Organization of Life & Abiotic/Biotic
These are the non-living parts of an ecosystem, such as sunlight, temperature, soil, and water.
What are abiotic factors?
This term describes day-to-day conditions like temperature and precipitation.
What is weather?
This is the relationship where one animal hunts and eats another.
What is predator–prey?
Organisms like plants and algae that make their own food using sunlight.
What are producers?
These gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere.
What are greenhouse gases?
A group of organisms of the same species living in the same area at the same time.
What is a population?
This term describes the long-term average of temperature, precipitation, and weather patterns.
What is climate?
A relationship where both organisms benefit — like bees and flowers.
What is mutualism?
Animals that eat only plants.
What are herbivores (primary consumers)?
Burning these fuels releases stored carbon into the atmosphere as CO₂.
What are fossil fuels?
All the different populations living together in one area.
What is a community?
A large geographical region with specific climate conditions, plants, and animals (examples: tundra, desert, rainforest).
What is a biome?
A relationship where one organism benefits while the other is harmed — like ticks on a dog.
What is parasitism?
These consumers eat both plants and animals.
What are omnivores?
Fossil fuels are formed from these ancient materials under heat and pressure over millions of years.
What are dead plants and animals (organic matter)?
This level of organization includes all biotic and abiotic components interacting together.
What is an ecosystem?
This scientific technique involves counting or estimating species in small sample areas to draw conclusions about the whole ecosystem.
What is ecosampling?
In a food web, these organisms break down dead materials and return nutrients to the soil.
What are decomposers?
Only about this percentage of energy is transferred from one trophic level to the next.
What is 10%?
Humans disrupt the carbon cycle by doing this, which removes trees that normally absorb carbon dioxide.
What is deforestation?
These three spheres — the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere — together support all life on Earth.
What is the biosphere?
Give one ecological consequence of humans damming a river.
What is… (any of the following)?
blocking fish migration
flooding upstream habitats
reducing downstream water flow
altering sediment movement
destroying wetlands
changing water temperature
reducing biodiversity
This term describes how energy moves from producers to consumers and decreases at every level.
What is energy flow (or a food chain/web)?
This pyramid model shows that the amount of energy decreases as you move from producers to top predators.
What is an energy pyramid?
This process explains how greenhouse gases contribute to global warming.
What is the greenhouse effect (trapping heat and increasing global temperatures)?