Reading...
Play button
Play button
Use LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to navigate between flashcards;
Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to flip the card;
H to show hint;
A reads text to speech;
80 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
|
What are tunicates and sea squirts?
|
Benthic, solitary, or colonial organisms common docks and pilings with a leathery exterior coating.
|
|
|
What are larvaceans?
|
Tadpole-shaped animals that secretes gelatinous house containing a plankton-collecting filter.
|
|
|
What are lancelets?
|
A filter feeder structurally and ecologically similar to larval lamprey - they have cilia on their pharyngeal gill slits which drive water through their pharynx.
|
|
|
What is a coelacanth?
|
Heavy-bodied fish from the Indian Ocean with several fins on their fleshy lobes containing bones similar to a tetrapod leg.
|
|
|
What are sharks, skates, and rays?
|
Chondrichthyans with five gills slits, rigid dorsal fins, and an upper jaw not fused to their cranium.
|
|
|
What are ratfishes and chimaeras?
|
Condrichthyans with one gill slit, flexible dorsal fin, and an upper jaw fused to braincase.
|
|
|
What are hagfishes?
|
Jawless, exclusively marine, moderate-to-deep sea fishes that eat soft-bodied invertebrates.
|
|
|
What is a marine iguana?
|
Herbiverous reptile found only in Galapagos Islands.
|
|
|
What are sea snakes and sea kraits?
|
Elongate vertebrates with laterally flattened tail and no gill openings which often eat eels.
|
|
|
What are sea turtles?
|
Group of largely threatened or endangered vertebrates which lay eggs in pits dug in sandy beaches by females.
|
|
|
What is the sperm whale?
|
Largest of the toothed whales, it's famous for spermaceti and ambergis, and has teeth in its lower jaw only.
|
|
|
What are phalaropes?
|
Coastal birds common in bays and lagoons. The males build nests and tend the eggs.
|
|
|
What are manatees and dugongs?
|
Herbivorous, tropical, marine mammals with posterior of body formed into a depressed tail.
|
|
|
What is a gray whale?
|
Migrates annually from the Bering Sea to calving grounds in Baja California and eats sediment dwelling invertebrates.
|
|
|
What is a polar bear?
|
Largest species of its taxonomic group, it's distributed in high latitudes of the northern hemisphere and is solitary except when mating. Hollow hair is colonized by unicellular algae.
|
|
|
What are penguins?
|
Flightless birds inhabiting the southern hemisphere.
|
|
|
What is Stellar's seacow?
|
Sirenian hunted to extinction in 1741, twenty-seven years after discovery in the Bering Sea.
|
|
|
What are albatrosses?
|
Among the largest of seabirds, they have a wingspan up to 3 m.
|
|
|
What is the blue whale?
|
The largest (greatest mass) animal ever recorded.
|
|
|
What is an otter?
|
A mustelid, it's the only marine mammal without blubber and lacks a clavicle.
|
|
|
What is the coast with the narrowest shelf?
|
The west coast of South America.
|
|
|
What are reasons the kelp forests are patchy?
|
Physical and biological disturbances, and competition cause this.
|
|
|
What is a guild?
|
Term applied to different species that occur in the same area and have essentially equivalent ecology?
|
|
|
What is encrusting and calcereous algae?
|
Dominant algae of the "pavement" community of kelp forests, and algal ridge of coral reefs.
|
|
|
What are sea urchins?
|
Invertebrates often responsible for the greatest biotic disturbance in kelp forests.
|
|
|
What are sea otters?
|
Virtual elimination of these led to explosion of populations of herbiverous invertebrates and collapse of many Pacific kelp forests.
|
|
|
What is El Nino/Southern Oscillation?
|
It's most obvious and often damaging change is increased temperature.
|
|
|
What are headlands?
|
Where the heaviest wave shock occurs.
|
|
|
What are rainfall and evaporation?
|
The factors exerting the greatest influence on salinity in tidepools.
|
|
|
What is the limit due to biological factors in an intertidal organism?
|
The lower limit of an organisms range in the intertidal zone.
|
|
|
What is Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis?
|
A scientific theory explaining the high diversity of corals on reef fronts, algae in damselfish territories, and invertebrates int eh rocky intertidal zones of the Pacific Coast.
|
|
|
What is permanent attachment?
|
A general strategy used by barnacles, serpulid annelids, and benthic algae to deal with heavy wave shock.
|
|
|
What are factors used to reduce desiccation?
|
Mobile animals move with the water or move to moist areas. Sessile or sedentary organisms tolerate losses of more than fifty-percent of their body water.
|
|
|
What are field experiments?
|
Joseph Connell was the first to use these to show the importance of interspecific competition in barnacles in the north Atlantic.
|
|
|
What is predation and herbivory?
|
These "keystone species" reduce the dominance some animals achieve by competition.
