Biology key terms

The proportion of an animal's food intake that contributes to useful production, such as an increase in its biomass.

Having enough food to feed a population.

A network of interconnected food chains showing feeding relationships within a community.

The preserved remains or traces of an organism from millions of years ago, found in rock.

All the fossil evidence discovered, providing a record of organisms that lived in the past.

A part of a whole, written as one number divided by another.

The number of times a value, category or class interval occurs.

Frequency per unit of class width, calculated by dividing frequency by class width.

A graphical display showing how frequently values, categories or groups occur.

A table that lists values, categories or class intervals alongside the number of observations in each.

Follicle-stimulating hormone; a pituitary hormone that stimulates an ovarian follicle containing an egg to mature.

A hormone that stimulates a follicle containing an egg to develop in an ovary.

A substance containing stored chemical energy that can be transferred during respiration; glucose is a common example.

A process within an organism that helps it survive.

A scanning method that maps changes in blood flow while a person carries out a task, providing indirect evidence about which brain areas are active.

A small reproductive particle produced by a fungus that can disperse and, if it reaches a suitable host, start a new infection.

A chemical treatment used to kill or inhibit fungi.

A pathogen that can cause disease in plants or animals and may reproduce by producing spores.

A knobbly swelling formed by abnormal, disorganised growth of plant tissue.

A reproductive cell that can join with another gamete during fertilisation.

The production of a gas, which can be followed by counting bubbles or measuring the volume collected.

A section of DNA that contains instructions for making a particular protein.

The use of a gene’s instructions to produce its protein.

The movement of alleles between populations when their members interbreed.

All the different alleles present in a population.

A horizontal level in a pedigree containing family members at the same stage of descent, such as parents or their children.

The switching on or off of genes, which controls which proteins a cell makes.