Ecology Basics

1. a characteristic of an organism that helps it to survive in its environment
5. a relationship between two organisms in which at least one organism benefits from the other
7. an organism that can make its own food by using energy from the Sun or other inorganic sources
10. a living organism or its effects on the environment.
11. a large region of Earth that has a characteristic climate and characteristic kinds of organisms
13. the series of relationships between a community of organisms and the environment.
14. all the living things in one ecosystem
15. the place in which an organism lives

2. the job or function of an organism within its ecosystem
3. an organism that breaks down and absorbs nutrients from dead organisms and wastes, and then returns the nutrients to the environment
4. the non-living parts of an environment i.e. water, sunlight
6. the gradual change of the populations in a given community.
8. an organism that cannot make its own food and must eat other organisms
9. a group of individual organisms of the same kind living in an ecosystem.
12. web, a diagram that shows many food chains interacting with each other