Vocab
Something an organism uses or obtains from its environment to grow, survive, or reproduce.
What is a resource?
Food, water, sunlight, oxygen, space, and shelter belong to this category.
What are resources?
One wildflower wilts because it receives too little water. This is this type of effect.
What is an individual effect?
A living or once-living part of an ecosystem.
What is a biotic factor?
A group of plants received 5 mL of water each day. Another group received 25 mL each day. What resource did the students change?
What is water availability?
A resource or environmental condition that restricts growth, survival, reproduction, or population size.
What is a limiting Factor?
Temperature, soil type, and water quality belong to this category.
What are environmental conditions?
The number of trout living in a stream decreases from 100 to 45. This is this type of effect.
What is a population effect?
A nonliving part of an ecosystem.
What is an abiotic factor?
Plants receiving 5 mL of water per day grew to an average height of 3 cm. Plants receiving 25 mL per day grew to an average height of 13 cm.
Describe the pattern in the data.
As water availability increased, average plant height increased.
This occurs when organisms try to use the same limited resource.
What is Competition?
A meadow receives very little rainfall. Identify the changing factor, its type, and the word that describes its availability (scarce or abundant)
What is water, a scarce resource?
A drought causes grass to become scarce. Describe one possible effect on an individual elk.
One elk may become weak, grow less, fail to reproduce, leave the area, or die because it cannot find enough food.
A disease spreads through a mule deer population. Is the change biotic or abiotic?
What is biotic?
Four out of ten plants survived when they received 5 mL of water per day. All ten plants survived when they received 25 mL per day.
How did water availability affect the plant populations?
More plants survived in the population receiving more water.
Information, observations, measurements, or data used to support a claim.
What is evidence?
A stream becomes too warm for trout. Identify the changing factor, its type, and the word that describes it (suitable or unsuitable).
What is temperature, an unsuitable environmental condition?
A drought affects many elk in the same area. Explain how the population could be affected over time.
Fewer elk may survive and reproduce, causing the elk population to decrease.
A drought causes fewer wildflowers to grow. Insects that eat the wildflowers then have less food. The effect on the insects is this type of effect.
What is an indirect effect?
Plants receiving 10 mL of water grew to an average height of 5 cm. Plants receiving 30 mL grew to an average height of 14 cm.
Give two specific numbers that could be used as evidence that water availability affected plant growth.
Plants receiving 10 mL averaged 5 cm, while plants receiving 30 mL averaged 14 cm.
A feature of the environment that affects an organism but is not used up.
What is an environmental condition?
Several owls are trying to use one nesting tree. Identify the limiting factor and the interaction occurring between the owls.
What are nesting space or shelter and competition?
Complete the cause-and-effect pattern:
When a resource becomes __________ or a condition becomes __________, individual growth, survival, or reproduction may be affected. If many individuals are affected, the __________ may change.
What are scarce, unsuitable, and population size?
A disease decreases the mule deer population. Explain one possible indirect effect on mountain lions.
Mountain lions may have less food available, so fewer may survive or reproduce, causing the mountain lion population to decrease.
Plants receiving 5 mL of water grew to an average height of 3 cm, and only four out of ten survived. Plants receiving 25 mL grew to an average height of 13 cm, and all ten survived.
Explain how these results show both an individual effect and a population effect.
Individual plants grew taller when more water was available. The group receiving more water also had more plants survive, so that population contained more living plants.