Vocabulary
This term refers to the non-living parts of an ecosystem.
What is ABIOTIC
An animal that serves as a food source for another animal.
What is PREY?
A representation of the distribution of biomass, and energy among trophic levels.
What is the TROPHIC (ENERGY) PYRAMID?
Any organism that gets its energy and matter from eating other organisms
What is a CONSUMER?
Red Squirrel and Sitka Spruce
Example of a mutually beneficial relationship.
A group of organisms that break down dead animals, plants, and waste into simpler inorganic substances.
What are Decomposers?
The type of relationship where both organisms benefit.
What is MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL (MUTUALISM)?
Trophic Pyramid Levels
What are: producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers, and tertiary consumers?
A community of living organisms and their environment.
What is an ECOSYSTEM?
The three sub-categories of Symbiotic Relationships.
What is: PARASITISM, COMMENCALISM, AND MUTUALISM?
Anything that has mass and takes up space.
What is matter?
A type of ecological relationship where both organisms must contend for the same common resource.
What is a COMPETITIVE RELATIONSHIP?
10% Rule
What is the idea that only 10% of the energy in one trophic level gets passed onto the next trophic level?
First hand effect of a decrease in the population of a tertiary consumer.
What is: Increase in secondary consumers?
Tick sucking the blood of a deer.
What is a PARASITIC RELATIONSHIP?
Organisms that are able to convert the sun's energy into usable energy for themselves and all biological organisms.
What are PRODUCERS?
An example of this relationship would be the relationship between barnacles and humpback whales, or grass seeds and moose.
What is a COMMENSAL relationship?
First hand effect of a decrease in producers.
What is: All other populations would eventually decrease, starting with primary consumers?
Cycle of matter in an ecosystem
What is: Matter is converted and recycled into different forms as it is passed along a food chain.
The general name for the phenomenon where species depend on each other-- if the population of one increases or decreases, this can affect the entire ecosystem.
What is INTERDEPENDENCE?
An individual living entity that functions as a self-sufficient unit, capable of processes such as growth, metabolism, reproduction, and response to stimuli.
What is an ORGANISM?
Name for the relationship category that refers to "the long-term living together of unlike organisms".
What is SYMBIOSIS?
Flow of Energy in an Ecosystem
What is: Starting with the energy from the sun, then producers, then consumers--Energy transfers through living things and is also "lost" in other forms (like heat and movement)?
Keystone Species
What is a species on which other species in an ecosystem largely depend, such that if it were removed the ecosystem would change drastically?
Over evolutionary time, organisms will adapt their behavior to best suit their environment and benefit their survival- For example, certain environmental pressures could cause a previously parasitic relationship to eventually become mutually beneficial.
What is SYMBIOSIS AS A CONTINUUM?