Ecosystem Relationships
A relationship where one organism hunts and eats another organism.
What is a predator-prey relationship?
Activities that harm ecosystems, such as pollution, deforestation, or littering.
What are the things that destroy the environment?
Frogs are producing fewer tadpoles because the lake is shrinking during a drought.
What is less water available for reproduction?
The process plants use carbon dioxide to make food.
What is photosynthesis?
Phytoplankton → krill → seals → sharks. Removing this organism would cause the most immediate impact.
What is phytoplankton (the producer)?
The relationship between a whale and barnacles is one where barnacles benefit but the whale is unaffected.
What is commensalism?
What are beneficial environmental impacts?
Actions like recycling, conservation, or habitat restoration.
Mosquito populations decreased after a very cold winter.
What is cold temperatures killing mosquitoes?
During respiration, animals take in this gas and release carbon dioxide.
What is oxygen?
Organisms that make their own food using sunlight.
What are producers?
A relationship where one organism benefits while the other is harmed.
What is parasitism?
Trash collecting in rivers can decrease oxygen levels and harm aquatic life.
What is water pollution harming organisms?
If the white shark population increases, the fish population will most likely decrease.
What is predation reducing prey population?
Nonliving parts of the environment that help cycle carbon.
What are abiotic factors?
Animals that eat other animals for energy.
What are carnivores?
An organism that eats plants for energy.
What is an herbivore?
One example of a negative human impact on habitats.
What is deforestation, pollution, or habitat destruction?
Brown bears entered a nearby town after a tornado destroyed forest trees.
What is habitat loss forcing animals to search for food elsewhere?
The organisms that break down dead plants and animals and recycle nutrients.
What are decomposers (fungi and bacteria)?
A network of interconnected food chains in an ecosystem.
What is a food web?
In a food chain, the polar bear hunts seals and is at the top of the Arctic food chain.
What is an apex predator (top predator)?
Zebra mussels are competing with native species for food sources.
What is competition with native aquatic organisms?
Animals during the Ice Age lost their habitats to ice sheets.
What is extinction or migration to new habitats?
In a food web, each level depends on the level below it for energy.
What is a trophic level?
Habitat destruction is causing the extinction of insects in Madagascar, which then affects lemurs.
What is the loss of biodiversity due to habitat destruction?