| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Ecosystem | All of the living and nonliving things that interact in a particular area |
| Biotic factors | Living things (organisms) in an ecosystem. |
| Abiotic factors | Nonliving things in an ecosystem. |
| Habitat | The specific environment that provides an organism with what it needs |
| Species | A group of similar organisms that can mate with one another and produce fertile offspring. |
| Niche | The role an organism has in its ecosystem. |
| Producer | An organism that can make its own food. |
| Consumer | An organism that obtains energy by feeding on other organisms. |
| Organism | An individual living thing. |
| Herbivore | Consumers that eat only plants. |
| Omnivore | Consumers that eat both plants and animals. |
| Carnivore | Consumers that eat only animals. |
| Scavenger | A carnivore that feeds on the bodies of dead organisms. |
| Decomposers | Organisms that break down wastes and dead organisms and return the raw materials to the environment. |
| Food chain | A series of events in which one organism eats another and obtains energy. |
| Food web | Overlapping food chains in an ecosystem. |
| Energy pyramid | A diagram that shows the amount of energy that moves from one feeding level to another in a food web. |
| Ecological succession | The series of predictable changes that occur in a community over time. |
| Community | All of the different organisms that live together in an area. |
| Primary succession | The settlement/establishment of vegetation in an area previously uncolonized by organisms. |
| Secondary succession | The recolonization of a geographic area, which had been previously settled, but somehow disrupted. |
| Pioneer plants | Organisms which first colonize an area often lichens and mosses. |
| Climax community | The most stable type of biome given its geographical area. |
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