| A | B |
|---|
| consumer | animals that eat other animals as food |
| producer | organisms that can make their own food (like plants) |
| autotroph | another name for a plant or producer |
| heterotroph | another name for an animal or consumer |
| decomposer | organism that gets nutrients from dead plants/animals |
| niche | role of an organism in an ecosystem |
| predator | captures, kills and consumes another organism |
| mutualism | both organisms benefit from their association |
| parasitism | one organism benefits, the other is harmed |
| ecosystem | a unit of nature; all of the organisms and the non-living environment found in a place |
| symbiotic/symbiosis | the physical relationship between the two species |
| keystone species | has a disproportionately large effect on its natural environment relative to its abundance |
| biodiversity | the variety of organisms (species) in an ecosystem |
| abiotic factor | nonliving aspects of the environment |
| biotic factor | living aspects of the environment |
| trophic levels | indicate an organism's position in a sequence of energy transfers |
| character displacement | In order for two species within the same area to coexist, they may adapt by developing different specializations |
| levels of organization | Biosphere, ecosystem, community, population, organism |
| primary producers | obtain energy from sunlight |
| competitive exclusion principle | A given habitat may contain many different species, but each species must have a different niche. Two different species cannot occupy the same niche in the same place for very long |
| food chain | ordered lists of who eats whom |
| food web | complex networks of feeding relationships that include decomposers |
| primary consumers | obtain energy from primary producers |
| secondary consumers | obtain energy from primary consumers |
| decomposers | obtain energy from living or dead organic matter (recycling nutrients) |
| autotrophs | produce their own energy using the sun |
| heterotrophs | produce their energy through consumption of organisms |
| chemotrophs | produce their own energy from breaking down chemicals |
| examples of nutrients that are recycled in an ecosystem | carbon, nitrogen, water |
| ecology | the study of how living things interact with each other and with their environment |
| organism | an individual living thing |
