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

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

ability to maintain ecological processes over long periods of time; ability of an ecosystem to maintain its structure and function over time

living factors in the environment

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

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

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

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

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

first organisms to live in an area

a state of balance

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