Animals & Nature
Animals that eat only plants (like cows and deer) are called this.
What are herbivores?
Also known as "survival of the fittest," this is the process where animals with helpful traits survive and have more babies.
What is natural selection?
An animal that hunts, catches, and eats another animal for food.
What is a predator?
The ultimate source of energy for almost every ecosystem on Earth.
What is the Sun?
The step-by-step process of an ecosystem growing back or changing over time.
What is ecological succession?
The natural home where a plant or animal lives, like a forest, ocean, or desert.
What is a habitat?
A helpful trait that helps a plant or animal survive in its home, like a polar bear's thick fur.
What is an adaptation?
What we call it when two living things both benefit and help each other out, like bees and flowers.
What is mutualism?
$200 Clue: Organisms like green plants that make their own food using sunlight.
What are primary producers (or autotrophs)?
The very first tough plants (like moss or lichen) that start growing on bare rock.
What are pioneer species?
Green plants use water, sunlight, and air to make their own food in this process.
What is photosynthesis?
An accidental mistake or change in an organism's DNA.
What is a mutation?
An animal's "job" or role in its habitat, including what it eats and where it lives.
What is a niche?
An animal that eats only plants (a primary consumer).
What is a herbivore?
Succession that starts in a place with no soil at all, such as after a volcano erupts.
What is primary succession?
A simple diagram showing how energy moves from plants to plant-eaters, and then to meat-eaters.
What is a food chain?
When humans choose which animals or plants to breed, like breeding dogs for specific colors or sizes.
What is artificial selection?
When two organisms try to use the very same resource at the same time, like two birds fighting over the same worm.
What is competition?
Creatures like mushrooms and bacteria that break down dead plants and animals to clean up nature.
What are decomposers (or detritivores)?
Succession that happens faster because soil is already there, like after a forest fire or a storm.
What is secondary succession?
An animal (like a honeybee or sea otter) that an entire ecosystem depends on to stay healthy.
What is a keystone species?
When a species completely dies out and no more are left alive on Earth.
What is extinction?
A relationship where one creature lives in or on another creature and hurts it, like a flea on a dog.
What is parasitism?
How much energy actually moves up from one step of the food chain to the next step.
What is 10%?
Non-native plants or animals brought into a new area that take over and hurt the local habitat.
What are invasive species?