Ecosystem Basics
All the living and nonliving things in an area together.
What is an ecosystem?
Organisms that make their own food usually using sunlight
What are producers (autotrophs)?
A diagram that shows ONE path energy takes
What is a food chain?
What is one reason an ecosystem might become unbalanced?
What is loss of a species, pollution, invasive species, overhunting, etc.
How can you tell if a food web shows a healthy ecosystem?
Many species with balanced competition, several connections, stable predator-prey relationships.
A group of the same species living in the same place.
What is a population?
Animals that must eat other organisms to get energy.
What are consumers (heterotrophs)?
A diagram that shows MANY connected feeding paths
What is a food web?
A plant that spreads fast and harms other species
What is an invasive species?
If a plant disappears, why might a predator be affected even if it doesn’t eat the plant?
Herbivores that predators depend on would decrease.
A group of different species living together in the same area.
What is a community?
These organisms break down dead material and return nutrients to the soil.
What are decomposers?
The direction arrows point in a food chain.
What is toward the organism receiving energy (toward the eater)?
Why would losing a producer affect many consumers in a food web?
Consumers depend on producers for energy, directly or indirectly.
How are food webs and the carbon cycle similar?
They both show matter moving through ecosystems.
Give one example of a biotic factor and one example of an abiotic factor.
Who Knows
What is one way decomposers help keep ecosystems balanced?
What happens to energy as it moves up a food chain?
What is it decreases at each level?
Why do savanna support more life than the tundra?
More water, more plants, and more habitats, warmer climate
Why is it important to include abiotic factors when studying ecosystems?
They control the living things that can survive there.
Explain why abiotic factors can limit which organisms live in an ecosystem.
Who Knows
Why are producers the most important energy source in a food web?
Who knows?
Explain how matter cycles in an ecosystem.
Producers → consumers → decomposers → back to the environment--> Producers
Predict what happens if humans overfish a key predator.
Prey populations increase; food web becomes unbalanced.
What could a model show to explain seasonal changes in available energy?
Less sunlight → producers make less food → less energy for consumers.