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01 Ecology Terms
Vocabulary for Ecology unit in Advanced Life Science; Corner Lake Middle School
Term | Definition |
---|---|
abiotic | An environmental factor that is not associated with the activities of living organisms |
biogeochemical cycle | |
biotic | A living thing; anything that can carry out life processes independently |
carbon cycle | The movement of carbon from the nonliving environment into living things and back. |
commensalism | A relationship between two organisms in which one organism benefits and the other is unaffected. |
competition | Ecological relationship in which two or more organisms depend on the same limited source. |
consumer | An organism that eats other organisms or organic matter. |
decomposer | An organism that gets energy by breaking down the remains of dead organisms or animal wastes and consuming or absorbing the nutrients. |
ecology | The study of interactions of living organisms with one another and their environment. |
ecosystem | A community of organisms and their abiotic, or nonliving environment. |
energy pyramid | A triangular diagram that shows an ecosystem’s loss of energy, which results as energy passes through the ecosystem’s food chain; each row in the pyramid represent a trophic feeding level in an ecosystem, and the area of a row represent the energy that i |
food chain | The pathway of energy transfer through various stages as a result of the feeding patterns of a series of organisms. |
food web | A diagram that shows the feeding relationships between organisms in an environment. |
limiting factor | An environmental factor that tends to limit population size. |
mutualism | A relationship between two species in which both species benefit. |
parasite | |
parasitism | A relationship between two species in which one species, the parasite, benefits from the other species, the host, which is harmed. |
predation | |
predator | |
prey | |
primary consumer | |
producer | |
secondary consumer | |
symbiosis | |
tertiary consumer | |
trophic level | |
water cycle | |
organism | A living thing; anything that can carry out life processes independently |