Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The living organisms of a region or habitat.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The sum total of animal and plant life of a given region or period: the equivalent of fauna and flora combined.
  • noun A treatise upon the animals and plants of any geographic area or geologic period.
  • noun A group of conifers, now commonly referred to Thuja, the arbor-vitæ. The name, however, is frequent in nurserymen's catalogues.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun all the plant and animal life of a particular region.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun biology The living organisms of a region.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun all the plant and animal life of a particular region

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin, from Greek biotē, way of life, from bios, life; see gwei- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek, ultimately from βίος (bios).

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