Biology Word Search PDF With Genetics, Evolution and Life Cycles

Save both pages, puzzle and answer key, as a PDF to post for the class before the genetics unit.

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Biology Word Search

Find every word hidden in the grid. Words go across and down.

0 of 16 words found

MYSPECIESCNLADE

HORMONELPHGTPKB

HABLQAPIARELHII

RESPIRATIONAONO

EORGANISMMEITGL

PFTOGJHWTOTVODO

RCSENTAFYSIOSOG

OBHVHRNLSOCHYMY

DECOSYSTEMSENSL

UTNLDOIGEETRTCW

COOUCUHHDONEHTO

TBNTRAITPEGDENL

IYAIMETABOLISML

OPROTEINPWATIZA

NKNNGSREYAOYSRW

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

KingdomKINGDOM
SpeciesSPECIES
TraitTRAIT
HeredityHEREDITY
ChromosomeCHROMOSOME
EvolutionEVOLUTION
EcosystemECOSYSTEM
OrganismORGANISM
MetabolismMETABOLISM
ReproductionREPRODUCTION
RespirationRESPIRATION
HormoneHORMONE
PhotosynthesisPHOTOSYNTHESIS
ProteinPROTEIN
BiologyBIOLOGY
GeneticsGENETICS

16 of 24 words from the Biology Key Terms list.

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Word list

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Answer key: Biology Word Search

MYSPECIESCNLADE

HORMONELPHGTPKB

HABLQAPIARELHII

RESPIRATIONAONO

EORGANISMMEITGL

PFTOGJHWTOTVODO

RCSENTAFYSIOSOG

OBHVHRNLSOCHYMY

DECOSYSTEMSENSL

UTNLDOIGEETRTCW

COOUCUHHDONEHTO

TBNTRAITPEGDENL

IYAIMETABOLISML

OPROTEINPWATIZA

NKNNGSREYAOYSRW

KINGDOM, SPECIES, TRAIT, HEREDITY, CHROMOSOME, EVOLUTION, ECOSYSTEM, ORGANISM, METABOLISM, REPRODUCTION, RESPIRATION, HORMONE, PHOTOSYNTHESIS, PROTEIN, BIOLOGY, GENETICS

Next step Build a puzzle from your own biology notes Scramble the same biology words

All 123 words

Classifying Living Things 24

Amphibian An animal such as a frog, with a name from the Greek for both kinds of life.
Animal A many-celled living thing that eats other organisms, and can usually move about.
Arthropod An animal with jointed legs and a hard outer skeleton, such as a crab or a spider.
Bacteria Tiny living things with no nucleus, often made of a single cell.
Bird A warm-blooded animal with feathers, wings and a beak that lays hard-shelled eggs.
Class The rank between phylum and order. Mammals make up one, and birds another.
Domain The highest rank of all. There are three: Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya.
Family The rank between order and genus. All cats, from lions to pets, share one.
Fern A green plant with fronds that spreads by spores and has no seeds or flowers.
Fish An animal that lives in water and breathes through gills.
Fungus A mushroom, a mold or a yeast: a living thing in a kingdom apart from plants and animals.
Genus The rank just above species. It gives the first word of a two-part scientific name.
Insect An animal with six legs and a body in three parts: head, thorax and abdomen.

Show all 123 words (110 more)

Classifying Living Things, continued

Kingdom The second highest rank in the sorting of living things, just below domain.
Mammal A warm-blooded animal with hair or fur whose mothers feed their young on milk.
Mold A fungus that gives old food a fuzzy coat.
Mollusk A soft-bodied animal such as a snail, a clam or an octopus.
Order The rank between class and family. Primates, from lemurs to apes, form one.
Phylum The rank just below kingdom. Animals with backbones belong to the one named Chordata.
Plant A living thing, usually green, that makes its food from sunlight using chlorophyll.
Reptile A cold-blooded animal with skin covered in scales, such as a lizard or a snake.
Species The basic unit for sorting living things. Homo sapiens, the modern human, is one.
Taxonomy The science of naming, describing and sorting living things into groups.
Vertebrate An animal with a backbone and a skull, such as a fish, a frog or a bird.

