What is a biome?
What is a term used by ecologist to describe the homes of organism. Biomes are described in terms of abiotic and biotic factors.
What is the food eaten by an organism used for?
Cellular respiration, biomass increase, and waste production.
Each step in a food chain or food web is called a trophic level. List the trophic levels starting with the largest.
What is primary producer, first level consumer/primary consumer, secondary consumer, tertiary consumer/3rd level consumer.
This includes all parts of the Earth in which life exist.
What is the biosphere
What is ecological succession?
What is changes in an ecological community. Changes in the composition of species. One group gradually replacing another in a pattern.
Which biome has the greatest biodiversity?
What is a tropical rain forest.
What does the law of conservation of energy state?
What is that energy can be neither created or destroyed; it can only be transferred to another form.
What do pyramid of energy show?
What is the relative amount of energy available at each trophic level of a food chain or food web.
It shows the energy flowing through an energy pyramid. It tells how much energy is transferred from one trophic level to the next.
What are the levels of ecological organization? List from the smallest to the largest.
Species, population, community, ecosystem, biome, biosphere.
What is primary succession?
What is the successive rise and fall of populations of plants from original colonizers to mature trees and shrubs, beginning with barren rock that has no initial soil layer.
Which latitudinal region contains the fewest number of species?
What is the arctic region.
In living things what is the energy transferred as?
What is organic mater (Molecules of carbohydrate, lipid/fat). The processes of respiration, growth in biomass, and waste production to the flow of energy in a living organisms.
What does a pyramid of biomass illustrate?
What is the relative amount of living organic matter in each trophic level. It determines the amount of energy available to the organism in the next trophic level.
What are tiny primary producers usually floating algae called?
What is phytoplankton
What is the main difference between primary and secondary succession?
Primary succession begins with barren land, requiring pioneer communities to produce soil, which takes along time.
Secondary succession has soil or other substrates present to help with the establishment of plant life.
What biome is known as the "bread basket" of our country? Why?
What is grasslands. Moderate temperatures and appropriate amounts of precipitation are beneficial for growing grain.
Explain the difference in the amount of available energy in the trophic levels of the desert ecosystem.
What is there is less available energy in the fourth trophic level because of the loss of energy through the metabolism in each of the lower trophic levels.
What is the approximate amount of energy that is available for transfer from one trophic level to the next
What is 10%
Explain the two processes used by autotrophs? Give example.
What is photosynthesis and chemosynthesis.
Photosynthesis- plants. Harness sunlight energy and convert it into carbohydrate (food).
Chemosynthesis- bacteria. Harness chemical energy from inorganic molecules such as hydrogen sulfide.
Compare and contrast the recovery time between primary and secondary succession.
Primary succession takes longer as soil needs to be created.
Secondary succession has soil or other substrate present which help with the establishment of plant life. Succession is faster.
Describe the relationship between temperature, rainfall and the type of forest.
A colder temperature and lower amounts of precipitation result in the development of the coniferous forest, a temperate climate with higher precipitation results in deciduous forest and a higher temperature and higher precipitation results in the tropical rainforest.
Explain how much energy is transferred in an energy pyramid.
Each successive trophic level contains 10% of the available energy from the previous trophic level. The other 90% is lost as heat to the atmosphere through metabolism by the organisms in that level.
What do pyramid of numbers show?
What is a pyramid of numbers shows the relative number of individual organisms at each trophic level in an ecosystem.
Define ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of interactions among organisms, populations, and communities and their interactions with their environment.
Name the first organisms (colonizer) on land.
What is mosses, lichen, small ferns, and low growing plants.