Artificial selection
Artificial selection is human-directed breeding in which plants, animals, or other organisms are chosen as parents because they carry traits people want to increase in future generations.
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Biology Topics
Browse Qlopedia topics grouped under Biology.
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Topics
Population genetics
Population genetics studies how genetic variation is distributed in populations and how allele frequencies change through mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, gene flow, and nonrandom mating.
Genetic drift
Genetic drift is evolutionary change caused by chance shifts in allele frequencies. It is strongest in small populations and can reduce genetic variation without making a population better adapted.
Speciation
Speciation is the evolutionary process by which populations become separate species, usually as reproductive isolation builds and gene flow between them is reduced or stopped.
Natural selection
Natural selection is an evolutionary process in which heritable traits become more or less common because they affect survival and reproduction in a particular environment.
Osmosis
Osmosis is the movement of water across a selectively permeable membrane toward the side with more dissolved solutes. It helps explain cell shape, plant turgor, kidney function, and reverse-osmosis water treatment.
Chloroplast
A chloroplast is a photosynthetic organelle in plants and algae. It captures light energy, uses it to make energy-rich molecules, and supports the carbon-fixing chemistry that helps build sugars.
Mitochondria
Mitochondria are double-membrane organelles in eukaryotic cells that help convert energy from food into ATP while also supporting metabolism, signaling, calcium balance, and cell stress responses.
Cellular respiration
Cellular respiration is the set of metabolic pathways cells use to transfer energy from food molecules into ATP, the small molecule that powers much of cell work.
Lichen
A lichen is a living partnership built mostly from fungi and photosynthetic algae or cyanobacteria. Lichens grow on bark, rock, soil, and exposed surfaces, and many are useful indicators of environmental conditions.
Mycorrhizal fungi
Mycorrhizal fungi live in partnership with plant roots, trading soil nutrients and water access for carbon from photosynthesis. These underground relationships shape plant growth, soil health, forests, farms, and ecosystem resilience.
Ecological succession
Ecological succession is the gradual change in species and ecosystem structure after new habitat forms or after disturbance reshapes an existing community.
Food web
A food web is a network of feeding relationships in an ecosystem. It shows how energy and matter move among producers, consumers, decomposers, predators, prey, parasites, scavengers, and detritus pathways rather than through a single simple food chain.
Pollinators
Pollinators are animals that move pollen between flowers, helping many plants make seeds and fruit. Bees, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, birds, bats, and other animals support wild ecosystems, farms, gardens, and much of the food people enjoy.
Invasive species
Invasive species are nonnative organisms that spread and can harm ecosystems, economies, or human health. They may be plants, animals, fungi, microbes, parasites, or diseases, and they often become difficult to control once established.
Habitat fragmentation
Habitat fragmentation happens when continuous habitat is broken into smaller, more isolated patches. It can limit movement, shrink populations, increase edge effects, reduce genetic exchange, and make species more vulnerable unless landscapes keep enough connected habitat.
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the variety of life, from genetic differences within species to the many species and ecosystems on Earth. It supports food, clean water, medicine, climate resilience, culture, and the ecological processes that make human and nonhuman life possible.
Tiger
Tigers are large solitary cats whose striped coats, powerful bodies, hunting behavior, and endangered status make them central to forest conservation across Asia.
The Serengeti
The Serengeti is the great savanna ecosystem of northern Tanzania and southwestern Kenya, famous for seasonal wildlife migration and for the way grass, rain, fire, predators, people, and conservation shape a living landscape.
Rabbit
Rabbits are small lagomorph mammals known for powerful hind legs, fast breeding, plant-based diets, and a long history as wild animals, domestic animals, and ecological actors.
Photosynthesis
Photosynthesis is the process that uses light energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars while releasing oxygen. It powers plants, algae, many microbes, food webs, oxygen in the atmosphere, and part of Earth?s carbon cycle, making it one of the most important biological processes on the planet.
Madagascar
Madagascar is the large island nation off southeastern Africa whose long isolation, varied habitats, Malagasy societies, endemic species, and conservation challenges make it one of Earth's most distinctive living laboratories of evolution and culture.
Lion
Lions are large cats known for social prides, powerful hunting, male manes, loud roars, and conservation challenges across African and Asian landscapes.
Keystone species
A keystone species is a species whose effect on an ecosystem is unusually large compared with its abundance, so changes to its population can reshape food webs, habitats, and biodiversity.