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natural selection
vocabulary
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Charles Darwin | Charles Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist best known for developing the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection. |
| migration | the movement of people, animals, or things from one place to another |
| adaptation | a heritable physical, behavioral, or functional trait that helps an organism survive and reproduce in its environment |
| habitat | the natural environment or place where a plant, animal, or other organism lives, grows, and reproduces |
| natural selection | the evolutionary process where organisms with traits best suited to their environment are more likely to survive, reproduce |
| hypothesis | a proposed, testable, and falsifiable explanation or prediction for an observation, phenomenon, or research question |
| variation | the differences in physical traits, behaviors, or genetic makeup between individual organisms of the same species or across different species |
| species | the most basic unit of classification and the lowest major taxonomic rank in the hierarchy of living organism |
| evolve | to change inherited traits over many generations |
| population | all the members of the same species living in the same area at the same time |
| predator | an animal that hunts and eats other animals |
| prey | an animal that is hunted and eaten by a predator |
| environment | all living and nonliving things around an organism that affect its life |
| evolution | the change in inherited traits of populations over many generations |
| decomposers | organisms such as fungi and many bacteria, that break down dead organisms and waste, returning nutrients to the environment |
| extinction | the permanent disappearance of a species when all its members have died |
| climate | the usual pattern of weather in a place over a long period of time |
| hibernate | to spend a period in a state of greatly reduced activity and energy use |
| biomes | large regions of earth with similar and typical plants and animals |
| fitness | how well an organism survives and reproduces in its environment |