| Term | Definition |
|---|
| ecosystem | A community and its physical environment together |
| biome | a large scale ecosystem |
| community | all the populations of organisms living in the same environment |
| habitat | a place in an ecosystem where a population lives |
| niche | the role each population has in its habitat |
| consumer | an organism in a community that must eat to get the energy it needs |
| decomposer | a consumer that breaks down the tissues of a dead organism |
| producer | a organism that makes its own food |
| food web | shows the interaction among many different food chains in a single ecosystem |
| food chain | the way in which the organisms in an ecosystem interact with one another according to what they eat, eating the organisms below it |
| symbiosis | a long term relationship between different kinds of organism |
| grassland | A biome's whose main plants are grasses. |
| coniferous forests | Mountainside forests with tall, narrow trees that grow close together and have thick bark. |
| tundra | A treeless biome between the icecap and the tree line of Arctic regions, having permanently frozen subsoil. |
| biotic | Of or having to do with life or living organisms or produced or caused by living organisms. |
| abiotic | Nonliving |
| predator | An organism that lives by preying on other organisms. |
| organism | An individual form of life, such as a plant, animal, bacterium. |
| marine | of or relating to the sea |
| freshwater | Of, relating to, living in, or consisting of water that is not salty |
| mountain | a landform higher than a thousand feet |
| desert | A barren biome with less than 10 inches of precipitation each year with little rainfall, extreme temperatures, and sparse vegetation. |
| individual | a single organism in an environment |
| population | all the individuals of the same kind, living in the same environment |
| herbivore | an animal that eats only plants as food |
| carnivore | an animal that eats other animals as food |
| omnivore | an animal that eats both plants and animals as food |
| prey | an animal that is hunted, killed and eaten by a predator animal |
| energy pyramid | shows the amount of energy that is available to pass from one level of the food chain to the next |
| endangered species | a population of organisms that is likely to become extinct if steps are not take to save it |
| extinct | no longer in existence |
| overpopulation | a situation in which too many animals compete for the natural resources in an area |
| tropical rain forest | a biome with lots of rainfall, sun light, trees and warm temperatures |
| deciduous forest | a biome based on trees that lose their leaves each fall |
| taiga | a biome made up mostly of needle-leaved evergreens, due to long winters and cold temperatures |
| compotition | The demand by two or more organisms for limited environmental resources, such as nutrients, living space, or light |
| instict | A behavior that an organism inherits. |
| learned behavior | a behavior an animal learns from its parents |
| threatened | describes a population of organisms that are likely to become endangered if they are not protected |
| interdependent | depending on each other |
| types and numbers of plants | determines the types and numbers of animals in an ecosystem |
| population decline | a situation in which the number of organisms decreases due to natural and unnatural causes |
| human activity | the most common cause for population decline |
| ten percent | the amount of energy passed from one level of a food chain to another |
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