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Ecosystems
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Organism | Living things. |
| Habitat | An environment that provides the things a specific organism needs to live, grow and reproduce |
| Biotic factor | Parts of a habitat that are or were once alive and that interact with an organism |
| Abiotic factor | Nonliving parts of an organisms habitat |
| Species | Group of organisms that can mate with each other and produce offsprings that can also mate and reproduce |
| Population | Members of one species living in a particular area |
| Community | All different populations that live together in a area |
| Ecosystem | the community of organisms that lives in a particular area along with the nonliving environment make a ecosystem |
| Ecology | The study of how organisms interact with each other and with their environment |
| Producer | Organism that can make its own food |
| Consumer | Feeds on other organisms |
| Decomposers | Break down biotic waste and organism, returning the materials to the ecosystem |
| Population density | measures the average number of people per unit of land area |
| Limiting factor | any resource or environmental condition that restricts the growth, abundance, or distribution of an organism or a population within an ecosystem |
| Carrying capacity | the maximum population size of a species that a specific environment can sustainably support over the long term without degrading the habitat |
| Food web | Consist of many overlapping food chains in an ecosystem |
| Food chain | Series of events in which one organism eats another and obtains energy and nutrients |
| Energy pyramid | Shows the amount of energy that moves from one feeding level to another in a food web |
| Photosynthesis | The set of chemical reactions plants use to turn light, water , and nutrients into oxygen and energy in form of sugars |
| Chlorophyll | Absorbs light much like cells in solar panels do |
| Autotroph | Organism that makes its own food |
| Heterotroph | Has to get its food from a source can’t make on its own |