| A | B |
|---|
| organism | any living thing |
| habitat | environment that provides an organism's needs |
| biotic factor | a living part of an organism's habitat |
| abiotic factor | a nonliving part of an organism's habitat |
| photosynthesis | process in which plants use water, carbon dioxide and sunlight to produce sugar |
| species | a group of organisms that are physically similar and can produce offspring |
| population | all the members of one species living in a particular area |
| community | all the different populations that live in a specific area |
| ecosystem | all the organisms and nonliving parts of their environment in a particular area |
| ecology | the study of how living things interact with each other and their environment |
| limiting factor | an environmental factor that causes a population to decrease or remaint the same |
| population density | the number of indivuals in a specific area |
| carrying capacity | largest population an area can support |
| adaptation | a behavior or physically characteristic that allows an organism to survive in its environment |
| competition | struggle between organisms to survive as they attempt to use the same limited resources |
| predator | anorganism that kills another for food |
| prey | an organism that is killed and eaten by another |
| symbiosis | an interaction between two organisms which benefits at least one of them |
| mutualism | a relationship between two species in which they both benefit |
| commensalism | a relationship where one species is helped and the other is not affected |
| parasitism | a relationship in which one organism lives on or inside a host organism and harms it |
| producer | an organism that can make its own food |
| consumer | an organism that feeds on other organisms to obtain energy |
| decomposer | an organism that breaks down wastes and dead organisms |
| food chain | a series of events in which one organism eats another and obtains energy |
| food web | the pattern of overlapping food chains in an ecosystem |
| herbivore | a consumer that only eats plants |
| carnivore | an organism that only eats meat |
| omnivore | an organism that eats both plants and animals |
| scavenger | an organism that feeds on thebodies of dead organisms |
| biodiviersity | the variety of life in the world or in a particular habitat or ecosystem |
| interdependence | the quality or condition in which organisms rely on each other for basic needs |
