| A | B |
|---|
| biotic factor | living factors in an ecosystem |
| ecosystem | living organisms and the nonliving factors that affect them |
| habitat | the place an organism lives |
| biosphere | all the regions on the planet Earth where life can survive and be found |
| bioenergetics | the study of the flow and transformation of energy in living systems |
| 1st law of bioenergetics | energy can neither be created nor destroyed it can only change form |
| 2nd law of bioenergetics | when energy is transformed the amount of usable energy decreases |
| law of the conservation of energy | 1st law of bioenergetics |
| entropy | the disorder of a system |
| metabolism | all of the chemical reactions in an organism |
| synthesis (anabolism) | chemical reactions that produce new tissue or larger more complex substances in organisms |
| decomposition (catabolism) | chemical reactions that release energy and provide building blocks for organisms |
| ATP | energy carrying molecule that provides cells with energy for immediate use |
| ADP | energy carrying molecule after its energy has been released |
| GTP | energy carrying molecule which contains the nitrogen base guanine |
| UTP | energy carrying molecule which contains the nitrogen base uracil |
| free energy | only form of energy can be used to do work by a living organism |
| chemical energy | type of potential energy is found in covalent bonds |
| nutrients | raw materials needed by an organism to make complex molecules |
| calorie | the amount of heat needed to raise a gram of water from 15°C to 16°C |
| kilocalorie | amount of heat needed to raise 1,000 grams of water from 15°C to 16°C |
| Calorie | unit used to describe amount of heat energy found in food |
| joule | unit of measurement is for heat energy used in the international system |
| heterotrophs | organisms that must obtain their nutritional needs from preformed organic molecules found in the environment |
| autotrophs | organisms that can obtain their nutritional need from simple inorganic molecules found in the environment |
| photosynthesis | process that uses light energy to convert inorganic molecules into organic nutrients |
| cellular respiration | process that releases chemical energy from organic nutrients |
| producers | organisms that provide food for all of the other organisms in an ecosystem |
| consumers | organisms that use plants and /or other organisms as their source of nutrition in an ecosystem |
| decomposers | organisms that return simple inorganic molecules to ecosystem by using dead plants and animals as their source of nutrition |
| food web | the flow of energy and nutrients through the organisms found in an ecosystem |
| abiotic factor | nonliving factors found in an ecosystem |
