Vocabulary
Any living thing is a/an ______________.
organism
The study of how living and non-living things interact with their environments.
ecology
Energy enters most ecosystems as ______
sunlight
Any organism that makes its own food
producer
A gas found in air that is produced as waste during photosynthesis
oxygen
Scientists that study ecosytems and teach other people about them
ecologist
What are the 4 levels of the rainforest (bottom to top)?
forest floor, understory, canopy, emergent layer
Plants combine carbon dioxide and water to make ________, which they use as food.
sugar
The process that producers use to make food from carbon dioxide and water.
photosynthesis
More than 300 years ago, scientists thought that plants got food from ______.
soil
The tiny plantlike organisms that are food for many pond animals.
algae
During photosynthesis, plants also produce _______, a waste product which they release into the air.
oxygen
A gas found in air that is used to make food by photosynthesis.
carbon dioxide
Who was the early Belgian scientist who questioned this idea of “soil-eating” plants?
Jan van Helmont
Describe a pond ecosystem.
Ponds are small bodies of fresh water.
Plants turn sugar into _______ for storage so they can have energy even when they cannot perform photosynthesis.
starch
A green substance found in leaves and other green parts of a plant.
chlorophyll
What did Jan van Helmont conclude from his experiments?
Trees do not get the matter they use for growth from soil. He thought that the matter must have come from water alone.
The understory does not get a lot of light so the leaves of plants grow _________. Why?
The understory does not get much sunlight, so plant leaves are big to capture more of it.
Explain why one ecosystem may have many more plants when compared to another ecosystem.
Most likely the cause is differences in temperature, sunlight, and soil.
(Think about the rainforest compared to a dessert)