Vocabulary
Living parts of an ecosystem (plants, animals, fungi)
What are biotic factors?
Smallest level of organization (one living thing)
What is an organism?
Factor that limits population growth
What is a limiting factor?
Organisms that make their own food
What are producers?
Water turning into vapor
What is evaporation?
Non-living parts of an ecosystem (water, sunlight, rocks)
What are abiotic factors?
Group of different populations living together
What is a community?
Example of a living limiting factor
What is a predator or disease?
Organisms that eat other organisms
What are consumers?
Process where plants release water vapor
What is transpiration?
A group of the same species living in one area
What is a population?
Organism → ? → community → ecosystem
What is a population?
Example of a nonliving limiting factor
What is drought or food shortage?
Organisms that break down dead matter
What are decomposers?
Gas that animals release and plants use
What is carbon dioxide?
All living and nonliving things interacting in one area
What is an ecosystem?
Put in order from smallest to largest: ecosystem, organism, population, community
Organism → Population → Community → Ecosystem
A population has more births than deaths. Is it increasing or decreasing?
What is increasing?
Grass → rabbit → fox is an example of a
What is a food chain?
Bacteria that help convert nitrogen in soil
What are nitrogen-fixing bacteria?
The study of how organisms interact with each other and their environment
What is ecology?
Explain the difference between a community and an ecosystem
A community includes only living things, while an ecosystem includes both living and nonliving things.
Explain how limiting factors affect population size
They reduce survival, reproduction, or resources, causing population growth to slow or decrease.
Explain how energy flows in a food web
Energy moves from producers to consumers and then to higher-level consumers and decomposers.
Explain how carbon, water, nitrogen, or oxygen cycles support life in ecosystems
They recycle essential elements so organisms can survive, grow, and reproduce.