Food Chains
Plants create their own food using energy from sunlight through this process.
What is photosynthesis?
This is formed when all the overlapping food chains in an ecosystem are put together.
What is a food web?
An ecosystem is defined as a collection of living organisms interacting with each other and with these other factors in their environment.
What are non-living (or abiotic) factors?
Organisms compete with one another in an ecosystem because these items are limited.
What are resources (such as food, water, mates, or space)?
The term used to describe the total variety of different living organisms in a particular area.
What is biodiversity?
Organisms such as fungi and bacteria that release chemicals to break down dead matter and recycle nutrients.
What are decomposers?
True or False: An organism in a food web can occupy more than one role, such as being both a secondary and tertiary consumer
What is True?
Living parts of an ecosystem, such as tigers, mushrooms, grass, and snails, are given this classification.
What are biotic factors?
A symbiotic relationship where both species benefit, causing both of their populations to grow faster when living together.
What is mutualism?
A non-native species that is introduced to a new ecosystem and causes environmental damage or harm.
What is an invasive species?
In a food chain diagram, the arrows must always point in this direction.
What is from the organism being eaten to the organism eating it (or the direction of energy flow)?
In a forest food web, if a kiwi eats a spider that previously ate a grasshopper, the kiwi is acting as this level of consumer.
What is a tertiary consumer?
Non-living parts of an ecosystem, such as temperature, water, sunlight, and rocks, are given this classification.
What are abiotic factors?
A symbiotic relationship where one species benefits while the other species is harmed
What is parasitism?
Introduced brown tree snakes caused 10 out of 11 native bird species in Guam to go extinct, causing a major loss of this.
What is biodiversity?
An animal like a wood rat that gets its energy by directly eating producers like the brittlebush.
What is a primary consumer (or herbivore)?
In a pond food web containing water plants, small fish, and large fish, removing the large fish will cause the water plant population to do this.
What is decrease? (Because small fish increase and eat more plants)
An animal located at the very top of a food chain or web that has no natural predators in its ecosystem.
What is an apex predator?
A symbiotic relationship where one species benefits and the other species is completely unaffected.
What is commensalism?
True or False: Only animals can be invasive species in an ecosystem.
What is False? (Plant species and other organisms can also be invasive)
These organisms harvest energy from the Sun to provide the necessary first step of energy for all other organisms in an ecosystem.
What are producers?
In a forest food web covered in one of our Stiles, matter and energy flow to the spider from a grasshopper, and then flow from the spider to this bird. This bird lives in New Zealand.
What is the kiwi?
By breaking down dead matter into simple nutrients, decomposers recycle matter back into the food web to support producers and these other organisms.
What are consumers?
Two different species of garden plants growing right next to each other compete for these three primary abiotic resources.
What are space, water (or nutrients), and sunlight?
When an introduced predator like a red fox enters an ecosystem and eats lemmings and hares, native predators like wolves will experience this impact on their population size.
What is a decrease (or reduction)? (Due to competition for limited food)