a process that develops a biotic community in a previously uninhabited and barren habitat with little or no soil

dominant community of plants and animals that come to live in an area

living factors in the environment

the unique role or job of an organism in an ecosystem

a state of balance

a variety of organisms in an ecosystem or biome

a community of interacting living organisms and the physical environment that they live in

a representation of several overlapping food chains in an ecosystem; includes the flow of energy from the Sun through producers to consumers and decomposers through multiple pathways

nonliving factors in the environment; physical rather than biological; do not come from living organisms

a condition or resource that keeps a population at a certain size

a process started by an event that reduces an already established ecosystem to a smaller population of species

the changing sequence of communities that live in an ecosystem during a given time period