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| Semi-enclosed bodies of water where fresh water from a river drains into the ocean. |
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| 19th century scientist develops cencept of ecology |
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| The study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their abiotic environment. |
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| Nonliving or physical (living space, temp, sunlight, soil, wind, and precipitation) |
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| A group of organisms of the same species that live together in the same area at the same time. |
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| A group of similar organisms whose members freely interbreed with one another in the wild to produce fertile offspring |
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| A natural association that consists of different species that live and interact together within an area at the same time. |
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| A biological community and its abiotic environment (more inclusive term than community_ |
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| A subdiscipline of ecology that studies ecological processes that operate over large areas |
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| A spatially heterogeneous region that includes several interacting ecosystems |
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| The layer of the Earth containing all living organisms. |
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| The gaseous envelope surrounding Earth |
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| The soil and rock of Earth’s crust |
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| The capacity or ability to do work |
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| Energy stored in the bonds of molecules (e.g. food) |
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| Energy transmitted as electromagnetic waves |
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| Energy in the form of heat (flows from object with higher temp to an object with a lower temp) |
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| Energy in the movement of matter |
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| Energy that flows as charged particles |
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| The study of energy and its transformations |
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| Multiple interacting parts enclosed in a definite boundary that forms a unified whole |
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| A system that is self-contained and isolated |
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| A system that exhibits an exchange of energy with its surroundings |
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| First law of thermodynamics |
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| Energy cannot be created or destroyed, although it can change from one form to another |
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| Second law of thermodynamics |
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| When energy is converted from one form to another, some of it is degraded into heat, a less usable form that disperses into the environment |
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| A measure of the disorder and randomness of less usable energy |
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| 6CO2+12H2O => (energy) C6H12O6+6H2O+6O2 - The biological process in which light energy from the sun is captured and transformed into the chemical energy of carbohydrate (sugar) molecules |
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| C6H12O6+6O2+6H2O => 6CO2+12H2O+energy - The process in which molecules such as glucose are broken down in the presence of oxygen and water into carbon dioxide and water |
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| Vents where seawater had penetrated and been heated by the hot rocks below |
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| To obtain energy and make carbohydrate molecules from inorganic raw materials |
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| The passage of energy in a one-way direction through an ecosystem |
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| Autotrophs - Organisms that manufacture complex organic molecules from simple inorganic substances. In most ecosystems, producers are photosynthetic organisms. |
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| Heterotrophs - Organisms that cannot synthesize their own food from inorganic materials and therefore must use the bodies of other organisms as sources of energy and body-building materials |
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| Consumers that eat producers (herbivores) |
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| Animals that feed on other animals; flesh-eaters |
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| Animals that eat a variety of plant and animal material |
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| Detritivores - Organisms that consume fragments of dead organisms |
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| Organic matter that includes dead organisms and wastes |
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| Saprotrophs - Heterotrophs that break down organic material and use the decomposition products to supply it with energy. Decomposers are microorganisms of decay. |
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| The successive series of organisms through which energy flows in an ecosystem. Each organism in the series eats or decomposes the preceding organism in the chain. |
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| An organism’s position in a food chain, which is determined by its feeding relationships |
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| A representation of the interlocking food chains that connect all organisms in an ecosystem |
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| Tiny shrimplike animals that are important in the Antarctic food web |
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| Graphic representations of the relative energy value at each trophic level |
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| An ecological pyramid that shows the number of organisms at each successive trophic level in a given ecosystem |
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| An ecological pyramid that illustrates the total biomass at each successive trophic level in an ecosystem |
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| An ecological pyramid that shows the energy flow through each trophic level in an ecosystem |
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| A quantitative estimate of the total mass, or amount, of living material. Often expressed as the dry weight of all the organic material that comprises organisms in a particular ecosystem |
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| Gross primary productivity - The total amount of photosynthetic energy that plants capture and assimilate in a given period |
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| Net primary productivity - Productivity after respiration losses are subtracted. That is, NPP is the amount of biomass found in excess of that broken down by a plant’s cellular respiration. NPP represents that rate at which this organic matter is actually incorporated into plant tissues for growth. |
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| Any energy that remains is used for growth and production of young |
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| 1986 Calculated how much of the global NPP is appopriated for the human economy and therefore not transferred to other organisms |
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| 2001 Reexamined Vitousek's work. Used contemporary data sets, and produced more accurate data" |
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