vocabulary
What is a niche? Give an example.
A niche is the role an organism has in its ecosystem.
Example: A bee’s niche is pollinating flowers and getting nectar for food
What is the role of a decomposer in a food web?
Decomposers break down dead organisms and return nutrients to the ecosystem.
What is a producer?
An organism that makes its own food.
What happens if a population has less food available?
The population may decrease.
Which is a population: one frog or all the frogs living in a pond?
All the frogs living in a pond.
What is a habitat? Give an example.
A habitat is the place where an organism lives and gets what it needs to survive.
A pond is a habitat for frogs.
In this food chain, grass → grasshopper → frog → snake, what does the grasshopper eat?
Grass
What is a consumer?
An organism that gets energy by eating other organisms.
A forest has deer, trees, rabbits, foxes, insects, water, and sunlight. What makes this an ecosystem?
The living and nonliving parts interact and depend on one another.
What do the arrows in a food chain show?
The direction energy moves.
What is a population? Give an example.
A population is all the organisms of the same species living in the same area.
Example: All the frogs living in a pond are a population.
grass → grasshopper → frog → snake.
If the number of grasshoppers in a food web suddenly decreases, what could happen to the frogs that eat them? Explain why.
The frog population could decrease because there would be less food available for them.
Which is a producer: grass, rabbit, or fox?
Grass
A student gives one plant 2 hours of sunlight and another plant 6 hours of sunlight. What is the independent variable?
The amount of sunlight.
Where does most energy in an ecosystem originally come from?
The Sun.
What is an ecosystem? Give an example.
An ecosystem includes all the living and nonliving things interacting in an area.
Example: A pond ecosystem includes frogs, fish, plants, water, sunlight, and rocks.
Why are producers important to an ecosystem?
They provide food and energy for other organisms
What is the name for a variable that remains the same throughout an experiment?
A constant.
Leaves → Caterpillar → Bird → Hawk. If the caterpillar population increases, what could happen to the bird population?
The bird population could increase because there is more food available.
What is the difference between a community and an organism?
Answer: An organism is one living thing, while a community is all the different populations of living things living and interacting in the same area.
Example: One frog is an organism; all the frogs, fish, insects, and plants living in a pond make up a community.
What is the difference between a food chain and a food web?
Answer: A food chain shows one path of energy, while a food web shows many connected food chains.
What is a decomposer?
An organism that breaks down dead organisms and returns nutrients to the environment
What would happen to an ecosystem if all the producers disappeared?
Consumers would eventually decrease because they would lose their main source of food and energy.
Seeds → Mouse → Snake → Hawk. If the mouse population increases, what could happen to the snake population?
The snake population could increase because there is more food available.