Energy Flow in Ecosystems
These organisms make their own food using sunlight or inorganic substances.
What are autotrophs (producers)?
This sphere of Earth includes all living organisms.
What is the biosphere?
This interaction occurs when one organism hunts, kills, and eats another organism.
What is predation?
This term describes the role an organism plays in its ecosystem, including how it obtains resources and interacts with other organisms.
What is a niche?
Unlike energy, which decreases as it moves through a food chain, the concentration of certain persistent pollutants does this.
What is increase?
This term describes an organism that obtains energy by consuming other organisms.
What is a heterotroph?
This model shows multiple interconnected food chains in an ecosystem.
What is a food web?
This level of ecological organization includes all members of the same species living in one area.
What is a population?
This interaction occurs when two organisms need the same limited resource.
What is competition?
The reintroduction of this predator to Yellowstone National Park helped change elk behavior and vegetation.
What are wolves?
Organisms at this trophic level (producer, primary consumer, secondary consumer, or tertiary consumer) generally have the highest concentrations of harmful substances due to biomagnification.
What are tertiary consumers?
Earthworms that consume fragments of dead organic matter belong to this group of consumers.
What are detritivores?
In a food chain, these symbols indicate the direction in which energy is transferred.
What are arrows?
This sphere of Earth includes all water, including oceans, lakes, rivers, and groundwater.
What is the hydrosphere?
Bees obtain nectar from flowers while helping the flowers reproduce. This relationship is an example of this type of symbiosis.
What is mutualism?
These marine mammals are keystone predators that help protect kelp forests by consuming sea urchins.
What are sea otters?
This toxic heavy metal can accumulate in aquatic food chains, reaching its highest concentrations in large predatory fish such as tuna and swordfish.
What is mercury?
This term describes the total mass of biotic matter at a trophic level.
What is biomass?
In the food chain grass → grasshopper → mouse → owl, the mouse occupies this trophic level.
What is the secondary consumer?
This level of organization includes all the different populations living and interacting in one area, but excludes nonliving factors.
What is a community?
A tick feeds on the blood of a deer, benefiting while harming its host. This relationship is an example of this type of symbiosis.
What is parasitism?
This ecological process occurs when a change in one population causes effects that spread through multiple trophic levels.
What is a trophic cascade?
This pesticide was widely used to kill insects but caused eggshell thinning in birds of prey, such as bald eagles, as it accumulated through food chains.
What is DDT?
Unlike detritivores, these organisms release digestive enzymes to chemically break down dead organic material.
What are decomposers?
An energy pyramid contains 80,000 kcal in producers. Using the 10% rule, this much energy is available to tertiary consumers.
What is 80 kcal?
A forest contains trees, deer, fungi, sunlight, soil, and water. Together, these living and nonliving components make up this level of ecological organization.
What is an ecosystem?
Barnacles attach to whales and gain transportation and access to food, while the whales are generally unaffected. This relationship is an example of this type of symbiosis.
What is commensalism?
Beavers are an example of this type of keystone species because they physically modify their environment by building dams, creating habitats for other species.
What is an ecosystem engineer?
Harmful substances can accumulate in the fatty tissues of organisms rather than being easily eliminated from their bodies. This property of these substances contributes to biomagnification.
What is fat-soluble?
This type of community interaction becomes more intense as resources become limited.
What is competition?