AP Biology: Ecosystems flashcards

Question 1

What is the name for a community of organisms together with the nonliving environment they interact with?

Accepted Answer

Ecosystem

Question 2

What do we call a steady state in which organisms and their environment are balanced?

Accepted Answer

Equilibrium

Question 3

What is an ecosystem's ability to stay at equilibrium despite a disturbance called?

Accepted Answer

Resistance

Question 4

What term describes how quickly an ecosystem returns to equilibrium after a disturbance?

Accepted Answer

Resilience

Question 5

What do we call a single linear sequence of who eats whom, from producers upward?

Accepted Answer

A food chain

Question 6

What do we call the network of interconnected food chains in an ecosystem?

Accepted Answer

A food web

Question 7

What is an organism's position in a food chain or food web called?

Accepted Answer

Its trophic level

Question 8

Which trophic level consists of herbivores that eat producers?

Accepted Answer

Primary consumers

Question 9

Which consumers are usually carnivores that eat primary consumers?

Accepted Answer

Secondary consumers

Question 10

Which consumers are carnivores that eat other carnivores?

Accepted Answer

Tertiary consumers

Question 11

Which kind of food web starts with decomposers feeding on dead organic matter?

Accepted Answer

A detrital food web

Question 12

Why do food webs describe ecosystems better than single food chains?

Accepted Answer

They show the many feeding relationships that cross trophic levels.

Question 13

What is the total mass of living or recently living organisms in an area at a trophic level called?

Accepted Answer

Biomass

Question 14

What do we call organisms that make their own food from inorganic carbon?

Accepted Answer

Autotrophs

Question 15

Which organisms make food using energy from inorganic chemicals instead of sunlight?

Accepted Answer

Chemoautotrophs

Question 16

What is the rate at which producers capture energy from sunlight called?

Accepted Answer

Gross primary productivity

Question 17

What is the energy that remains in producers after respiration and heat loss called?

Accepted Answer

Net primary productivity

Question 18

What does trophic level transfer efficiency measure?

Accepted Answer

How efficiently energy moves from one trophic level to the next.

Question 19

Which kind of ecological pyramid is always upright?

Accepted Answer

The pyramid of energy

Question 20

Which two kinds of ecological pyramid can be inverted?

Accepted Answer

Pyramids of numbers and pyramids of biomass

Question 21

What term means the average time a water molecule stays in one reservoir?

Accepted Answer

Residence time

Question 22

What is the term for the part of Earth where water moves and is stored?

Accepted Answer

The hydrosphere

Question 23

What geologic process carries carbon on the ocean floor down into Earth's interior?

Accepted Answer

Subduction

Question 24

What is the largest carbon reservoir, formed from marine organisms' calcium carbonate shells?

Accepted Answer

Limestone

Question 25

Why are fossil fuels called a non-renewable resource?

Accepted Answer

They form far more slowly than people use them.

Question 26

What process converts atmospheric N2 into forms that living things can use?

Accepted Answer

Nitrogen fixation

Question 27

Which bacteria in legume root nodules fix nitrogen?

Accepted Answer

Rhizobium

Question 28

What is the conversion of organic nitrogen waste and dead matter into ammonium called?

Accepted Answer

Ammonification

Question 29

Which process returns nitrogen to the atmosphere as N2 gas?

Accepted Answer

Denitrification

Question 30

In what form does phosphorus mainly occur in the phosphorus cycle?

Accepted Answer

Phosphate ions

Question 31

Which amino acid contains sulfur that forms disulfide bonds shaping proteins?

Accepted Answer

Cysteine

Question 32

What do we call rain that has absorbed sulfur dioxide and become acidic?

Accepted Answer

Acid rain

Question 33

What is the term for an overgrowth of microbes caused by excess nutrients, which depletes oxygen?

Accepted Answer

Eutrophication

Question 34

What do we call an area of water where normal plant and animal life is depleted, often because of eutrophication?

Accepted Answer

A dead zone

AP Biology: Ecosystems flashcards

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