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Science ch.1 Ecology
Ecology vocab words
Question | Answer |
---|---|
a living thing | organism |
an environment that provides the things an organism needs to live, grow, and reproduce | habitat |
a living part of an organism's habitat | biotic factor |
a nonliving part of an organism's habitat | abiotic factor |
the process in which organisms use water along with sunlight and carbon dioxide to make their own food | photosynthesis |
a group of organisms that are physically similar and can mate with each other and produce offspring that can also mate and reproduce | species |
all members of one species in a particular area | population |
all the different populations that live together in an area | community |
the community of organisms that live in a particular area, along with their nonliving surroundings | ecosystem |
the study of how living things interact with each other and their environment | ecology |
an approximation of a number, based on reasonable assumptions | estimate |
the number of births in a population in a certain amount of time | birth rate |
the number of deaths in a population in a certain amount of time | death rate |
moving into a population | immigration |
leaving a population | emigration |
the number of individuals in an area of a specific size | population density |
an environmental factor that causes a population to decrease | limiting factor |
the largest population that an area can support | carrying capacity |
a process by which characteristics that make an individual better suited to its environment become more common in a species | natural selection |
a behavior or physical characteristic that allows an organism to live successfully in its environment | adaptations |
the role of an organism in its habitat, or how it makes its living | niche |
the struggle between organisms to survive as they attempt to use to same limited resource | competition |
an interaction in which one organism kills another for food | predation |
the organism that does the killing in a predation interaction | predator |
an organism that is killed and eaten by another organism | prey |
a close relationship between two species that benefits at least one of the species | symbiosis |
a relationship between two species in which both species benefit | mutualism |
a relationship between two species in which one species benefits and the other is neither helped nor harmed | commensalism |
a relationship in which one organism lives on or in a host and harms it | parasitism |
the organism that benefits by living on or in a host in a parasitism interaction | parasite |
the organism that a parasite lives in or on a parasitism interaction | host |
the series of a predictable changes that occur in a community over time | succession |
the series of changes that occur in an area where no soil or organisms exist | primary succession |
the first species to populate an area | pioneer species |
the series of changes that occur in an area where the ecosystem has been disturbed, but where the soil and organisms still exist | secondary succession |