Ecology

Ecology

Industry: Biology

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Ecology

Magnetic declination

Biology; Ecology

The difference in angle between true north and magnetic north, or true south and magnetic south. The poles occasionally switch, also, which last happened 780,000 years ago.

Green algae

Biology; Ecology

A common (more than 7,000 species) algae, especially in estuaries, with nucleated cells and chloroplasts that make food from sunlight. The "higher" plants evolved from it.

Ecosystem, pulsing

Biology; Ecology

Howard Odum's hypothesis that ecosystems change not only gradually, but in the unpredictable starts, fits, and "pulses" characteristic of systems subject to chaos dynamics.

Genetically modified food crops (GM)

Biology; Ecology

Most Americans do not realise that eating processed food almost always means eating something genetically altered, in part because the foods are not normally labelled as such.

Scrapie

Biology; Ecology

A fatal degenerative disease that destroys the nervous systems of sheep and goats. Named after the infected sheep's habit of scraping its itchy skin against trees and bushes.

Richter scale

Biology; Ecology

An obsolete logarithmic scale of 1-10 that measures earthquake magnitude (but not its felt intensity). Created in California by Charles Richter. See Moment Magnitude Scale.

Polyp

Biology; Ecology

A coelenterate (corals, sea anemones, jellyfishes, and hydroids) with a hollow cylindrical body anchored at one end and open at the other, where a mouth is fed by tentacles.