Meaning & use
abiotic
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Meaning
adjectivenot comparable
Relating to the non-living physical and chemical parts of an environment, such as water, light, temperature, or minerals.
Grammar: Usually comes before a noun: abiotic factors, abiotic stress.
Patterns
- abiotic factors
- abiotic stress
- abiotic components
- abiotic environment
Sunlight, temperature and soil pH are abiotic factors that shape the pond ecosystem.
Drought is an abiotic stress that can sharply reduce crop yields.
Students separated the abiotic components, such as rocks and water, from the living organisms in their survey.
Common combinations
- abiotic factors
- Light, water and temperature are the main abiotic factors in the habitat.
- abiotic stress
- High salinity is an abiotic stress that many plants cannot tolerate.
- abiotic components
- Sand, air and minerals are abiotic components of the soil.
- abiotic environment
- The deep sea is an abiotic environment dominated by pressure, cold and darkness.
- abiotic synthesis
- The lab modeled abiotic synthesis of simple organic molecules under early-Earth conditions.
Synonyms and how they differ
- non-living
- The plain everyday choice; fine in general speech, but it lacks the explicit scientific contrast with biotic.
- inanimate
- Means not alive, yet usually describes objects rather than ecological factors like rainfall or pH.
- physical
- Covers non-living matter but leaves out the chemical processes that abiotic includes.
Opposites
Word family
- biotic adjective
- Relating to living organisms or their effects; the direct opposite of abiotic.
- biota noun
- The animal and plant life of a particular region.
- abiogenesis noun
- The natural origin of life from non-living matter.
Commonly confused: abiotic or biotic? abiotic or abiogenesis?
abiotic vs biotic
Biotic refers to living or life-caused things such as pollination or disease; abiotic refers to non-living influences such as frost or salinity.
abiotic vs abiogenesis
A noun naming the origin-of-life process; the adjective abiotic does not mean that process itself.
Practice
In ecology, sunlight, temperature and soil pH are described as ___ because they are non-living parts of the environment.
Choose one answer.
Sunlight, temperature and pH are non-living physical or chemical factors, so they are abiotic. Biotic refers to living organisms, organic suggests carbon-based or living material, and symbiotic describes a close relationship between living species, so none of those fit the non-living contrast.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “abiotic”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.