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Ecology
vocab
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Ecology | the study of all the interactions among organisms and their enviroment |
Abiotic Factor | any nonliving part of the environment, such as water, sunlight, temperature, and air |
Biotic Factor | any living or once living organism in the environment |
Population | all the individuals of one species that live in the same space at the same time |
Community | all the populations of differnet species in a given area that interact in some way and depend on one another for food, shelter, and other needs |
Ecosystem | all of the communities in a given area and abiotic factors that affect them |
Biosphere | part of the Earth that supports life- the top of the Earth's crust, all the waters covering the Earth's surface, and the surrounding atmosphere; includes biomes, ecosystems, communities, and populations |
Population Density | number of individuals in a population that occupies an area of limited space |
Limiting Factor | any biotic factor that limits the number of individuals in a population |
Symbiosis | any close interaction among two or more different species including mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism |
Niche | role of an organism in the ecosystem including what it eats, how it interacts with other organisms, and how it gets its food |
Habitat | place where an organism lives |
Food Chain | model that describes how energy passes from one organism to another |
Food Web | model that describes how energy ,from food, moves through a community; a series of overlapping food chains |
Water Cycle | continuous cycle of water molecules on Earth as they rise into the atmosphere, fall back to Earth's surface as rain or any other precipitation and flow into rivers and oceans through the process of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation |