Biology Review
Terms
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- A nonliving component of an ecosystem, such as air, water, or temperature.
- Abiotic Factor
- The part of an ecosystem where a chemical, such as carbon or nitrogen, accumulates or is stockpiled outside of living organisms.
- Abiotic Reservoir
- The attraction between different kinds of molecules.
- Adhesion
- The relative number of individuals of each age in a population.
- Age Structure
- Confrontational behavior involving a contest waged by threats, displays, or actual combat, which settles disputes over limited resources, such as food or mates.
- Agonistic Behavior
- An alternative version of a gene.
- Allele
- Behavior that reduces an individual\'s fitness while increasing the fitness of another individual.
- Altruism
- The similarity between two species that is due to convergent evolution rather than to descent from a common ancestor with the same trait.
- Analogy
- The region of an aquatic ecosystem beneath the photic zone, where light does not penetrate enough for photosynthesis to take place.
- Aphotic Zone
- Learning that a particular stimulus or response is linked to a reward or punishment; includes classical conditioning and trial-and-error learning.
- Associative Learning
- Natural selection that maintains stable frequencies of two or more phenotypic forms in a population.
- Balancing Selection
- Individually, an action carried out by the muscles or glands under control of the nervous system in response to a stimulus; collectively, the sum of an animal\'s responses to external and internal stimuli.
- Behavior
- The scientific field concerned with behavior in an evolutionary context.
- Behavioral Ecology
- A seafloor, or the bottom of a freshwater lake, pond, river, or stream.
- Benthic Realm
- A two-part, latinized name of a species.
- Binomial
- The variety of living things, encompassing genetic diversity, species diversity, and ecosystem diversity.
- Biodiversity
- The current rapid decline in the variety of life on Earth, largely due to the effects of human culture.
- Biodiversity Crisis
- A small geographic area with an exceptional concentration of endangered and threatened species, especially endemic species (those found nowhere else).
- Biodiversity Hot Spot
- Any of the various chemical circuits that involve both biotic and abiotic components of an ecosystem.
- Biogeochemical Cycle
- The intentional release of a natural enemy to attack a pest population.
- Biological Control
- The accumulation of persistent chemicals in the living tissues of consumers in food chains.
- Biological Magnification
- The amount, or mass, of organic material in an ecosystem.
- Biomass
- Major types of ecological associations that occupy broad geographic regions of land or water and are characterized by organisms adapted to the particular environments.
- Biome
- A living component of a biological community; an organism, or a factor pertaining to one or more organisms.
- Biotic Factor
- Genetic drift resulting from a drastic reduction in population size; typically, the surviving population is no longer genetically representative of the original population.
- Bottleneck Effect
- In a population, the number of individuals that an environment can sustain.
- Carrying Capacity
- A waxy barrier in the walls of endodermal cells in a plant root that prevents water and ions from entering the xylem without crossing one or more cell membranes.
- Casparian Strip
- A process in which positively charged minerals are made available to a plant when hydrogen ions in the soil displace mineral ions from the clay particles.
- Cation Exchange
- A biome dominated by spiny evergreen shrubs adapted to periodic drought and fires; found where cold ocean currents circulate offshore, creating mild, rainy winters and long, hot, dry summers.
- Chaparral
- The use and reuse of chemical elements such as carbon within an ecosystem.
- Chemical Cycling
- In classification, the taxonomic category above order.
- Class
- Describing a dispersion pattern in which individuals are aggregated in patches.
- Clumped
- Evolutionary change in which adaptations in one species act as a selective force on a second species, inducing adaptation that in turn act as a selective force on the first species; mutual influence on the evolution of two different interactive species.
- Coevolution
- The process carried out by an animal\'s nervous system, which includes perceiving, storing, integrating and using information obtained by its sensory receptors.
- Cognition
- A representation within the nervous system of spatial relations among objects in an animal\'s environment.
- Cognitive Map
- The bonding together of like molecules, often by hydrogen bonds.
- Cohesion
- Animal behavior including transmission of, reception of, and response to signals.
- Communication
- An assemblage of all the organisms living together and potentially interacting in a particular area.
- Community
- Decomposing organic material that can be used to add nutrients to soil.
- Compost