| A | B |
|---|
| Biodiversity | the variety of life in a particular habitat or ecosystem |
| Ecosystem | System made up of organisms interacting with each other and with the nonliving parts of that system |
| Biotic Factors | Living parts of an ecosystem |
| Abiotic Factors | Nonliving things in an ecosytem |
| Population | Group of the same type of organism living in the same place at the same time |
| Community | All of the populations living in an area |
| Organism | any single or multicelled organism that has the characteristics of life |
| Keystone Species | a species on which other species in an ecosystem largely depend, such that if it were removed the ecosystem would change drastically |
| Producer/Autotroph | Organism that makes its own food |
| Consumer/Heterotroph | Organism that eats other organisms |
| Decomposer | Breaks down dead organisms or wastes of organisms |
| Scavenger | Animal that feeds on dead or decaying animals that it did not kill |
| Carnivore | Animal that eats the flesh of other animals |
| Herbivore | Animal that feeds on plants |
| Omnivore | Animal that eats both plants and animals |
| Food Chain | Model that shows how energy flows from on organism to another in an ecosystem |
| Food Web | All the interconnecting food chains |
| Detrivore | Organisms that eat decaying plant & animal matter (detritus) |
| Energy Pyamid | a model that shows the flow of energy from one trophic level to the next in an ecosystem |
| Specialist | consumer that eats only one type of organism |
| Generalist | consumer that eats a wide variety of organisms |
| Trophic Level | a level or a position in a food chain or ecological pyramid |
