Ecology and the Biosphere

Recall cards on ecology and the biosphere: the scope of ecology and its four levels of organization (organism, population, community, and ecosystem), species interactions, and mutualism; biogeography, endemic versus generalist species, and the abiotic factors (light, temperature, water, inorganic nutrients, oxygen, wind, and fire) that shape where organisms live, including lake turnover, upwelling, migration, torpor, and net primary productivity; the terrestrial biomes (tropical wet forest, savanna, subtropical desert, chaparral, temperate grassland, temperate forest, boreal forest, and Arctic tundra) with their climate, vegetation, and soils; the aquatic biomes (ocean zones, coral reefs and bleaching, estuaries, lakes and ponds, rivers and streams, and wetlands); and climate versus weather, the ice-core record, Milankovitch cycles, the greenhouse effect and greenhouse gases, the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane and clathrate feedback, glacier and ice loss, sea-level rise, and phenology shifts.