| A | B |
|---|
| ecology | the study of relationships between living organisms and their environment |
| Ecosystem | a community and its abiotic environment |
| Population | a group of organisms of the same species who live in the same area at the same time |
| community | a group of populations living and interacting with each other in an area |
| species | a group of organisms which can interbreed and produce fertile offspring |
| habitat | the environment in which a species normally lives or the location of a living organism |
| autotroph | producer, makes its own food (ex: plants, algae, photosynthetic prokaryotes) |
| heterotrophs | consumers; primary = herbivore, secondary = carnivores that eat herbivores, carnivores = who eat carnivores |
| detrivores | decomposer; eats dead things in dirt (ex: earthworms, beetles) |
| saprotrophs | also decomposers, but the smaller ones (ex: fungi, protozoa, bacteria) |
| Trophic Level | any of the several levels of a food chain, whose species are based on their main nutritional source |
| carrying capacity | the maximum population size that can be supported by the available resources, symbolized by "K" |
| random sample | a sample of species that are spaced in a patternless, unpredictable way |
| Evolution | the process of cummulative change in the heritable characteristics of a population |
