| A | B |
|---|
| abiotic | nonliving physical or chemical condition in an environment |
| biodiversity | variety of life on Earth |
| biosphere | part of Earth that living organisms inhabit |
| biotic | any living art of an environment |
| carbon cycle | process by which carbon moves from inorganic to organic compounds and back |
| carnivore | consumer that eats animals or meat |
| consumer | living things that eat, or consume, other living things |
| decomposer | organism that breaks down and absorbs nutrients from dead organisms |
| food chain | a pathway of energy and materials through a community |
| food web | network of all the food chains in an ecosystem |
| herbivore | consumer that eats plants |
| limiting factors | any condition that keeps the size of a population from increasing |
| niche | the job of an organism in the community |
| nitrogen cycle | the reusing of nitrogen in an ecosystem |
| omnivore | consmer that eats both plants and animals |
| parasite/host | an organism that lives in or on another living thing and gets food from it. and organism that provides food for a parasite. |
| population | a group of living things of the same species that live in an area |
| predator/prey | an animal that hunts, kills, and consumes another animal. the animals that the predator eats and kills. |
| primary succession | process by which a community arises in a virtually lifeless area with no soil |
| producer | living things that make, or produce, their own food |
| relationships | the way in which two or more things are connected |
| scavenger | organism that feeds on animal and plant remains that it did not capture |
| secondary succession | a change following a disturbance that damages an existing community but leaves the soil intact |
| symbiosis | interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both |
| trophic level | feeding level in an ecosystem |
| urbanization | the increasing number of people that migrate from rural to urban areas |
| water cycle | the path that water takes through an ecosystem |
