Interactions+among+Living+Things


 * An ecosystem is all the living and nonliving things that interact in an area. Each organism in ecosystems has unique characteristics.
 * Offspring that inherit the characteristics that made their parents successful also live to reproduce.
 * The behaviors and physical characteristics of species that allow them to live successfully in their environment are called __Adaptations__.
 * Every organism in an ecosysten has a varierty of adaptations that are suited to its specific living conditions.
 * An organisms particular role, or how it fits into an ecoystem is called a __niche__.
 * A niche included the type of food the organism eats, how it obtains this food, and which other species use the organism as food.
 * An organisms niche may include how it interacts with other organisms.
 * There are three major types of interactions among organisms in an ecosystem: Competition, Predation, and Symbiosis.
 * Competition is the struggle between organisms to survive in a habitat with limited resources.
 * Organisms that survive have adaptations that enable them to reduce competition.
 * Predation is an interaction in which one organism hunts and kills another for food.
 * The organism that does the killing is the predator, and the organism that is caught is the prey.
 * Predators have adaptations that help them catch and kill their prey.
 * Prey's use Mimicry, False Coloring, Warning Coloring, and other techniques to avoid being caught by effective predators.
 * Predation can have a major effect on the size of a population, or all the members of one species in a particular area.
 * Symbiosis is a close relationship between two species that benefits at least one of the species.
 * The three type of symbiotic relationships are mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism.
 * Mutualism is a relationship in which both species benefit. An example is the saguar and the long-eared bats. The saguaro benefits as its pollen is carried on the bat's nose to another plant.
 * A relationship in which one species benefits and the other species is neither helped nor harmed is called commensalism. An example is when red-tailed hawks' are helped by having a place to build their nest, while the cactus is not affected by the birds.
 * Pariasitsm involves one organism living on or inside another organism and harming it.
 * The organism that benefits is called parasite, and the the organism the parasite live on or in is called a host.
 * The parasite benefits from the interaction while the host is harmed.