Energy Flow

• Metabolism


  Sum total of reactions that happen in an organism's body
• Metabolic rate


  How quickly fuels are broken down to keep an organism's cells running
• Endotherms


  Animals that use and regulate their metabolic heat production to maintain a relatively stable body temperature
• Ectotherms


  Animals that don't use their metabolic heat production to maintain a stable body temperature, and instead change temperature with the temperature of the environment, like lizards
• Basal metabolic rate


  Baseline metabolic rate for endotherms (per gram, or in calories). Taken when the organism is in a more neutral environment
• Standard metabolic rate


  Baseline metabolic rate in ectotherms (per gram, or in calories). Specific to the environment, because it changes with the temperature
• As a general rule, the smaller an endotherm's mass, the higher its metabolic rate per gram of tissue because they have more surface area, and so cool down a lot faster
• Torpor


  State of decreased activity that allows animals to survive in unfavorable conditions and/or conserve energy. Can be used for long periods of time like estivation or hibernation, but can also happen sporadically, like when dormice go into it at the coldest part of the day to conserve energy
• Radiation


  When an organism exchanges heat with its environment through infared radiation, without contact
• Conduction


  When an organism exchanges heat with its environment by directly touching it, like when our skin touches water
• Convection


  Where heat is transferred through movement of a liquid or gas
• Evaporation


  When vaporization of water leads to loss of heat, how people exchange heat with their environments
• Thermoregulation


  When animals keep their bodies at temperatures within the range of livability
• Thermogenesis


  Heat production in endotherms
• Nonshivering thermogenesis


  Mechanism for heat production in animals that involves brown fat instead of movement
• Brown fat


  Brown adipose tissue that contains many mitochondria with special proteins that let them release energy from fuel molecules directly as heat instead of channeling it into ATP formation
• Vasoconstriction


  When your blood vessels get smaller so that they lose less heat to the environment
• Vasodilation


  When your blood vessels get bigger so that they lose more heat to the environment to cool you off
• Concurrent heat exchangers


  When blood vessels holding warmer blood going out transfer it through conduction to colder ones going in, meaning that cold blood doesn't reach the core as easily. See this in animals like the wading crane whose feet are in cold water but the rest of them isn't
• Insulation


  Physical protection from heat loss to the environment; birds use feathers to keep a layer of warm air near them, most mammals have fur, some have blubber, which is super heavy duty and mostly seen in the arctic
• Life history


  The pattern of survival and reproduction events typical for a member of a species (lifecycle)
• Life history strategies


  Collection of life history traits that are well adapted to a species' environment
• Fecundity


  An organism's reproductive capacity, the number of offspring it's capable of producing
• The higher the fecundity of an organism, the less time it's likely to spend on each individual offspring
• Organisms that reproduce early in their life histories tend to live less long, because the energy they put into reproduction is not available for growth
• Semelparity


  When a member of a species only reproduces once in its lifetime and then dies because they used up most of their resources on that one reproductive event
• Iteroparity


  When individuals of a species are capable of reproducing multiple times throughout their lives
• Food web


  Many different intersecting food chains representing different things an organism can eat or be eaten by
• Photoautotrophs


  use energy from sunlight to make organic compounds (sugars) out of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, like plants and algae
• Chemoautotrophs


  Use energy from chemicals to build organic compounds out of CO2 or similar molecules, like in undersea vent communities
• Autotrophs


  Organisms that make their own food, producers. The basis for every ecosystem on earth
• Heterotrophs


  Organisms that get their organic molecules by consuming other organisms or their byproducts, consumers
• Primary producers

  Organisms at the base of the food chain that are autotrophs (usually photosynthetic)
• Primary consumers

  The organisms that eat the primary producers, mostly herbivores, some eat algae
• Secondary consumers

  Carnivorous organisms that eat the primary consumers
• Tertiary consumers

  The carnivorous organisms that eat other carnivorous organisms (the secondary consumers)
• Apex consumers

  Organisms at the very top of the food chain
• Omnivores


  Organisms that eat both plants and animals
• Decomposers


  Organisms that creak down dead material and waste, usually don't appear on food webs or chains
• Detritivores


  Class of decomposers that also consumes debris of organic matter on top of just decomposing matter