| A | B |
|---|
| community | all the populations of organisms living together within the same area |
| consumers | organisms within a community which cannot make their own food and therefore depend on other organisms for their food |
| decomposer | an organism that obtains energy from dead organisms and waste material |
| food chain | a producer and a series of consumers through which energy is transferred when one individual eats another |
| food web | summary of known food chains in a community |
| herbivores | animals which eat only producers |
| niche | includes all the roles of an organism in the ecosystem |
| photosynthesis | process by which plants and other producers capture the light energy of the sun and transform it into chemical energy in food |
| predator | an organism that catches and eats other organisms |
| prey | living organisms that are caught and eaten by other organisms |
| producers | organisms which make food by the process of photosynthesis |
| trophic level | a feeding level in a food chain |
| carnivore | consumer that eats only animals |
| energy pyramid | compares energy available at each level of the food chain |
| population | made of organisms of one species living together |
| ecosystem | community interacting with the abiotic parts of the environment |
| biosphere | all the parts of Earth where life is found |
| carrying capacity | largest number of individuals an environment can support |
| population density | number of organisms in a certain area |
| symbiosis | close relationship between two different species |
| parasitism | relationship in which two organisms live together and one is benefited and the other is harmed |
| mutualism | a relationship in which two organisms live together and both benefit |
| commensalism | relationship in which two organisms live together and one is benefited and the other is not affected |
| competition | use of the same limited resource by different species |
| biotic factors | living things in the environment |
| abiotic factors | nonliving things in the environment |
| limiting factor | any biotic or abiotic factor that restricts the number of individuals in a population |
| ecology | the study of interactions that take place between organisms and their nonliving environment |
| habitat | the place where an organism lives in a community |
| omnivore | consumers that eat both plants and animals |
| organism | an individual living thing of a certain species |
| population size | number of individuals in a population |
| water cycle | evaporation , condensation, precipitation |
| nitrogen | important material needed by living things to make proteins |
| nitrogen cycle | the transfer of nitrogen from the atmosphere to plants and back |
