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| Ecology | The study of the interactions of living organisms with one another, and with their physical environment. |
| Habitat | The place where a particular population of species lives. |
| Community | The many species that live together in a habitat. |
| Species Diversity or Diversity | The number of species living within an ecosystem. |
| Succession | The regular progression of species replacement. |
| Primary Succession | When succession occurs on land where nothing has grown before. |
| Secondary Succession | When succession occurs in areas where there has been previous growth, such as abandoned fields or forest clearing. |
| Primary Productivity | The amount of organic material that the photosynthetic organisms of an ecosystem produce. |
| Producers | The organisms that first capture energy, including plants, some kind of bacteria, and algae. |
| Consumers | All other organisms in an ecosystem, which obtain the energy to build there molecules by consuming plants or other organisms. |
| Trophic Level | A group of organisms that have the same source of energy; a step in the food chain. |
| Herbivores | Animals that eat plants. |
| Carnivores | Secondary-consumers, animals that eat herbivores (flesh eating) |
| Omnivores | Animals that eat both plants and animals. |
| Detritivores | Include fungal and bacterial decomposers, vultures, and worms, obtain there energy from dead bodies and organic wastes produced at all tropic levels. |
| Decomposers | Include Bacteria and fungi, organisms that decay. |
| Food Chain | A path of energy through the tropic levels of an ecosystem. |
| Biomass | The dry weight of tissue and other organic matter. |
| Ground Water | Water retained beneath the surface of the earth. |
| Nitrogen Fixation | The process of combining nitrogen gas with hydrogen to form ammonia. |
| Food Web | A complicated interconnected path of energy. |
| Ecosystem | A community and all the physical aspects of its habitat. |
