prairie

(noun)

an extensive area of relatively flat grassland with few, if any, trees, especially in North America

Related Terms

  • steppe

Examples of prairie in the following topics:

  • Temperate Grasslands

    • Temperate grasslands are found throughout central North America, where they are also known as prairies, and within Eurasia, where they are known as steppes .
    • The dominant vegetation tends to consist of grasses; some prairies sustain populations of grazing animals .
    • The American bison (Bison bison), more commonly called the buffalo, is a grazing mammal that once populated American prairies in huge numbers.
  • Types of Biodiversity

    • An example of a largely-extinct ecosystem in North America is the prairie ecosystem.
    • Prairies once spanned central North America from the boreal forest in northern Canada down into Mexico.
    • The variety of ecosystems on earth, from (a) coral reef to (b) prairie, enables a great diversity of species to exist.
  • Simple Learned Behaviors

    • Prairie dogs typically sound an alarm call when threatened by a predator, but they become habituated to the sound of human footsteps when no harm is associated with this sound; therefore, they no longer respond to them with an alarm call.
  • The Fossil Record and the Evolution of the Modern Horse

    • The series of fossils tracks the change in anatomy resulting from a gradual drying trend that changed the landscape from a forested habitat to a prairie habitat.
    • One of the trends, depicted here, is the evolutionary tracking of a drying climate and increase in prairie versus forest habitat reflected in forms that are more adapted to grazing and predator escape through running.
  • Biogeography

    • Moving farther north, you would see that deserts are replaced by grasslands or prairies.
Subjects
  • Accounting
  • Algebra
  • Art History
  • Biology
  • Business
  • Calculus
  • Chemistry
  • Communications
  • Economics
  • Finance
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • Microbiology
  • Physics
  • Physiology
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  • Sociology
  • Statistics
  • U.S. History
  • World History
  • Writing

Except where noted, content and user contributions on this site are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 with attribution required.