Biotic Vs. Abiotic
This term describes living or once-living parts of an ecosystem, such as plants, animals, and bacteria.
biotic factors
This is the scientific term for a group of individuals of the same species living in the same place at the same time.
population
An unusually dry summer leads to a shortage of berries. Predict the effect on the local bear population.
The bear population will decrease or move away.
This dry, arid biome has very low rainfall, forcing plants and animals to adapt to extreme water scarcity to keep their population sizes stable.
desert biome
In a food web, the arrows do not show who eats whom; instead, they point in the direction of this moving through the system.
energy
This term describes nonliving physical and chemical elements in an ecosystem, such as temperature, rocks, and water.
abiotic factors
When the birth rate of a population is higher than its death rate, the overall population size will do this.
increase or grow
If a disease wipes out 80% of the rabbit population, the population of their grass food source will likely experience this effect.
It will increase
This frozen, treeless biome has a layer of permanently frozen soil called permafrost, which heavily limits the types of plant populations that can grow.
tundra
These organisms sit at the base of every food web and use sunlight to make their own food, supporting all other populations.
producers or plants
If a wild fire sweeps through a Tennessee forest, is the ash left behind considered a biotic or abiotic variable?
abiotic
Food, water, space, and shelter are examples of these, which restrict how large a population can grow.
limiting factors
How does an increase in sunlight and warm spring temperatures typically affect plant population growth in a meadow?
It causes an increase.
Tennessee is primarily located within this biome, characterized by four distinct seasons and trees that lose their leaves every autumn.
deciduous forest
If an invasive insect completely wipes out the primary consumers in a food web, the secondary consumer populations will likely experience this change.
decrease
Identify whether predators and disease are biotic or abiotic environmental variables.
biotic
If an elk population in a protected area exhausts its food supply of fresh grass, the population size will most likely experience this change.
a decrease
A factory warms up a nearby stream's water, dropping dissolved oxygen levels. The trout population's response is an example of what kind of relationship?
cause and effect
In a marine biome, a sudden spike in coral reef destruction will directly cause the population of reef-dependent fish to do this.
decrease
These vital organisms, like fungi and bacteria, break down dead matter and return nutrients back to the soil for producers to use.
decomposers
A sudden drop in winter water temperature in a river causes a fish population to shrink. Is temperature a biotic or abiotic variable in this system?
abiotic
This maximum population size that a specific environment can sustainably support over time is called what?
carrying capacity
Explain how a severe drought can indirectly cause a reduction in a consumer population like hawks.
Reducing plants causes a reduction in rodents and then a reduction in hawks.
This biome—often called a prairie or savanna—is dominated by grasses rather than large trees, and it supports huge populations of grazing herbivores like bison or zebras.
grassland
This specific term describes an organism that eats both plant populations (producers) and animal populations (consumers) within a food web.
omnivore