Unit 5: Ecosystems Vocab Review

What is an abiotic factor?

• A living part of the environment

• A nonliving part of an organism's habitat

• An organism that obtains energy by eating animals

• A process that releases energy by breaking down glucose

What is cellular respiration?

• A process that releases energy by breaking down glucose in the presence of oxygen

• A diagram that shows the amount of energy that moves from one feeding level to another

• A series of events in an ecosystem where organisms transfer energy

• The pattern of overlapping feeding relationships in an ecosystem

What is the role of a decomposer in an ecosystem?

• To obtain energy by eating only plants

• To break down wastes and dead organisms

• To obtain energy by feeding on other organisms

• To show the amount of energy that moves from one feeding level to another

What does the Law of Conservation of Energy state?

• Energy can be created and destroyed

• Energy cannot be created or destroyed

• Matter is created and destroyed in chemical changes

• Energy is only transferred in food chains

What is an energy pyramid?

• A diagram that shows the amount of energy that moves from one feeding level to another in a food web

• A series of events in an ecosystem where organisms transfer energy

• The pattern of overlapping feeding relationships in an ecosystem

• A process that releases energy by breaking down glucose

What is nitrogen fixation?

• The process of converting nitrogen gas into ammonia

• The process that bacteria perform to change free nitrogen into a usable form of nitrogen

• The process of plants absorbing nitrogen from the soil

• The process of nitrogen being released into the atmosphere

What is an omnivore?

• An organism that only eats plants

• An organism that only eats animals

• An organism that obtains energy by eating both plants and animals

• An organism that makes its own food

What is a producer in an ecosystem?

• An organism that feeds on dead organisms

• An organism that makes its own food

• An organism that eats both plants and animals

• An organism that belongs to the same species

What is the role of decomposers in the carbon cycle?

• They produce carbon dioxide through photosynthesis

• They break down dead organisms, releasing CO2 into the soil

• They consume carbon compounds from plants

• They convert CO2 into oxygen

What is population density?

• The number of individuals in a population

• The number of individuals per unit area

• The number of species in an ecosystem

• The number of organisms that can make their own food