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Definition: a niche is the role or job of a species in a habitat.

Sentence: Two species cannot occupy the same ecological niche in a habitat if they are competing for the same resources.

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DEFINITION: A producer in an ecosystem is an organism that produces its own food, such as plants and algae. SENTENCE: Producers make their own food. 

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DEFINITION: Consumer is a category that belongs within the food chain of an ecosystem. It refers predominantly to animals.

SENTENCE: Consumers are unable to make their own energy

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DEFINITION: study of the organization and functioning of communities

SENTENCE: Together, the two ecologists discussed the basic theoretical aspects of community ecology.

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DEFINTION: study of the processes that affect the distribution and abundance of animal and plant populations.

SENTENCE: A population is a subset of individuals of one species that occupies a particular geographic area

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DEFINITON: Ecosystem ecology is an inherently interdisciplinary field of study.

SENTENCE: An individual ecosystem is composed of populations of organisms, interacting within communities, and contributing to the cycling of nutrients and the flow of energy.

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DEFINITION: interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both.

SENTENCE: A clownfish and A sea anemone engage in a symbiotic relationship

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DEFINITION: the number or quantity of people or things that can be conveyed or held by a vehicle or container.

SENTENCE: At carrying capacity, the population will have an impact on the resources of the given area

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DEFINTION: a population's per capita growth rate gets smaller and smaller as population size approaches a maximum imposed by limited resources in the environment

SENTENCE: Exponential growth produces a J-shaped curve, while logistic growth produces an S-shaped curve.

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DEFINTION: a process that increases quantity over time at an ever-increasing rate.

SENTENCE: The growth of the virus followed an exponential curve.

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DEFINTION: Autotrophs are organisms that can produce their own food, using materials from inorganic sources.

SENTENCE: An autotroph is an organism that feeds itself, without the assistance of any other organisms.

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DEFINITION: A heterotroph is an organism that cannot manufacture its own food by carbon fixation

SENTENCE: The lion is a heterotroph because it obtains its food by hunting other animals.

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DEFINTION: a resource or environmental condition which limits the growth, distribution or abundance of an organism or population within an ecosystem.

SENTENCE: A limiting factor restricts organisms from occupying their fundamental niche and results instead in the fulfillment of their actual or realized niche.

Types of Limiting Factor

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DEFINTION: An ecological community in which populations of plants or animals remain stable and exist in balance with each other and their environment.

SENETNCE: A climax community is the final stage of succession, remaining relatively unchanged until destroyed by an event such as fire or human interference.

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DEFINTION: An estuary is a semi-enclosed coastal body of water with a free connection to the open sea and within which sea water is diluted by fresh water. SENTENCE: Estuaries are geologically ephemeral and can rapidly disappear with a relatively small change in sea level via glaciations and deglaciations.

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DEFINTION: the trapping of the sun's warmth in a planet's lower atmosphere, due to the greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared radiation emitted from the planet's surface.

SENTENCE: The burning of fossil fuels and the resulting increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere contribute to the greenhouse effect

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DEFINITION: any force that affects the size of a population of living things in response to the density of the population

SENTENCE: There are as well as density-dependent biological factors such as disease, predation, and intraspecific competition .

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DEFINTION: Any influences on a population’s birth or death rates, regardless of the population density. SENTENCE: Density independent factors are typically a physical factor of the environment, unrelated to the size of the population in question.

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DEFINTION: species that are the first to colonize newly created environments or recently disturbed environments during the processes of primary succession and secondary succession, respectively.

SENTENCE: In time, this rather inhospitable surface will be colonized by pioneer species.

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DEFINTION: an organism that decomposes, or breaks down, organic material such as the remains of dead organisms. SENTENCE: Decomposers include bacteria and fungi.