| Term | Definition |
| biotic factor | Any living thing in the environment |
| population | number of individuals of a species living in the same place at the same time |
| biosphere | all parts of Earth inhabited by living organisms |
| niche | job of a species in its environment |
| water cycle | the cycle that includes evaportation, condensation, and precipitation |
| community | all the populations in an ecosyatem |
| ecological | interaction of biotic and abiotic factors |
| food web | series of overlapping food chains |
| habitat | where an organism lives in the ecosystem |
| ecological pyramid | model that compares amount of energy available at each level of a food chain |