Ecosystems/Living Things Interact

A singe organism in an environment is called an _________________.

individual

Organisms of the same kind living in the same environment make up a _____________.

population

All the populations of organisms living together in an environment make up a ______________.

community

A community and its physical factors or environment make up an _____________.

ecosystem

Every population lives in a certain part of an ecosystem, known as its _____________.

habitat

Within an ecosystem, each population has a certain role, or ______________.

niche

The __________ provides the energy for almost every ecosystem on Earth.

sun

_______________, or plants, use the energy of the sun, change it into food, and pass it on to other organisms.

Producers

All other organisms in an ecosystem community must eat to get the energy they need. So the animals in a community are ________________.

consumers

A ______________ shows how consumers in an ecosystem are connected to one another according to what they eat.

food chain

First-level consumers, or ______________, eat the plants.

herbivores

___________________, or carnivores, eat the herbivores.

Second-level consumers

________________, such as mushrooms and bacteria, break down the tissues of dead organisms. They use some nutrients from the dead tissue as food.

Decomposers

A _____________ shows the relationships between many food chains within a single ecosystem.

food web

An ________________ shows the amount of energy available to pass from one level of a food chain to the next.

energy pyramid

Because most ecosystems don’t have unlimited resources, there may be _______________ for these resources among organisms.

competition

An animal that hunts

Predator

The animal that is hunted

Prey

A long term relationship between different kinds of organisms is called ________________.

symbiosis

An ________________ is a behavior that an organism inherits, such as building a shelter or finding a mate.

instinct

Behaviors that organisms have learned from their parents, not inherited from them.

learned behaviors

Organisms listed as _______________ have populations so small that they are likely to die out if steps aren’t immediately taken to save them.

endangered

Organisms listed as _______________ are likely to become endangered if they are not protected.

threatened

When the last individual of a population dies, that kind of organism becomes ____________________ and is gone forever.

extinct