Ecology **Chapter 2**
Terms
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- Ecology
- the scientific study of interactions among organisms and their environments.
- Biosphere
- the portion of Earth that supports life.
- Abiotic Factors
- The nonliving parts of an organisms' environment.
- Biotic Factors
- All the living organisms that inhabit an environment.
- Population
- A group of organisms that one species that interbreed and live in the same place at the same time.
- Community
- A collection of interacting populations.
- Ecosystem
- made up of interactions among the populations in a community and the commmunity's physical surroundings, or abiotic fators.
- Habitat
- The place where an organism lives throughout its life.
- Niche
- The role and posistion a species has in its environment.
- Symbiosis
- the realtionship which there is a close and permanent asssociation among organisms of different species.
- Commensalism
- A symbiotic realtionship in which one species benefits and another species is neither harmed nor benefited.
- Mutualism
- A symbiotic relaionship in which both species benefit.
- Parasitism
- A symbiotic realtionship in which one organism benefits at the expense of another.
- Autotroph
- Organisms that use energy stored in chemical compounds to manufacture their own nutrients.
- Heterotroph
- Organisms that cannot make their own food and must feed on other organisms.
- Scavenger
- Animals that feed on animals that have already died.
- Decomposer
- Organisms that break down and absorb nutrients from dead organisms.
- Food Chain
- A simple model that scientists use to show how matter and energy move through an ecosysytem.
- Trophic Level
- Organism in a food chain that represents a feeding step in the passage of energy and materials through an ecosystem.
- Food Web
- Model that expresses all the possible feeding relationships at each trophic level in a community.