| Term | Definition |
|---|
| ecosystem | all the living and nonlinving things in an area |
| abiotic factor | all the nonliving parts of an ecosystem |
| biotic factor | living parts of an ecosystem |
| population | all the organisms of a species living in the same area |
| ecology | the study of how all things in an ecosystem interact |
| community | all the populations living in an area |
| habitat | place where an organism lives |
| niche | the role of an organism within its natural environment that determines its relations with other organisms and ensures its survival |
| food chain | the path every takes from producers to consumers to decomposers - describes the feeding relationship in an ecosystem |
| food web | show energy's relationships between all of the species in a community; map of overlapping food chains |
| herbivore | eat producers; eat plants |
| carnivore | eat meat |
| ominivore | animals that eat both plants and animals |
| predator | hunts other living things for food |
| prey | hunted for food |
| scavenger | don't hunt; feed on the remains of dead animals |
| producers | any of the plants and algae that use the sun's energy to produce (photosynthesis) oxygen and food that animals need |
| consumers | organisms that cannot make their own food; get evergy from the food made by other organisms |
| decomposers | break down dead matter into substances that can be used by producers |
| threatened | likely to become extinct; describes an organism or species that is in danger of becoming extinct |
| endangered | a species whose numbers are so few, or are declining so quickly, that the animal, plant, or other organism may soon become extinct |
| extinct | having died out or ceased to exist; having no members of the species living |
| evaporation | process in which a liquid changes into a gas |
| condensation | process in which a gas changes into a liquid |
| precipitation | any form of water particles (rain, sleet, snow, or hail) that falls to the Earth |
| Water Cycle | continuous movement of water between Earth's surface and the air, changing from liquid to gas to liquid |
| Carbon Cycle | continuous transfer of carbon between the atmosphere and living things |
| Nitrogen Cycle | continuous movement of nitrogen between air, soil, plants, and animals |
| pollutants | something that adds harmful substances to Earth's land, water or air |
| biome | large ecosystems with its own climate, soil, plants and animals; found in different parts of the world |
| grasslands | biome where grasses are the main plant life, rainfall is irregular and not usually plentiful |
| taiga | a cool forest biome of conifers in the upper Northern Hemisphere |
| tundra | cold biome of the far north; large, treeless plain in the arctic regions, here the ground is frozen all year |
| desert | sandy or rocky biome, with little precipitation and little plant life |
| deciduous forest | forest biome with many trees that lose their leaves |
| tropical rain forest | biomes along and near Earth's equator; hot, humid with a lot of rainfall; support a wide variety or life; most of the life is high up in the branches |
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