|
|
|
What is disturbance?
|
Affects the presence and identity of organisms in sediments.
|
|
|
What is sand?
|
A "clean" sediment, due to regular wave shock.
|
|
|
What are organic/inorganic particles?
|
Regular wave shock removes these from sand.
|
|
|
What are filter feeders?
|
Not present in sand or fine sediment, they take food from their environment.
|
|
|
What is high-tide and low surge?
|
Conditions in which large organisms appear around sand-sediment.
|
|
|
What are porous conditions?
|
Sandy sediments are more oxygenated, due to this.
|
|
|
What are algal mats?
|
These partially stabilize surfaces of mud habitats.
|
|
|
What are burrowers?
|
They may disturb the sub-surface chemical conditions in mud.
|
|
|
What are rip currents?
|
Occur when amount of water pushed onto shore exceeds that moving offshore when waters recede and causes excess water to initially move parallel to shore and then perpendicular to shore.
|
|
|
What are spur-and-groove habitats?
|
A coral reef habitat with similar sets of conditions as rip currents.
|
|
|
What are fjords?
|
Estuaries formed when glaciers recede.
|
|
|
What are esteros?
|
Estuary-like environments that rarely receive freshwater input in the Gulf of California.
|
|
|
What are long-shore currents?
|
They deposit a sand bar which closes off bar-build estuaries.
|
|
|
What is a salt-sedge estuary?
|
An estuary strongly stratified with sharp demarcation between freshwater and saltwater.
|
|
|
What is stenohaline?
|
An organism that can tolerate little, if any, variation in salinity.
|
|
|
What are osmoregulators?
|
An animal that regulates it's own body osmolarity. Salmon and some eels, for example.
|
|
|
What are osmoconfomers?
|
Animals which match their body osmolarity to that of their environment.
|
|
|
What is photic zone of neritic waters?
|
Primary production is the highest here.
|
|
|
What are the affects of algal blooms?
|
Release of poisons into the water, harboring bacteria that cause cholera, and sore throats and eye irritation.
|
|
|
What is meroplankton?
|
The plantonic zoea larva of a crab, for example.
|
|
|
What are mechanisms used to stay afloat?
|
Having flat shape, storing oil, and using bubbles.
|
|
|
What is myoglobin in red muscle?
|
It is responsible for storing oxygen.
|
|
|
What are tunas?
|
They have stiff fins, a high, narrow tail, and finlets.
|
|
|
What is the shortest known pelagic food chain?
|
Krill to whale, with no middle man.
|
|
|
What is primary productivity?
|
Central gyres do not have this because they lack nutrients.
|
|
|
What is upwelling?
|
In areas with this, the water is rich in nutrients, cold, and fishing is good. It does NOT occur year round.
|
|
|
What are holoplankton?
|
Animals whose entire lives are spent as plankton, pteropod and heteropod mollusks and comb jellies, for example.
|
|
|
What are meroplankton?
|
Animals spending their larval stage as plankton.
|
|
|
What are nekton?
|
Actively swimming organisms, do not spend any of their time as plankton. Oceanic squid, for example.
|
|
|
What is the best location for coral reef growth?
|
Areas with active currents, surge, and waves, which ensures a high concentration of oxygen.
|
|
|
What are sediments?
|
The active environment of coral reefs prevents smothering by this.
|
|
|
What are plankton?
|
These make up corals' diet.
|
|
|
What are hermatypic corals?
|
"Reef-building" corals which contribute significantly to the growth of coral reefs.
|
|
|
What are zooxanthellae?
|
These live in the cells of hermatypic coral, creating a mutualistic relationship.
|
|
|
What is the temperature for optimal reef growth?
|
23-25 degrees Celsius.
|
|
|
What is environment in which coral reefs grow?
|
Nutrient poor waters.
|
|
|
What is nutrient cycling?
|
On the coral reef, this involves the exchange of organic and inorganic compounds between hosts and symbionts.
|
|
|
What are coprophages and decomposers?
|
Rapidly recycle organic particles on coral reefs.
|
|
|
What are the organisms responsible for removal of primary production?
|
Fishes and invertebrates in coral reef environments.
|
|
|
What is a fringing reef?
|
The shores of volcanic islands are colonized by corals that initially form this.
|
|
|
What is a barrier reef?
|
A reef enclosing a subsided island.
|
|
|
What is a lagoon?
|
An area of water separated from an island from a barrier reef.
|
|
|
What is an atoll?
|
A circular reef which occurs when an island subsides and disappears below the surface.
|
|
|
What are the characteristics of an atoll?
|
Famous for high species richness, most species are rare and the communities exhibit low "evenness".
|
|
|
What are stony corals, encrusting algae, and giant clams?
|
Species which make up the physical structure of reefs.
|
