| A | B |
|---|
| Producers | organisms that make their own food |
| Photosynthesis | the process in which plants make their own food which involves using water carbon dioxide and sunlight to make glucose and oxygen |
| Chlorophyll | the green pigment in plants that trap sunlight for photosynthesis |
| Glucose | the sugar that plants produce during photosynthesis |
| Consumers | organisms that must eat in order to obtain energy |
| Primary consumers | organisms that eat plants directly |
| Secondary consumers | organisms that eat animals that eat plants |
| Herbivores | animals that eat only plants |
| Carnivores | animals that eat only meat |
| Omnivores | animals that eat both plants and animals |
| Scavengers | animals that eat the carcasses of other dead animals such as a vulture |
| Food chain | a diagram that shows the flow of energy from the sun to the producers and to the consumers |
| Food web | a diagram that shows overlapping and interconnected food chains |
| Decomposers | organisms that obtain energy from breaking down dead organisms such as bacteria fungi and worms |
| Nitrogen cycle | the way that nitrogen is passed around between plants animals and nonliving parts of an ecosystem |
| Carbon cycle | the way that carbon is passed around between plants animals and nonliving parts of an ecosystem |
| Composting | using decomposers to break down dead organic material for good soil in a pile or container |
| Energy pyramid | a diagram that is large on the bottom with producers and gets smaller as it goes up with the consumers to show the loss of energy from one trophic level to the next |
| Trophic level | a level on the energy pyramid that represents organisms and what they eat |
| 10% rule | states that as organisms move up the energy pyramid only 10% of the energy is passed along at each level |
| Biomass | the biological material derived from living or recently living organisms |
