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Ecology Vocabulary
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| autotrophs | organisms that make their own food; another name for producers |
| heterotrophs | organisms that cannot make their own food; another name for consumers |
| ecosystem | all of the living and nonliving things that interact in an area |
| habitat | the place where an organism lives and that provides the things the organism needs |
| biotic | living part of an ecosystem |
| abiotic | nonliving part of an ecosystem |
| community | all of the different populations that live together in an area |
| population | all of the members of one species in a particular area |
| ecology | the study of how living things interact with each other and their environment |
| limiting factor | an environmental factor that prevents a population from increasing |
| carrying capacity | the largest population that an area can support |
| niche | an organism’s particular role in an ecosystem, or how it makes its living |
| competition | the struggle between organisms for limited resources in a habitat |
| predation | an interaction in which one organism hunts and kills another organism for food |
| prey | an animal that a predator feeds upon |
| symbiosis | a close relationship between two organisms in which at least one organism benefits |
| mutualism | a type of symbiosis in which both organisms benefit |
| commensalism | a type of symbiosis in which one species benefits and the other is neither helped nor harmed |
| parasitism | a symbiotic relationship in which one organism lives in or on another and harms it |
| parasite | an organism that lives in or on a host and causes harm to the host. |
| host | an organism that provides a source of energy or a suitable environment for another organism to live |
| producer | an organism that can make its own food; another name for autotroph |
| consumer | an organism that cannot make its own food; another name for heterotroph |
| herbivore | an animal that eats only plants |
| carnivore | an animal that eats only other animals |
| omnivore | an animal that eats both plants and other animals |
| scavenger | a carnivore that feeds on the bodies of dead animals |
| decomposer | an organism that breaks down large chemicals from dead organisms into small chemicals and returns important materials to the soil and water |
| food chain | a series of events in which one organism eats another |
| food web | the pattern of overlapping food chains in an ecosystem |
| energy pyramid | a diagram that shows the amount of energy that moves from one feeding level to another in a food web |
| 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 | moving out of a population |
| water cycle | the continuous process by which water moves from Earth’s surface to the atmosphere and back |
| native species | species that have naturally evolved in an area |
| exotic species | species that are carried to a new location |
| invasive species | exotic species that have a negative impact on an ecosystem |
Created by:
skrebbeks
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