Ecology Basics
This is a nonliving factor in an ecosystem, such as sunlight, temperature, water, or soil.
What is an abiotic factor?
The place where an organism lives and obtains the resources it needs is called this.
What is a habitat?
Organisms that make that make their own food, usually using energy from sunlight, are called these.
What are autotrophs?
A simple model that shows how energy moves from one organism to another is called this.
What is a food chain?
A dog eats both meat and plants. Is it an herbivore, carnivore, or omnivore?
What is an omnivore?
This is a group of organisms of the same species living in the same area.
What is a population?
The role an organism plays in its environment, including how it uses resources, is called this.
What is a niche?
Organisms that must obtain energy by consuming other organisms are called these.
What are heterotrophs?
A model that shows multiple interconnected feeding relationships within an ecosystem is called this.
What is a food web?
A lion hunts and kills a zebra for food. This ecological interaction is called this.
What is predation?
All the populations of different species living and interacting in the same area make up this level of organization.
What is a biological community?
Two organisms have a relationship in which both benefit. This type of symbiosis is called this.
What is mutualism?
In the food chain grass > rabbit > fox, the rabbit is classified as this type of consumer.
What is an herbivore?
In this food chain algae > minnow > sunfish, identify the producer, primary consumer, and secondary consumer.
What is algae = producer, minnow = primary consumer, and sunfish = secondary consumer?
A squirrel, oak tree, mushroom, and hawk all live in the same forest. Together, the living populations make up this.
What is a biological community?
This level of organization includes all the living things and nonliving components interacting in an area.
What is an ecosystem?
In this type of symbiosis, one organism benefits while the other is neither helped nor harmed.
What is commensalism?
In the food chain grass > grasshopper > frog > snake > hawk, the grasshopper is at this trophic level.
What is a the primary consumer?
In a food web, a species that disappears may affect many other organisms because organisms are connected through these relationships. Give one possible effect of the species' extinction?
What is its predators may lose a food source, its prey may increase in population, or competition among other species may change?
A species of bird can eat many different types of food and live in many different environments. Would you classify it as a generalist or specialist?
What is a generalist?
Put these in order from smallest to largest:
ecosystem, population, community, organism, biosphere.
What is organism > population > community > ecosystem > Biosphere?
A tick feeds on the blood of a dog while the tick benefits and the dog is harmed. This type of symbiosis is called this.
What is parasitism?
Explain what would most likely happen to an ecosystem's food web if the sun suddenly stopped providing energy.
What is producers would eventually die, causing consumers to lose their food and energy sources, disrupting the entire ecosystem?
Imagine that wolves are removed from a biological community. Deer populations increase because they have fewer predators. The deer then consume more vegetation, causing plant populations to decrease. What ecological concept does this demonstrate.
What is a cascading effect (trophic cascade)?
Two species of birds live in the same forest and depend on the same limited food source. According to the competition exclusion principle, what could eventually happen.
What is one species may outcompete the other, forcing it to move, change its niche, or potentially become locally extinct?