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  • ecology – the study of living things and their environments
  • environment – everything that surrounds a living thing
  • community – all populations that live in a certain place
  • ecosystem – living and nonliving things in an environment, together with their interactions
  • population – group of the same kind of organism living in a certain place
  • habitat – place where an organism lives
  • niche – organism’s functional role, or job, in its habitat
  • limiting factors – conditions in the environment that put limits on where an organism can live
  • nitrogen-fixing bacteria – bacteria that can use nitrogen in soil to make nitrogen compounds
  • consumer – organisms that obtain food by eating other organisms
  • decomposer – organism that breaks down the wastes or remains of other organisms
  • producer – organism that makes its own food
  • scavenger – animal that eats only dead organisms
  • energy pyramid – way of showing how energy moves through a food chain
  • food chain – a chain of organisms which shows the feeding relationships in a habitat
  • food web – a series of interconnected food chains
  • biome – large region of the earth with particular plant and animal communities
  • climatic factors – factors such wind, water, light, temperature that affect a habitat
  • conservation – wise use of natural resources
  • natural resource – materials found in nature that are used by living things
  • nonrenewable resource – materials found in nature that CANNOT be renewed or replaced
  • renewable resource – natural resouces that CAN bereplaced
  • pollution – release of harmful materials into the environment
  • biosphere – thin zone of the earth that supports all life
  • predator – animal that hunts and eats other animals
  • prey – animal hunted or caught for food
  • adaptation – trait of a living thing that helps it live in its environment
  • environment – Everything that surrounds a living thing
  • abiotic – non-living factors in an environment
  • biotic – living factors in an environment