ecosystem
Americannoun
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Ecology. a system, or a group of interconnected elements, formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with their environment.
Aquatic ecosystems differ radically from their terrestrial counterparts.
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any system or network of interconnecting and interacting parts, as in a business.
The success of Apple’s ecosystem depends on hardware/software integration.
Manufacturers, retailers, and customers are all part of the automotive industry’s ecosystem.
noun
Related Words
ecosystem, habitat, environment, biosphere, ecology are all scientific terms that can refer to spaces or systems in which plants and animals (including humans) live in relationship with each other and with the surrounding physical conditions. environment is the most general term. It can refer to a set of surrounding conditions thought of as a whole, as in a desert environment, or it can single out one or more conditions that could exist with a variety of others: This plant thrives in a warm, moist environment. By itself, it usually refers to all the conditions, elements, and living things that humans live among: Armed conflict always harms the environment. A habitat, on the other hand, is a specific area or set of surrounding conditions that is the natural home of a particular animal, plant, or other organism: The polar bear’s habitat is the Arctic sea ice. The word ecosystem refers to all of the organisms and physical conditions within a certain space, interacting with each other to form a complex, balanced web of relationships. It can be of any size: The 3,000-acre marsh is a finely balanced wetland ecosystem. Each aquarium houses a complete ecosystem of rocks and sand, aquatic plants, fish, and other creatures. The largest known ecosystem of all is the biosphere, consisting of the whole earth and all its living inhabitants. ecology is different from all the other words here: like them, it can mean the web of relationships operating within a particular ecosystem, as in a grassland ecology, but more often refers broadly to relationships between organisms and their environments in general, or to the science that studies these relationships.
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Chemical substances move through ecosystems on the Earth in cycles (see carbon cycle).
The source of energy for almost every ecosystem on Earth is the sun.
Etymology
Origin of ecosystem
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
They need the “context”—a company’s living, breathing ecosystem with “decision traces,” the history of every decision made, every prospect considered, every process used or discarded.
San Diego County “lets rivers be rivers and ecosystems manage themselves,” Linas said.
From Los Angeles Times
That could cause knock-on delays across the aviation ecosystem, so be prepared to be nimble and patient if you’re still set on flying.
Weapons systems have evolved from disposable purchases to multi-decade ecosystems nowadays.
From MarketWatch
Nvidia had over $100 billion in operational cash flow last year, and it has been spreading that wealth around throughout the AI start-up ecosystem.
From Barron's
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
