ECOSYSTEM VOCABULARY

2. Scientific study of interactions among organisms and their environment.
5. Animals that feed on animals that have already died.
6. Nonlivings parts of an organism's environment, temperature, moisture, light, and soil are examples.
9. Symbiotic relationship in which one organism benefits at the expense of the other species.
11. Simple model that shows how matter and energy move through an ecosystem; can consist of three steps, but must have no more than five steps.
13. All the living organisms that inhabit an environment.
14. Role and position a species has in its environment, includes all biotic and abiotic interactions as an animal meets its needs for survival and reproduction.
15. Organism in a food chain that represents a feeding step in the passage of energy and materials through an ecosystem.
17. Permanent close association between two or more organisms of different species.
19. organisms such as fungi that break down and absorb nutrients from dead organisms.
20. collection of several interacting populations that inhabit a common environment.

1. Portion of Earth that supports life, extends from the atmosphere to the bottom of the oceans.
3. Organisms that use energy from the sun or energy stored in chemical compounds to manufacture their own nutrients.
4. organisms that cannot make their own food and must feed on other organisms for energy and nutrients.
7. a symbiotic relationship in which both species benefit.
8. Model that expresses all the possible feeding relationships at each trophic level in a community.
10. Symbiotic relationship in which one species benefits and the other species is neither harmed nor benefited.
12. Place where an organism lives out its life.
16. Interactions among populations in a community; the community's physical surroundings or abiotic factors.
18. Group of organisms of one species that interbreed and live in the same place at the same time.