| Term | Definition |
| ecology | the study of living things and their environments |
| environment | everything that surrounds a living thing |
| interact | to act upon eachother |
| community | all populations that live in a certain place |
| ecosystem | living and nonliving things in an environment, together with their interactions |
| populations | group of the same kind of organism living in a certain place |
| habitat | place where an organism lives |
| niche | organism's role, or job, in its habitat |
| carrying capacity | largest amount of a population that can be supported by an area |
| limiting factors | conditions in the environment that put limits on where an organism can live |
| range | area where a type of animal or plant population is found |
| cycle | something that happens over and over in the same way |
| nitrogen-fixing bacteria | bacteria that can use nitrogen in soil to make nitrogen compounds |
| consumer | organisms that obtain food by eating other organisms |
| decomposer | organism that breaks down the wastes or remains of other organisms |
| producer | organism that makes its own food |
| scavenger | animal that eats only dead organisms |
| energy pyramid | way of showing how energy moves through a food chain |
| food chain | a chain of organisms in which each link feeds on the one ahead and is eaten by the one behind |
| food web | way of showing how food chains are related |
| climax community | last community in a succession |
| succession | gradual change in organisms that occurs when the environment changes |