Question | Answer |
organism | a living thing |
habitat | an environment that provides the things that an organism needs to live,grow,and reproduce |
biotic factor | the living parts of a habitat |
abiotic factor | the nonliving parts of a habitat |
photosynthesis | to make their own food |
species | a group of organisms that are physically similar and can mate with each other and produce offspring that can also mate and reproduce |
population | the members of one species in a particular area |
community | all the different populations that live together in an area |
ecosystem | the community of organisms that live in a particular area, along with their nonliving surroundings |
ecology | the study of how living things interact with each other and the environment |
estimate | an approximation of a number, based on reasonable assumptions |
birth rate | the birth rate of a population is 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 in to a population |
emigration | leaving a population |
population density | the number of individuals in an area of a specific time |
limiting factor | an environmental factor that causes a population to decrease |
carrying capacity | the largest population that an area can support |
natural selection | a characteristic that makes an individual better suited to it's environment may eventually become common in that species through a process called natural selection |
adaptations | the behaviors and physical characteristics that allow organisms to live successfully in their environments |
niche | the role of an organism in it's habitat , or how it makes it's living, is called niche |
competition | the struggle between organisms to survive as they attempt to use the same limited resource |
predation | an interaction in which one organism kills another for food |
predator | the organism that does the killing is the predator |
prey | the organism that is killed is the prey |
symbiosis | symbiosis is a close relationship between two species that benefits at least one of the species |
mutualism | the relationship in which both species benifit is called mutualism |
commensalism | a relationship in which one species benifits and the other species is neither helped nor harmed is called commensalism |
parasitism | involves one organism living on or inside another organism and harming it |
parasite | the organism that benifits is called a parasite |
host | the organism it lives on or in is called a host |
succesion | the series of predictable changes that occur in a community over time |
primary succesion | the series of changes that occur in an area where no soil or organisms exist |
pioneer species | the first species to populate the area are called pioneer species |
secondary succesion | the series of changes that occur in an area where the ecosystem has been disturbed, but where soil and organisms still exist |