Ecology Final, Ecosystems And Productivity

Front 1

Ecosystem

Back 1

The biotic community and its abiotic environment functioning as a system.
Differences among terrestrial ecosystems are determined largely by vegetation. Differences in aquatic ecosystems are determined by physical characteristics such as the depth, flow or salinity.

Front 2

Food Web

Back 2

Interlocking pattern formed by a series of interconnecting food chains. A food web shows direct interactions between predator and prey. Arrows flow from prey (consumed) to predator (consumer).

Front 3

Food Chain

Back 3

Movement of energy and nutrients from one feeding group of organisms to another in a series that begins with plants and ends with carnivores, detrail feeders, and decomposers.

Front 4

Autotroph

Back 4

Derive energy from sunlight.

Front 5

Heterotroph

Back 5

Organisms requiring organic compounds for their principal source of food because they cannot manufacture their own food

Front 6

Primary Productivity

Back 6

Rate at which plants produce biomass per unit area per unit time.

Front 7

Environmental Influences on Primary Productivity

Back 7

Water
Nutrients
Light
Temperature extremes

This will decrease total carbon gain and therefore overall plant growth. Less growth leads to less productivity.

Front 8

Secondary Productivity

Back 8

Production by consumer organisms per unit time.

Front 9

Environmental Influences on Secondary Productivity

Back 9

Dependent on primary productivity.
Metabolism maintained by respiration. Most energy goes to respiration rather than growth and reproduction.

Front 10

Net Primary Productivity

Back 10

Photosynthesis - Respiration (autotrophs)

Front 11

Consumer Energy Balance:
Define each term:
I = A + W

Back 11

I = Ingestion
A = Assimilation
A = P + R
P = Production
R = Respiration
W = Waste

Front 12

Consumption Efficiency (CE)

Back 12

CE = I/Pn-1

Ratio of energy ingested to production of the next lower trophic level.

Front 13

Assimilation Efficiency (AE)

Back 13

AE = A/I

Efficiency of the consumer to extract energy from the food it consumes.

Front 14

Production Efficiency (PE)

Back 14

PE = Pn/A

Efficiency of the consumer to incorporate assimilated energy into growth and reproduction.

Front 15

Epilimnion

Back 15

Warm, oxygen rich upper layer of water in a lake or other body of water, usually seasonal

Front 16

Metalimnion

Back 16

Transition zone in a lake between hypolimnion and epilimnion; region of rapid temperature decline

Front 17

Hypolimnion

Back 17

Cold, oxygen poor zone of a lake, below the thermocline

Front 18

Thermocline

Back 18

A layer within a body of water where the temperature changes rapidly in depth. It is the area in between the upper epilimnion and the lower hypolimnion. The depth of the thermocline depends on the input of solar radiation and the surface of the temperature water.

Front 19

Biogeochemical Cycle

Back 19

all nutrient flow from the nonliving to the living and back to the nonliving components of the ecosystem in a more or less cyclic path.

Front 20

Nutrient Cycling

Back 20

Assimilation by organisms to release by decomposition.

Front 21

Retranslocation

Back 21

Recycling nutrients within the plant: before dying tissue falls off, plants reabsorb the tissue's nutrients to make new tissue.

Front 22

Decomposition coefficient determined by...

Back 22

Lignin and climate

Front 23

Mineralization

Back 23

Microbial breakdown organic to inorganic

Front 24

Immobilization

Back 24

Inorganic to organic form in microbial or plant tissue