Genes and Heredity 21

Allele One of two or more versions of the same gene.
Chromosome A thread of DNA and protein that holds many genes. Human body cells have 46.
Clone A living thing with the same DNA as another. Dolly the sheep, in 1996, was one.
DNA The molecule that carries the instructions for life. Its two strands coil in a double helix.
Dominant Describes a version of a gene that masks the other version when both are present.
Gene The basic unit of heredity: a stretch of DNA passed from parent to young.
Genotype The set of gene versions a living thing carries, often written with letters such as Bb.
Heredity The passing of traits from parents to their young.
Heterozygous Having two different versions of one gene, written Bb.
Homozygous Having two matching versions of one gene, written BB or bb.
Hybrid The young of two different species or varieties. A mule is one.
Inherit To receive a trait from a parent.
Mutation A change in the sequence of DNA. It can happen through a copying error.
Offspring The young of a living thing: its children, pups, chicks or seedlings.
Pedigree A family chart that shows how a trait passes down the generations.
Phenotype The traits of a living thing that you can observe, such as its height or color.
Punnett square A grid that predicts which gene versions the young of two parents could have.
Purebred Describes an animal bred, over generations, from parents of one breed.
Recessive Describes a version of a gene that is masked unless both copies match.
Trait A feature of a living thing, such as eye color, that can be passed on.
Variation The differences in DNA among the members of one species.

Evolution and Adaptation 17

Adaptation An inherited trait that helps a living thing survive and reproduce where it lives.
Ancestor A relative from long ago. Darwin argued that all life shares a common one.
Beak A bird's bill. Its shape is suited to the way the bird feeds.
Camouflage Colors or patterns that help an animal stay hidden against its background.
Compete To strive against others for the same food, space, light or mates.
Descendant A living thing that comes later in a family line: a child, a grandchild and so on.
Descent Common ___: the idea that living things share ancestors far back in time.
Ecosystem All the living things in a place together with the soil, water and air around them.
Evolution Change in the inherited traits of a population over many generations.
Extinct No longer living anywhere on Earth, like the dodo of Mauritius.
Fossil Remains or marks of ancient life kept in rock, such as a shell, a bone or a footprint.
Habitat The place where a species lives and finds the food, water and shelter it needs.
Instinct Behavior an animal is born with, such as hatchling sea turtles heading for the ocean.
Lineage A line of descent that runs from ancestor to descendant through time.
Origin On the ___ of Species: Darwin's book on evolution, published in 1859.
Selection Natural ___: those best suited to their surroundings survive and leave more young.
Survive To stay alive, as the members best suited to a place tend to do.

Life Processes 20

Carbohydrate A sugar, or a chain of sugars such as starch.
Cell The basic unit of life. Every living thing is made of one or more.
Circulation The flow of blood around the body, pumped by the heart through blood vessels.
Digestion Breaking food down into small parts that the body can absorb.
Enzyme A protein that speeds up a chemical reaction without being used up.
Excretion Getting rid of the waste made by the body's chemical reactions.
Fermentation Releasing energy from sugar without oxygen. Yeast does it, making alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Growth An increase in size over time.
Homeostasis Keeping conditions inside the body steady, such as body temperature.
Hormone A chemical messenger that carries a signal from one part of the body to another.
Metabolism All the chemical reactions that keep a living thing alive. From the Greek for change.
Nutrition Taking in food and water and using them to support life.
Organism Any living thing that works as an individual, from a bacterium to a whale.
Photosynthesis How green plants and algae use sunlight to build sugar out of water and carbon dioxide.
Protein A large molecule built from chains of amino acids.
Reproduction Making new living things: producing young from one parent or two.
Respiration The process in cells that uses oxygen to release energy from food.
Response What a living thing does after it detects a change, as a plant bends toward light.
Stimulus A change in the surroundings that a living thing can detect, such as light.
Vitamin A substance the body needs in small amounts and mostly has to get from food.

Life Cycles and Growth 22

Adult A fully grown living thing that can have young of its own.
Bud An undeveloped shoot on a plant that can open into leaves or a flower.
Caterpillar A moth or butterfly as a larva.
Chrysalis The pupa of a butterfly.
Cocoon A silk case that many moth caterpillars spin around themselves before they change.
Egg The shelled or jelly-coated start of many animals, where the young grows until it hatches.
Embryo A living thing at its earliest stage of development.
Flower The part of a plant where seeds are made, often with bright petals.
Fruit The part of a flowering plant that holds the seeds, formed from the flower's ovary.
Germination The start of growth from a seed or a spore.
Hatch To break out of an egg.
Juvenile A young animal or plant that is not yet fully grown.
Larva The young form of an animal that will change shape, such as a maggot or a grub.
Life cycle The series of stages a living thing passes through, round to the start again.
Metamorphosis A big, sudden change of body form, as when a tadpole becomes a frog.
Molt To shed an old skin, shell or coat of feathers.
Nymph A young insect, such as a dragonfly, that already looks much like the adult but has no wings.
Pollination The moving of pollen from the anther of a flower to a stigma.
Pupa The stage between larva and adult insect. Its name is Latin for doll.
Seed A plant embryo with stored food, wrapped in a protective coat.
Spore A tiny unit, built to travel, from which a new fern or fungus can grow.
Tadpole The larva of a frog or toad, which swims with a tail and breathes through gills.

