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Ecology and Ecosystems Vocabulary Autotroph • Organism that can capture energy from sunlight or chemicals and use it to produce its own food from inorganic compounds; also called a producer Producer • Organism that can capture energy from sunlight or chemicals and use it to produce food from inorganic compounds; also called an autotroph Heterotroph • Organism that relies on other organisms for their energy and food supply; also called a consumer Consumer • Organism that relies on other organisms for its energy and food; also called heterotroph Herbivore • Heterotroph that obtains energy by only eating plants Carnivore • Heterotroph that obtains energy by eating animals Omnivore • Heterotroph that obtains energy by eating both plants and animals Decomposer • Heterotroph that breaks down organic matter Food Chain • A series of steps in which organisms transfer energy by eating and being eaten Food Web • Links all the food chains in an ecosystem together Trophic Level • Each step in a food chain or food web; first level is producers, then consumers, which make up second, third, and higher levels Ecological Pyramid • A diagram that shows the relative amounts of energy or matter contained within each trophic level in a food chain or web; 3 types: energy, biomass, and pyramids of numbers • The energy/biomass starts at 100% for the producers with only about 10 percent of that energy transfers to organisms at the next trophic level Biotic Factors • Biological influences on organisms within an ecosystem • Including birds, trees, mushrooms, and bacteria, etc. Abiotic Factors • Physical, or nonliving, factors that shape ecosystems • Temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind, nutrient availability, soil type, sunlight, etc. Predation • An interaction in which one organism (predator) captures and feeds on another organism (prey) • Predator Prey Symbiosis • Any relationship in which two species live closely together Mutualism • Both species benefit from the relationship Commensalism • One member of the relationship benefits and the other is neither helped nor harmed Parasitism • One orgasm lives on or inside another organism and harms it Thermal Energy • Heat; the total amount of kinetic energy due to the random motion of atoms or molecules in a body of matter; energy at its most random form; with each energy transfer from ATP, a bit of energy slipped off into the surroundings as thermal energy