Food Chains and Webs
Which organism is the primary consumer in the food chain below?
Grass → Chipmunk →Snake →Hawk
The Chipmunk
Name the 5 different types of relationships
1. Predation
2. Competition
3. Mutualism
4. Commensalism
5. Parasitism
What are the four types of animal communication?
1. Visual
2. Auditory
3. Chemical
4. Tactile
The main source of energy is what?
The Sun
Why are invasive species dangerous? Give at least 2 out of the three reasons.
They have no natural predators.
They spread quickly.
They compete with native species for resources.
What does it mean if a food chain has 4 trophic levels?
There are four organisms
In the deciduous forest you see squirrels eating berries and nuts and hawks eating snakes. These are both examples of what?
Predation or Predator and Prey relationships
There is a snake called a cobra that will inflate its hood to scare off other animals. What type of communication is this?
Visual
The last place energy flows to is where?
The decomposers
If an invasive species is an omnivore, what type of animals would it compete with?
Herbivores and carnivores.
If the primary consumer are deer and they are ALL hunted in an area, what does that mean for the producers and secondary consumers?
The producers will thrive because the deer aren’t eating them and the secondary consumers will compete for food and die off because the deer are gone.
There are certain fish that have crustaceans on them that swim to the surface and let the birds eat the crustaceans. What type of relationship is this between the fish and the bird? Explain.
Mutualism – the bird gets a meal and the fish gets cleaned up.
Watch the following clip and identify the type of animal communication.
Auditory
The producers start with 2567 kCal of energy. How much would the secondary consumers have available to them?
25.67 kCal
Analyze the graph. What is the most likely reason for the rabbits to be increasing?
The snake population is diseased.
A local ecosystem has discovered that the secondary consumers have increased while the primary consumers and producers are dying off. Why would this happen?
The secondary consumers are not being eaten by the top predator or tertiary consumer.
Dogs and cats have to take a flea and tick preventative every month to keep them flea and tick free. What would be the host in this relationship and would be the parasite?
Host would be the dog or cat.
Parasite would be the flea or tick.
Skunks defense mechanism is to spray their enemies and lifting their tails to signal a predator to back off. What is the main type of communication here?
Chemical
How does removing the first trophic level disrupt the energy flow?
The energy cannot be passed on to the second level which would cause the organisms to die.
Analyze the graph below. How many months was the ecosystem in equilibrium? What caused it to go out of equilibrium?
5 months.
The rabbits got sick.
Give one possible food chain with five trophic levels from the food web below AND label them producer, primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary.
Teacher will check the answers
Give an example of a symbiotic relationship we would be able to get from a forest food web.
Teacher will check answers.
Often times male birds do dances to attract mates, what type of communication is this and give another example of this type of communication that has not been stated.
Visual
Other examples teacher will check
Explain what the 10% rule is. How much does the organism keep and how much does it pass on.
The organisms keep 90% of the energy and pass on 10% to the next level.
What could cause this massive decline in deer if all the other organisms were at equilibrium?
Hunting