| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Biosphere | Part of the earth that supports organisms, is the highest level of biological organization, and is made up of all the earth's ecosystems. |
| Ecology | the study of the interactions that take place among organisms and between organisms and the physical features of the environment. |
| Abiotic Factor | All the nonliving, physical features of the environment, including light, souil, water and temperature and that help determine which species can survive in an area. |
| Biotic Factor | Living or once-living organisms in the environment. |
| Community | Consists of groups of populations that interact with each other in a given area and depend of each other for food, shelter, and for other needs. |
| Ecosystem | Consists of biotic community and the abiotic factors that affect it. |
| Population Density | Size of a population that takes up a specific area at a given time. |
| Limiting Factor | Any biotic or abiotic factor that restricts the number of individuals in a population. |
| Carrying Capacity | Largest Number of individuals an enviroment can support and maintain over a long period of time. |
| Symbiosis | Any close relationship between two or more different species. |
| Habitat | Physical location where an organism lives. |
| Niche | Role of an organism in the ecosystem, including what it eats, how it interacts with other organisms, and how it gets its food. |
| Food Chain | Model that describes the feeding relationships in a community, usually has three or four links, and shows how energy in the form of food passes from one organism to another. |
| Food Web | Model used to describe a series of overlapping food chains and that shows the many organisms that feed on more than one level in an ecosystem. |
| Ecological Pyramid | Model used to describe the transfer of energy from the producers of an ecosystem through successive levels of organisms in the food chain. |
| Water Cycle | Constant journey of water molecules on Earth as they rise into the atmosphere, fall to land or the ocean as rain or snow, and flow into rivers and oceans through the processes of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. |
| Nitrogen Cycle | Transfer of nitrogen from the atmosphere to plants and back to the atmosphere or directly into plants again. |
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