Terms
The base level of a food web typically gets energy not through feeding but instead through ____________.
photosynthesis
What do we call the organisms that get energy directly from the sun instead of by feeding?
Producers
Why does a producer make sugar using sunlight?
To get energy
Name one Mono Lake species
Check answer
"A worm is eaten by a bird, which is eaten by a bobcat." This statement describes one part of a food web, which we call a _________.
food chain
What do we call the level of organisms that eat plants and other photosynthesizing organisms?
Primary consumers
What is the name of the lake we have been studying together for the Ecosystems unit?
Mono Lake
Energy that is not used by an organism is typically lost to the air as _______.
heat
The levels of a food web are also called ______ levels.
trophic
What do we call the organisms that eat organisms that eat plants?
Secondary consumers
Why is the producer part of a trophic pyramid the largest part?
Because producers constitute the greatest biomass of an ecosystem
What is the role decomposers, who eat dead organisms, play in an ecosystem?
They break down matter so it can be recycled back into the ecosystem.
When a toxin becomes more concentrated in upper-level consumers in an ecosystem, that phenomenon is called __________.
Biomagnification
This level is typically the highest level of a food web for a terrestrial (land-based) ecosystem.
Tertiary consumers
About how much biomass at one level of an ecosystem becomes biomass at the next level when it is eaten?
About 10%
What does the term "benthic" mean, as in "benthic algae?"
living at the bottom of a body of water