| A | B |
|---|
| Organism | a living that obtains food, water, shelter, and other things it needs to live, grow, and reproduce from its environment |
| Habitat | An environment that provides the things the organism needs to live, grow, and reproduce |
| Biotic factors | the living parts of an organism's habitat |
| Abiotic factors | the nonliving parts of an organism's habitat. They include water, sunlight, oxygen, temperature, and soil |
| Photosynthesis | A process in which water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide are combined to make food. |
| Species | a group of organisms that are physically similar and can mate with each other and produce offspring that can also mate and reproduce. |
| Population | all the members of one species in a particular area. |
| Community | all the different populations that live together in an area. |
| Ecosystems | The community of organisms that live in a particular area, along with their nonliving surroundings. |
| Ecology | The study of how living things interact with each other and with their environment. |
| Natural selection | organisms whose unique characteristics are best suited for their environment tend to survive and produce offspring. offspring that inherit these characteristics also live to reproduce. |
| Adaptations | the behaviors and physical characteristics that allow organisms to live successfully in their environments. |
| Niche | The role of an organism, or how it makes its living that includes the type of food the organism eats, how it obtains this food, adn which other organisms use the organism as food, when and how the organism reproduces and the physical conditions it requir |
| Producer | An organism that can make its own food |
| Consumer | An organism that obtains energy by feeding on other organisms |
| herbivores | consumers that eat only plants |
| carnivores | consumers that eat only animals |
| omnivores | consumers that eat both plants and animals |
| scavenger | carnivore that feeds on the bodies of dead organisms |
| decomposers | break down wastes and dead organisms and return the raw materials to the ecosystem |
