Eco Vocab and Concept Map

Environment: The air, water, and land in which organisms live.
Organism: A living thing such as an animal or plant.
Population: A group of the same type of organisms living in a specific area.
Community: A group of different organisms living in the same area.
Ecosystem: A place with all the living things interacting with each other and their environment.
Biosphere: The part of Earth, including land, water, and air, where life exists.
Ecology: The study of how living things interact with one another and their environment.
Species: A group of living things that can breed together to produce fertile offspring.
Biome: An area with its own unique climate and living organisms.

Producers / Autotrophs: Organisms that produce their own food.
Consumers / Heterotrophs: Organisms that eat other living things:
- Herbivore: Eats plants.
- Carnivore: Eats animals.
- Omnivore: Eats both plants and animals.
- Decomposer: Feeds on dead organisms.

Food Chain: A sequence of who-eats-who in an ecosystem.
Food Web: All interconnected food chains in a particular environment.
Ecological Pyramid: A representation showing the number or biomass of organisms at each trophic level.
Biomass: Total weight of organisms in a particular environment.
Biodiversity: The variety and number of living organisms in an environment.
Carrying Capacity: Maximum number of organisms that an environment can support.

Predation: One organism catching and feeding on another.
- Predator: An animal that hunts other animals.
- Prey: An animal that is hunted.
Symbiosis: A close relationship between organisms of different species:
- Mutualism: Both species benefit.
- Commensalism: One species benefits, and the other is unaffected.
- Parasitism: One species benefits at the expense of another.