Ecosystem Basics
What is an ecosystem?
A community of plants, animals, and smaller organisms that interact with each other and with non-living factors in the environment around them.
What is the definition of a biotic factor?
A living thing in an ecosystem.
What are the 3 type of consumers?
Omnivore, carnivore, and herbivore
True or False: Abiotic and biotic factors do not interact with each other at all in an ecosystem?
False -- Abiotic and biotic factors interact with each other in many different ways. For example, soil is abiotic and moles are biotic, but moles DO interact with soil by using it as a habitat.
What are the 2 main TYPES of factors in an ecosystem?
Abiotic and biotic
What are 3 examples of biotic factors in a forest ecosystem?
Possible answers: trees, nuts/seeds, flowers, worms, insects, rodents, small birds, owls, bears.
This uses the energy from the sun to make its own food?
Producers
an animal that survives by killing and eating another animal
Predator
In an ecosystem, different abiotic and biotic factors have different ________________________ with one another.
Relationships
Where does the producers get the energy to make their own food?
The sun.
Plants making their own food is known as
photosynthesis
Eats other organisms in order to survive
Consumers
Name a particular type of ecosystem.
Possible answers: forest, rain forest, aquatic, grasslands, desert.
Name one abiotic factor a mouse might interact with and explain how.
Possible answer: An mouse relies on water in an ecosystem to hydrate and survive.
What is one way of knowing that a factor is biotic?
Possible answers: It requires energy to survive. It grows. It reproduces. It reacts to its environment. When it dies it will decompose.
An animal that is hunted and killed by another animal for food?
prey
What do fungi, grass, worms, squirrels, and owls all have in common?
They are all BIOTIC factors!
Which of the following is an example of a competitive relationship:
a) a deer and rabbit both eating clover
b) a plant making food by using energy from the sun
c) a cow eating grass
d) a wolf eating a moose
The correct answer is A
Is soil biotic or abiotic?
abiotic
How can you be sure that grass is a biotic factor?
Possible answers: It can grow. It requires energy to survive (i.e. it uses light energy from the sun to produce its own source of energy).
An individual form of life such as a plant, animal, or fungus
organism
What is an ecosytem?
All the living and nonliving things in a certain area