Mickayla's Picture This

1. Food webs describe the relationships — links or connections — among species in an ecosystem
3. A scavenger is an organism that mostly consumes decaying biomass, such as meat or rotting plant material.
7. A producer is an organism that creates its own food or energy.
9. An abiotic factor is a non-living part of an ecosystem that shapes its environment.
11. A food chain describes how energy and nutrients move through an ecosystem.
13. An herbivore is an organism that feeds mostly on plants.
14. A biotic factor is a living organism that shapes its environment.
15. an organism deriving its nutritional requirements from complex organic substances.

2. An omnivore is an organism that eats plants and animals.
4. A carnivore is an organism that mostly eats meat, or the flesh of animals.
5. an organism that is able to form nutritional organic substances from simple inorganic substances such as carbon dioxide.
6. a niche is the match of a species to a specific environmental condition. It describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors and how it in turn alters those same factors.
8. Decomposers (fungi, bacteria, invertebrates such as worms and insects) have the ability to break down dead organisms into smaller particles and create new compounds.
10. a team of quantitative and qualitative researchers in the field of consumer behavior, sensory perception and product integrity.
12. the natural home or environment of an animal, plant, or other organism.