| A | B |
|---|
| abiotic | non living |
| biotic | living |
| autotroph | make their own food |
| heterotroph | cannot make own food, must eat other organisms for food |
| atmosphere | the layer of air that surrounds the earth |
| biosphere | the portion of the earth in which all living things exist |
| ecosystem | interaction between all living organisms and the nonliving environment |
| hydrosphere | water, the portion of earth that is water |
| lithosphere | land, the rocky crust of the earth |
| carnivore | eats meat |
| herbivore | eats plants |
| onmivore | eats plants and meat |
| scavengers | feed on dead animals |
| predator | attacks and kills (hunter) |
| prey | what is being hunted |
| producers | another name for autotrophs, organisms that make their own food |
| consumers | another name for heterotrophs |
| decomposers | break down and eat dead and decaying plants and animals; the final consumer in all ecosystems (fungi, bacteria, mushrooms) |
| community | all living organisms within a given place in an enviroment |
| habitat | where an organism lives |
| niche | role (job) of the organism within the environment |
| population | a set species in a community (all the rabbits in the forest behind the school) |
| competition | struggle between organisms |
| food chain | producer-primary consumer-secondary consumer-arrows always point to the thing doing the eating |
| food web | a diagram showing feeding relationships between organisms in an ecosystem |
| primary consumer | eats producers (deer, insects) |
| secondary consumer | eats consumers (fox, eagles) |
| tertiary consumer | eats secondary consumers |
| pyramid of biomass | bottom is producers, top is tertiary consumers; energy is lost as you go up |
| biomagnification | nonbiodegradable; chemical increases as it is taken up the food chain |
| commensalism | a relationship between two organisms where one is helped and one is unaffected |
| mutualism | a relationship between two organisms where both are helped |
| parasitism | a relationship between two organisms where one is helped and the other is harmed |
| symbiosis | a close relationship between two organisms where at least one is helped by the other |
