Levels of Organization
Define 'organism'
Any living thing
Define 'herbivore'
An organism that only eats plants
Define 'competition'
The struggle for resources among organisms
Define 'evolution'
The process by which variations among individual organisms can lead to changes in an entire species over time
Give an example of a population
All of one kind of organism living in an area
Define 'carnivore'
An organism that only eats meat
What would happen if a population had unlimited resources?
They could grow to an unlimited size.
Who is considered to be the most prominent scientist in the development of evolution as a scientific theory?
Charles Darwin
Define 'ecosystem'
A collection of living and nonliving things that coexist in a common area
Define 'heterotroph'
An organism that needs to eat other organisms to get energy
List three (3) things that are considered limiting factors in an ecosystem.
Food, water, space, available mates, sunlight intensity, temperature range, weather, minerals available, water acidity, type of rock or soil, predator/prey relationships etc.
Define 'natural selection'
Those who survive and breed pass on their genetic information to the next generation.
Those who are not successful in the environment often die without leaving any offspring.
Define 'community'
All of the populations that live together in an area
What does the direction of the arrow show in a food web?
Define 'carrying capacity'
The number of organisms of any single species that an ecosystem can support
Why are organisms within a species never exactly alike?
Due to genetic variation - the unique combination of traits each organism inherits from its parents
List the levels of organization in order from SMALLEST to LARGEST
Individual - Population - Community - Ecosystem - Biome - Biosphere
Where do producers (autotrophs) get their energy from?
The sun
Explain the cycle of a predator/prey relationship.
High prey population - predators start to grow because of increased food availability.
Prey population decreases - predators start to die off because of limited food source.
Prey population increases because of lower predator population.
Cycle starts over again.
List the 4 conditions that are vital to the process of evolution.
Overproduction, Competition, Genetic variation, Selection by the environment