This is the process by which plants convert light energy from the sun into a chemical form (sugar).
What is photosynthesis?
This is a model of multiple, interconnected food chains within an ecosystem
What is a food web?
Animals that hunt and feed on other animals are known as this.
What are predators?
In an energy pyramid, the bottom level is made up of these organisms, which collect and store energy directly from sunlight.
What are producers
Having a much greater amount of this—meaning a wide variety of different species—makes an ecosystem healthier and more stable over time.
What is biodiversity?
Plants rely on photosynthesis to grow and reproduce, which requires these three specific resources
What are energy from the sun, water, and carbon dioxide in the air?
In a pond food web containing plants, slugs, turtles, and snakes, if all snakes are removed, the turtle population will increase, causing this to happen to the plant and slug populations.
What is they will both decrease?
When different organisms need the same food supply, they must engage in this type of interaction to get the resources they need to survive.
What is competition?
Because they cannot use energy directly from the sun and must get their energy by eating other organisms, animals are known as this.
What are consumers?
When loggers cut down a large area of trees, an endangered species can lose a lot of this, forcing them to find a new place to survive.
What is its habitat?
If a large forest of trees is suddenly cut down, this specific effect on the air is most likely to occur as a result of halted photosynthesis.
What is a decrease in oxygen
If all slugs were removed from that same pond, the turtles would eat the same amount of plants but no slugs, resulting in this change to the turtle and snake populations.
What is there would be fewer turtles and snakes?
Barberfish swim alongside hammerhead sharks eating dead skin, fungi, and parasites. Because both organisms benefit, this relationship is called this.
What is mutualism?
As you move up the energy pyramid from producers to tertiary consumers, this happens to the amount of available energy at each level.
What is there is less energy (only about 10% passes up)?
A loss of coastal seagrass due to boat traffic leads to a reduction in biodiversity and the potential for an increase in this geological problem during big storms.
What is erosion?
One piece of evidence that an organism undergoes cellular respiration is that the organism does this to food to support its growth.
What is breaks down food?
Because it affects the producers that support everything else, a decrease in rainfall resulting in this event would have the most severe consequences for the largest number of organisms in a food chain.
What is a drought?
Cattle egrets eat bugs that fly out of the grass as cattle walk through it. Because the egret benefits but the cattle is neither helped nor harmed, this is an example of this.
What is commensalism?
These organisms break down dead life forms for their own survival, which releases nutrients back into the ecosystem for other life forms to use.
What are decomposers?
When designing a tunnel for animals to cross under a road safely, scientists choose the design that results in the highest biodiversity because it helps keep the ecosystem in this condition.
What is stable?
In the cycle of matter between plants and animals, animals release this gas as a byproduct of cellular respiration, which plants then need for photosynthesis
What is carbon dioxide (CO2)?
In a forest where skunks eat mice, and coyotes eat both mice and skunks, if the skunks all die, there may or may not be enough of this organism for the coyotes to maintain their population.
What are mice?
An organism that is not native to an ecosystem, has few natural predators, and whose population rapidly grows out of control is known as this.
What is an invasive species?
In addition to water, these are two crucial parts of the energy flow often missing from a standard ecosystem energy pyramid.
What are the sun and decomposers?
Two different sections of a stream can be considered equally healthy if they both have high biodiversity and a lack of this over time.
What are major changes (in biodiversity)?