| A | B |
|---|
| herbivore | eats only plants |
| carnivore | eats only animals |
| omnivore | eats both plants & animals |
| consumer and heterotroph | an organism that cannot make it own food and feeds on other organisms |
| producer and autotroph | an organism that uses light energy or energy stored in chemical compounds to make energy-rich compounds |
| food web | the model that shows all the possible feeding relationships at each trophic levels |
| food chain | model that links organisms by their feeding relationships |
| population | a group of organisms, all of the same species, which interbreed and live in the same area at the same time |
| community | a group of interacting populations in a certain area at a certain time |
| ecosystem | a biological community and the community abiotic factors |
| biome | regional or global ecosystems characterized by climate and species found there |
| detritivore | eats dead organic matter |
| decomposer | returns dead and decaying plants and animals into simpler molecules that can be more easily absorbed |
| biodiversity | the variety of living things in an ecosystem |
| generalist | eats many types of food |
| specialist | eats one or very few types of food |
| biotic | living things in an ecosystem |
| abiotic | nonliving things in an ecosystem |
| keystone species | a species very important to its ecosystem |
| ecology | the study of interactions among living things & their surroundings |
| biosphere | the portion of the Earth that supports living things |
| biogeochemical cycle | movement of a chemical through the biological and geological, or living and nonliving, parts of the ecosystem |
| biomass | total dry mass of all organisms in a given area |
| chemosynthesis | process by which ATP is synthesized by using chemicals as an energy source instead of light |
| hydrologic cycle | pathway of water from the atmosphere to Earth's surface, below ground, and back |
| nitrogen fixation | process by which cetain types of bacteria convert gaseous nitrogen into nitrogen compounds |
| carbon cycle` | cycle that shows the movement of carbon through the abiotic and biotic parts of the earth |
| autotroph or producer | an organism that uses light energy or energy stored in energy chemical compounds to make energy-rich compounds |
| heterotrophs | an organism that cannot make its own food and feeds on other organisms |
| oxygen cycle | The cycle that includes photosynthesis and respiration and returns oxygen to the atmosphere |
| trophic level | a feeding step in a food chain |
| biomass | the total weight of living matter at each trophic level |
| pyramid of biomass | the total DRY weight of living material available at each trophic level |
| pyramid of energy | represents the amount of energy available at each trophic level |
| 10% | the amount of energy that is available for each new trophic level |
