| A | B |
|---|
| trophic level | category of living things by how organism gets energy - 1st has autotrophs, other levels have heterotrophs |
| autotroph | = a producer, an organism that makes own food from Sun's energy and other raw materials |
| heterotroph | = a consumer, an organism that cannot make own food and must feed on other organisms for energy |
| primary consumer | = 2nd trophic level, organism in a food chain that relies directly on autotrophs for its source of energy |
| secondary consumer | = 3rd trophic level, organism that relies on primary consumers as principal source of energy |
| decomposer | organism that feeds on detritus (dead organic matter) |
| food web | representation of the feeding relationships among organisms in ecosystem |
| photosynthesis | process that green plants (and some other organisms) use to make carbohydrates from the energy of the sun and carbon dioxide |
| cellular respiration | process in which cells break down glucose into carbon dioxide, water, and energy (ATP) |
| chemosynthesis | process by which non-photosynthetic autotrophs convert inorganic chemicals into organic compounds without using solar energy |
| chemoautotroph | an organism that can synthesize organic compounds from inorganic chemicals without using the Sun's energy |
| thermodynamics | a scientific study of energy transformations |
| ecological pyramid | a representation of energy flow in food chains and webs |
| biomass | the total dry mass of all living material in an ecosystem |
| pyramid of biomass | graphic representation of the dry mass of tissue in an ecosystem at each trophic level |
| monoculture | cultivation of a single species of plants |
| pyramid of energy | a graph of the amount of energy available at each trophic level |
