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chapter 1
populations and communities
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Organism | A living thing |
| Habitat | An environment that provides the things an organism needs to live, grow, and reproduce |
| Biotic factors | The living parts of a habitat |
| Abiotic factors | The nonliving parts of an organisms habitat |
| Photosynthesis | Plants and algae need water, along with sunlight and carbon dioxide, to make their own food |
| Species | A group of organisms that are physically similar and can mate with each other and produce offspring that can also mate and reproduce |
| Population | All the members of one species in a particular area |
| Community | All the different populations that live together in an area |
| Ecosystem | The community of organisms that live in a particular area, along with their nonliving surroundings. |
| Ecology | The study of how living things interact with each other and their environment |
| Estimate | An approximation of a number, based on reasonable assumptions. |
| Birth Rate | The number of births in a population in a certain amount of time. |
| Death Rate | The number of deaths in a population in a certain amount of time. |
| Immigration | Moving into a population. |
| Emigration | Leaving a population. |
| Population Density | The number of individuals in an area of a specific size. |
| Limiting Factor | An environmental factor that causes a population to decrease. |
| Carrying Capacity | The largest population that an area can support. |
| Natural Selection | A characteristic that makes an individual better suited to its environment may eventually become common in that species through this process |
| Adaptations | The behaviors and physical characteristics that allow organisms to live successfully in their environments. |
| Niche | The role of an organism in its habitat, or how it makes its living |
| Competition | The struggle between organisms to survive as they attempt to use the same limited resource. |
| Predation | An interaction in which one organism kills another for food. |
| Predator | The organism that does the killing. |
| Prey | The organism that is killed. |
| Symbiosis | A close relationship between two species that benefits at least one of the species. |
| Mutualism | A relationship in which both species benefit. |
| Commensalism | A relationship in which one species benefits and the other species is neither helped nor harmed. |
| Parasitism | One organism living on or inside another organism and harming it. |
| Parasite | The organism that benefits (for parasitism) |
| Host | The organism that the parasite lives on or inside. |