Vocabulary
This is the study of how living things interact with each other and their environment.
What is Ecology?
Name three different types of ecosystems.
What are desert, forest, arctic, wetland, grassland, and freshwater (any combination of the three)?
Plants use this green pigment to carry out photosynthesis.
What is Chlorophyll?
This type of interaction occurs when animals depend on plants for food.
What is a Direct interaction?
This shows the interconnected food chains within an ecosystem, showing who eats whom.
What is a Food Web?
These are factors in an ecosystem such as soil, water, sunlight, and temperature
What are Abiotic factors?
These living things are at the first level of a food chain and make their own food.
What are producers?
This gas is absorbed by plants during photosynthesis and used to create energy.
What is Carbon Dioxide?
Decomposers like fungi and bacteria break down dead plants and animals, which indirectly helps the ecosystem by doing this.
What is recycling nutrients into the soil?
Organisms like rabbits and cows that eat only plants are classified as this.
What are Herbivores?
These are factors in an ecosystem, like plants, animals, and bacteria.
Biotic factors
These are factors in an ecosystem that include climate patterns, vegetation structure, and geographic location.
What are ecosystem characteristics?
In aquatic ecosystems, plants help keep water clean by doing this.
What is Water Filtration?
When plants absorb water from the ground to grow, this is an example of what kind of interaction?
What is a Direct interaction?
This type of consumer eats both plants and animals.
What is an Omnivore?
This process uses light, water, and carbon dioxide to produce oxygen and sugar in plants.
What is Photosynthesis?
This term refers to tiny ocean plants that absorb carbon dioxide during photosynthesis and help store carbon when they sink to the ocean floor after they die.
What are phytoplankton?
The roots of plants prevent this process, which can lead to loss of fertile land and water pollution.
What is Soil Erosion?
The Sun influences the temperature of ecosystems, impacting all living things. This is an example of what kind of interaction?
What is an Indirect interaction?
These organisms break down dead plants and animals, recycling nutrients back into the ecosystem.
What are Decomposers?
This term describes the variety of plants, animals, and other organisms within an ecosystem, which helps maintain balance.
What is biodiversity or diversity?
How does the cold climate of the Arctic and the hot, dry conditions of deserts affect the diversity of plants and animals in each ecosystem?
The Arctic has lower biodiversity due to extreme cold, while deserts have limited diversity because of scarce water and extreme temperatures.
In the nutrient cycle, plants absorb nutrients from the soil and use them for growth. What step is missing after plants die and decompose?
What is return nutrients to the soil for plant growth?
Name three components of ecosystems based on their roles in the food chain.
What are Producers, Consumers, and Decomposers?
To determine an organism's niche, we need to know...
What is: what it eats, where it lives and how it interacts with other organisms in it's ecosystem.