Ecosystems 101
This term describes living and nonliving components interacting together.
What is an ecosystem?
This rule explains why energy decreases at higher trophic levels.
What is the 10% Rule?
In a food web, arrows show the direction of __________.
What is energy flow?
This interaction benefits both species involved.
What is mutualism?
This level of biodiversity refers to variation within a species.
What is genetic diversity?
Two major components of every ecosystem.
What are biotic and abiotic?
This term describes the total energy captured by producers.
What is Gross Primary Productivity (GPP)?
Herbivores belong to this trophic level.
What are primary consumers?
This interaction involving a host benefits one species and harms the other.
What is parasitism?
Species found only in one geographic area are called this.
What are endemic species?
This type of organism brings energy into most ecosystems.
What is a producer?
This process must be subtracted from GPP to calculate NPP.
What is Respiration?
Very few are found due to the minimal energy available at higher trophic levels.
This term describes how a species uses resources and interacts with its environment.
What is ecological niche?
Increased with increased biodiversity.
What is resilience?
This process allows producers to convert sunlight into chemical energy.
What is photosynthesis?
Food chains are short because energy is lost as __________ at each trophic level.
What is heat?
The removal of a top predator causing widespread ecosystem changes is called this.
What is a trophic cascade?
Using different resources to reduce competition is called this.
What is resource partitioning?
A sudden reduction in population size causes this evolutionary effect.
What is the bottleneck effect?
Ecosystems are considered systems because changes to one part __________.
What is affect other parts of the system?
If respiration increases while GPP stays constant, this value decreases.
What is Net Primary Productivity?
Removing ___________ from a food web affects all organisms because they are the source of the ecosystem’s energy.
What are producers?
This makes species more vulnerable to environmental changes, including if a non-native species is introduced to an ecosystem.
What are narrow tolerance ranges?
Evolutionary phenomenon that makes small isolated populations are at higher extinction risk.
What is reduced gene flow?