process by which new species are formed.69

Flashcard 80

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Front: What is the biological species concept?

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Back: Defines species based on reproductive isolation, meaning that members of the same species can interbreed successfully, but not with other species.70

Flashcard 81

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Front: What is prezygotic isolation?

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Back: Mechanisms that prevent successful mating or fertilisation.70

Flashcard 82

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Front: What is postzygotic isolation?

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Back: Mechanisms that prevent offspring from producing offspring of their own.71

Flashcard 83

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Front: What is the morphological species concept?

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Back: Defines species based on physical differences.72

Flashcard 84

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Front: What is the ecological species concept?

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Back: Defines species based on their ecological niche.73

Flashcard 85

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Front: What is the phylogenetic species concept?

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Back: Defines species as a monophyletic group of populations.73

Flashcard 86

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Front: What is allopatry?

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Back: When organisms live apart from each other.74

Flashcard 87

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Front: What is dispersal?

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Back: The movement of individuals from one area to another that can result in the colonisation of new areas.75

Flashcard 88

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Front: What is a vicariance event?

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Back: A geographic or ecological barrier that splits a population.76

Flashcard 89

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Front: What is sympatry?

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Back: When organisms live in the same geographic area.77

Flashcard 90

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Front: What is reinforcement?

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Back: The process where natural selection favours traits that prevent hybridisation.7879

Flashcard 91

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Front: What are hybrid zones?

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Back: Areas where the ranges of two species overlap, and they interbreed to some degree.80