| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Biology | the study of life that seeks to provide an understanding of the natural world |
| Organism | anything that possesses all the characteristics of life; all organisms have an orderly structure, produce offspring, grow, develop, and adjust to changes in the environment |
| Unicellular | having only one cell |
| Multicellular | having more than one cell |
| Reproduction | production of offspring by an organism; a characteristic of all living things |
| Growth | increase in the amount of living material and formation of new structures in an organism; a characteristic of all living things |
| Development | all of the changes that take place during the life of an organism; a characteristic of all living things |
| environment | biotic and abiotic surroundings to which an organism must constantly adjust; includes air, water, weather, temperature, |
| stimulus | anything in an organism's internal or external environment that causes the organism to react |
| response | an organism's reaction to a change in its internal or external environment |
| adaptation | evolution of a structure, behavior, or internal process that enables an organism to respond to environmental factors and live to produce offspring |
| evolution | gradual change in a species through adaptations over time |
| scientific method | procedures that biologists and other scientists use to gather information and answer questions; include observing and hypothesizing, experimenting, and gathering and interpreting results |
| observation | an act or instance of noticing or perceiving. |
| inference | the process of deriving the strict logical consequences of assumed premises. |
| hypothesis | explanation for a question or a problem that can be formally tested |
| experiment | procedure that tests a hypothesis by collecting information under controlled conditions |
| control | in an experiment, the standard against which results are compared |
| independent variable | in an experiment, the condition that is tested because it affects the outcome of the experiment |
| dependent variable | in an experiment, the condition that results from changes in the independent variable |
| abiotic | nonliving parts of an organism's environment; air currents, temperature, moisture, light, and soil are examples |
| biotic | all the living organisms that inhabit an environment |
| ecology | scientific study of interactions between organisms and their environments |
| ecosystem | interactions among populations in a community; the community's physical surroundings or abiotic factors |
| species | groups of organisms that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring in nature |
| population | group of organisms all of the same species, which interbreed and live in the same place at the same time |
| community | collection of several interacting populations that inhabit a common environment |
| habitat | place where an organism lives out its life |
| niche | role of position a species has in its environment; includes all biotic and abiotic interactions as an animal meets its needs for survival and reproduction |
| symbiosis | permanent, close association between two or more organisms of different species |
| mutualism | a symbiotic relationship in which both species benefit |
| parasitism | symbiotic relationship in which one organism benefits at the expense of another, usually another species |
| producer | an organism, as a plant, that is able to produce its own food from inorganic substances. |
| consumer | an organism, usually an animal, that feeds on plants or other animals. |
| autotroph | organisms that use energufrom the sun or energy stored in chemical compounds to manufacture their own nutients |
| heterotroph | organisms that cannot make their own food and must feed on other organisms for energy and nutrients |
| herbivore | An animal that feeds chiefly on plants. |
| carnivore | an animal that eats flesh. |
| omnivore | an animal that feeds on both animal and vegetable substances |
| decomposer | organisms, such as fungi and bacteria, that break down and absorb nutrients from dead organisms |
| photosynthesis | process by which autorophs, such as algaw and plants, trap energy from the sunlight with chlorophyll and use this energy to convent carbon dioxide and water into simple sugars |
| cellular respiration | chemical process where mitochondria break down food molecules to produce ATP; the three stages of cellular respiration are glycolysis, the citric acid cycle, and the electron transport chain |
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