Ecology Terms

2. Consume decomposing plant and animal tissues
3. Factor that has an effect on a population's growth regardless of the number of individuals in that population
5. Sustainable energy that can be used over and over again
7. Meat-eating organisms
9. The variety of life in an area
13. Nonliving components of an environment
14. The process of an individual entering a population
15. Occurs when an individual leaves a population
18. Natural pathway in which essential elements are recycled in the environment
21. Balanced, stable community of plants, animals, and their environment
24. Organisms that must consume other organisms for energy
25. Combination of food chains through which energy in an ecosystem flows
26. Occurs after a community has been impacted by some sort of disturbance such as a fire

1. Position in a food chain, food web, or ecological pyramid
4. Diagram showing each trophic level's amount of energy and biomass
6. Biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment
7. A species' average population size in a particular habitat
8. The study of relationships between living organisms and the interactions of organisms with their environment
10. Organisms that make their own food
11. Anything that contains a population's size and slows or stops its growth
12. Energy derived from unsustainable sources
16. Factor whose effects on the growth of a population are dependent on the number of individuals in that population
17. Organisms that only eat plant material
19. Occurs when a new patch of land that has no soil is exposed or created
20. Organisms that eat plant and animal material
22. Break down dead tissue using biochemical reactions instead of ingestion
23. All living organisms in an environment