Organism
A living thing.
Habitat
An environment that provides all the things an organism needs to live, grow, and reproduce.
Biotic Factor
A living part of an organism's habitat.
Abiotic Factor
A nonliving part of an organism's habitat
Photosynthesis
The process in which plants make their own food using sunlight
Species
A group of organisms that are physically similar and can produce offspring.
Population
All the members of one species in a particular area.
Community
All the different populations that live in a particular area.
Ecosystem
All the organisms and the nonliving parts of their environment in a particular area.
Ecology
the study of how living things interact with each other and their environment.
Adaptation
A behavior or physical characteristic that allows an organism to live successfully in its environment
Competition
A struggle between organisms to survive as they attempt to use the same limited resource.
Predator
An organism that kills another for food (obtains energy by feeding on other organisms)
Symbiosis
An interaction between two organisms which benefits at least one.
Mutualism
A relationship between two species in which both species benefit.
Commensalism
A relationship between two species in which one species is helped while the other is neither harmed nor helped.
Parasitism
a relationship in which one organism lives on or inside the host organism and harms it.
Producer
An organism that can make its own food.
Consumer
An organism that feeds on other organisms to obtain energy.
Decomposer
An organism that breaks down wastes and dead organisms and returns raw materials to the ecosystem.
Food Chain
A series of events in which one organism eats another and obtains energy.
Food Web
The pattern of overlapping food chains in an ecosystem.
Herbivore
A consumer that only eats plants.
Carnivore
A consumer that only eats meat.
Omnivores
A consumers that eats both plants and animals.
Scavenger
A carnivore that feeds on the bodies of dead organisms
Biome
A group of ecosystems with similar climates and organisms. A biome is determined by its climate. (Temperature and precipitation.)
Terrestrial biomes
land biomes. Examples are: rain forest, desert, grassland, deciduous forest, boreal forest and tundra.
Aquatic biomes
water biomes. Examples are: freshwater ecosystems like streams, rivers, lakes and ponds and marine saltwater ecosystems like open ocean, intertidal zones, and estuaries.