| A | B |
|---|
| abiotic factor | a non-living part of an organism's habitat |
| biotic factor | a living part of an organism's habitat |
| ecology | the study of how organisms interact with their environment |
| community | all the different populations that live together in an area |
| population | all members of one species in a particular area |
| carrying capacity | the largest population that an area can support |
| limiting factors | an environmental factor that prevents a population from increasing |
| immigration | joining a population |
| emigration | leaving a population |
| commensalism | a close relationship in which one species benefits and the other species in not affected |
| predation | an interaction where one organism kills another for food |
| niche | an organism's role in an ecosystem |
| mutualism | a symbiotic relationship in which both species benefit |
| competition | the struggle between organisms to survive as they attempt to use the same limited resources |
| succession | a series of predictable changes that occur over an area over time |
| primary succession | a series of changes that occur in an area where no soil or organisms exist |
| secondary succession | the series of changes that occur in an area where the ecosystem has be disturbed, but the soil & organisms still exist |
| carnivore | a consumer that only eats animals |
| herbivore | a consumer that only eats plants |
| omnivore | a consumer that eats both plants & animals |
| decomposer | an organism that breaks down chemicals from wastes & dead organisms, returning the nutrients to the soil & water |
| scavenger | a carnivore that eats off of the bodies of dead organisms |
| energy pyramid | a diagram that shows the amount of energy that moves from one feeding level to another |
| food web | the pattern of overlapping food chains in an ecosystem |
| food chain | a series of events in which one organism eats another to obtain energy |
