Consumers & Competition
Symbiosis & Predation
Energy & Producers
Balancing Ecosystems & Biodiversity
Your Questions
100
These organisms obtain energy by eating other organisms.
What are consumers?
100
This term is an predator that has an unusually large impact on its ecosystem. The removal of these species can completely destroy the ecosystem.
What is a keystone species?
100
These organisms convert sunlight into usable energy, forming the base of the food web.
What are producers?
100
These organisms consume dead animals.
What are scavengers?
100
This term means the variety of life in a certain area.
What is biodiversity?
200
This is the competition between individuals of the same species.
What is intraspecific competition?
200
Describe the host & symbiont species in symbiosis.
The host is the larger organism that provides food, shelter, or other support.
The symbiont is the smaller organism that depends upon the host.
200
These are the three ways ecologists model eating patterns in an ecosystem.
What is a food chain, food web, and energy pyramid?
200
Without these organisms, nutrients would not be recycled.
What are decomposers or scavengers?
200
Energy flow is modeled by using ___ (symbol) in food chains & webs.
What is an arrow?
300
In the food chain: phytoplankton → krill → fish → leopard seal → polar bear, this organism is the apex predator.
What is the polar bear?
300
This is why predators are an important part of ecosystems.
These organisms help control the populations of their prey, preventing overgrazing and maintaining ecosystem balance.
300
These are the ingredients producers use to create glucose in photosynthesis.
What are carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight?
300
_____ often outcompete native species when introduced to a new ecosystem.
What are invasive species?
300
True or False: An organism always dies if it is outcompeted by another.
False - organisms will try to adapt or move to a new habitat.
400
Besides food, water, and space, organisms compete for this resource.
What is light?
400
This explains the three types of symbiosis.
mutualism: both species benefit.
commensalism: one benefits & the other is neither hurt or helped
parasitism: one species benefits while the other is harmed.
400
This is why there are usually only 4 or 5 trophic levels in a food chain.
What is because only about 10% of energy is transferred between trophic levels, and there isn't enough energy to support more levels?
400
This is what happened when wolves were removed from Yellowstone National Park.
What is a trophic cascade?
400
These are the three types of predation.
What is true predation (hunting & killing prey), grazing, and parasitism?
500
This principle states that two species cannot occupy the same niche in the same habitat at the same time.
What is the competitive exclusion principle?
500
Prey have adapted to be equipped with these characteristics to avoid predation. (List & describe 3)
Camouflage - Disguise using color, shape, or pattern.
Mimicry - Looking like another, more harmful, species
Speed & agility - Being fast to outrun prey or moving in confusing patterns
Armor/ defense - Hard, protective shells, sharp spines, thick skin
Social behavior - Living in herds for protection & communication, mobbing
Behaviors - Being nocturnal, playing dead, migration
Chemical defense - Sprays and poisons
Reproduction - Reproducing quickly in large numbers
500
These are three ways that energy is used in each trophic level.
What is: To grow, repair tissues, interact in the environment, lost as heat...
500
This is why biodiversity should be protected by humans.
Biodiversity helps keep our planet healthy & provides for humanity's well-being, providing essential services like clean air, water, food, and medicines, while also playing a vital role in climate regulation and resilience.
500
This is how some bacteria make their own energy.
What is chemosynthesis?