BIOLOGY 1A03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Saprotrophic Nutrition, Habitat, Detritivore

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Biology
• Course: BIOLOGY 1A03
• Professor: Lovaye Kajiura

Document Summary

5. 1. 1 - define species, habitat, population, community, ecosystem and ecology. Species - a group of organisms that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. They are a group of individuals of common ancestry that closely resemble each other and that are normally capable of interbreeding to produce fertile offspring. Habitat - the environment in which a species normally lives or the location of a living organism. If this area is extremely small, we call it a microhabitat, such as the crevices in the bark of a tree in which some insects live. Conditions in a microhabitat are different to those of the surrounding habitat. Population - a group of organisms of the same species who live in the same area at the same time. The members of a population have a high chance of interbreeding, assuming the species concerned reproduces sexually. The boundaries of populations are often hard to define.