Ecology Vocabulary

6. the direct or indirect interaction of organisms that leads to a change in fitness when the organisms share the same resource.
10. any force that affects the size of a population of living things regardless of the density of the population
14. all the biotic organisms on Earth and the ecosystems they inhabit, including the oceans and the atmosphere.
15. an organism that consumes all or part of the body of another—living or recently killed—organism, which is its prey.
16. refers to the role of a species in its ecosystem.
18. the sum total mass of living organisms such as plants, animals, in a specific unit of area or volume of habitat
19. the living aspects of the environment. They consist of other organisms, including members of the same and different species.
20. the living organisms (biotic) in an area and the non-living aspects (abiotic) of the environment.

1. an individual living thing.
2. all of the populations of different species that live in the same area and interact with one another. A community is composed of all of the biotic factors of an area.
3. the sequence of transfers of matter and energy in the form of food from organism to organism.
4. factors that affect the per capita growth rate of a population differently depending on how dense the population already is.
5. animals or plants from another region of the world that don't belong in their new environment.
7. an organism that helps define an entire ecosystem.
8. the physical environment in which a species lives and to which it is adapted.
9. a group of ecosystems with the same climate and dominant biotic communities found in different locations throughout the biosphere.
11. any animal that serves as a food source for another animal.
12. all of the food chains in an ecosystem.
13. the nonliving aspects of the environment. They include factors such as sunlight, soil, temperature, and water.
15. a group of organisms belonging to the same species (a group of individuals that can breed to produce fertile young) that live in the same area and interact with one another.
17. the study of how living organisms interact with each other and with their environment.