Biologists and Branches of Biology 19

Anatomy The science of how living things are built. Its name comes from the Greek for cutting up.
Aristotle The ancient Greek thinker who wrote History of Animals from his own observations.
Biology The science of living things, from bacteria to blue whales.
Botany The branch of science that studies plants.
Culture Microbes grown on purpose in the lab on a food called a medium.
Darwin The English naturalist who published On the Origin of Species in 1859.
Dissect To cut open a dead plant or animal to study its parts.
Ecology The study of how living things relate to their surroundings. From the Greek for house.
Experiment A fair test set up to find out whether an idea holds true.
Genetics The study of genes, heredity and how traits vary.
Hypothesis A proposed explanation that can be tested.
Linnaeus The Swedish naturalist who set up the two-part Latin names that every species still gets.
Mendel The friar whose pea plant experiments, from 1856 to 1863, founded the study of heredity.
Microscope A tool for seeing things too small for the naked eye.
Paleontology The study of ancient life through fossils.
Pasteur The French scientist known for vaccines and for a way of heating food that bears his name.
Petri dish A shallow round lidded plate for growing microbes, named after a German scientist.
Physiology The study of how the parts of living things work.
Zoology The branch of science that studies animals.

How this list was compiled: Own work: the word list and every clue were written for this page. The facts in the clues were checked on 2026-09-19 against Wikipedia, among them the articles on biology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology), classification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy_%28biology%29) and Carl Linnaeus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus). Some clues were reworded on 2026-09-20, and any fact that changed was checked against Wikipedia the same day. Licence: own work

How it works

This biology word search PDF is made in your browser: build the puzzle, then save it from the print window. It starts on 16 of 24 key terms, such as Enzyme, Habitat and Photosynthesis, out of 123 words.

Read the full guide

Life science word search or high school biology

Life science is the middle school name for the same subject, and three lists fit it: Classifying Living Things (24 words), Life Cycles and Growth (22) and Easy Biology, 25 words of 3 to 5 letters such as Gene, Seed and Pupa. For a high school course, pick Genes and Heredity (21), Life Processes (20) or Hard Biology, 41 words of 9 to 14 letters, and press Hard. Evolution and Adaptation (17) and Biologists and Branches of Biology (19) complete the row called Start from a list, under the puzzle.

What the PDF holds

Two pages sized for Letter or A4: the puzzle under a Name and Date line, then the answer key.

Genetics is a key term and Gene is not, since GENE sits inside it. Gene is in Genes and Heredity.
Photosynthesis is the longest entry at 14 letters, so a grid under 14 by 14 leaves it out.
Only 3 entries have a space: Punnett square, Life cycle and Petri dish. Each is hidden closed up, as PUNNETTSQUARE.

Questions and answers

Are cell parts such as nucleus and ribosome in the biology word find?

No. Organelles, mitosis and the bases of DNA are left out on purpose: they fill the cell word search in this set. To add your own terms, type them at the end of the word list under the grid.

Who is the father of genetics?

Gregor Mendel, whose pea plant experiments ran from 1856 to 1863. He is in Biologists and Branches of Biology with Darwin, who published On the Origin of Species in 1859, Linnaeus, Pasteur and Aristotle.

Can students solve the biology word search puzzle from clues?

Yes. Tick Show clues, not words, in More options. In Genes and Heredity, Homozygous becomes "Having two matching versions of one gene, written BB or bb."

All 123 words

Classifying Living Things 24

Classifying Living Things, continued

Genes and Heredity 21

Evolution and Adaptation 17

Life Processes 20

Life Cycles and Growth 22

Biologists and Branches of Biology 19

How it works

Life science word search or high school biology

What the PDF holds

Questions and answers

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