| A | B |
|---|
| abiotic | nonliving parts of the environment |
| autotroph | an organism that produces its own food |
| biodiversity | the variety of species in an area |
| biotic | the living parts of the environment |
| carnivore | an organismthat survives by eating animals |
| carrying capacity | the largest population of any single species that an area can support |
| community | a combination of all the different populations |
| competition | the struggle between organisms for the same limited resources in a particular area |
| consumer | an organism that obtains its energy from producers |
| decomposer | an organism that consumes dead organisms and organic wastes |
| ecological niche | the specific role played by an organism or a population of organisms in the ecosystem |
| ecological succession | the process by which an existing community is replaced by another community |
| ecology | the study of how living things interact with one another and with their environment |
| ecosystem | all the living and nonliving things that interact in a specific area |
| energy pyramid | a diagram showing how food energy moves through the ecosystem |
| biosphere | all the Earth's ecosystem, collectively; the biologically inhabited portions of Earth, including all of the water, land and air in which organisms survive |
| environment | every living and nonliving thing that surrounds an organism |
| finite | limited;able to be used up |
| food chain | a representation that identifies the specific feeding relationships among organisms |
| food web | a representation of many interconnected food chains that shows the feeding relationships among producers, consumers, and decomposers |
| habitat | the place where an animal or plant lives |
| herbivore | an organism that eats only plants |
| heterotroph | organism that cannot make its own food; a consumer |
| host | the organism in a parasitic relationship that provides a home and /orfood for the parasite |
| limiting factors | any factor in the environment that limits the size of a population |
| parasite | an organism that survives by living and feeding on other organisms |
| population | all the individuals of a single species that live in a specific area |
| predator | an animal that hunts and kills other animalsfor foods |
| prey | an animal that is hunted and killed by predators |
| producer | an organism that makes its own food from light energy and inorganic materials |
| scavenger | a carnivore that feeds on the bodies of dead organisms |
