Vocabulary
What are organisms that make their own food and release oxygen?
Producers
What is a organism that only eats plants for energy?
Bonus: Which letter is silent?
Herbivores
Bonus: the "h" is silent
What are animals that hunt other animals to eat called?
Predators
What does a robin eat in a food chain?
Worms, crickets, or other small bugs.
Algae, trees, and grass are examples of what?
Producers
What are organisms that cannot produce their own food and must eat other organisms (plants or animals) to obtain energy?
Consumers
Plants take in _________ from the air and release _________ back into the air.
Carbon dioxide; oxygen
True or False: The arrows in a food web represent the flow of energy between organisms.
True. For example, a squirrel eats acorns from an oak tree. So, we would draw an arrow from the oak tree to the squirrel.
What are two kinds of decomposers?
How do you know they are decomposers? Explain your reasoning!
Worms, mushrooms, bacteria, etc. are all examples of decomposers since they break down dead organisms into smaller pieces and give nutrients back into the soil.
What are all the living and non-living things in a specific area called?
Ecosystem
Where does all of the energy in an ecosystem come from?
The Sun
What is the main thing plants use to grow?
Which pair of organisms needs to switch places in order for this food chain to be correct?
Grass -> Mouse -> Hawk -> Snake
Snake and Hawk
The food in our mold experiment got smaller. What is happening to it?
It is being decomposed by the mold.
Carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores are all examples of what?
Consumers
What are vitamins and minerals needed for an organism to grow and be healthy called?
Nutrients
True or False: Plants eat soil. Please explain your reasoning with full sentences.
False. Plants take in nutrients from the soil, but their main sources of matter is from air and then water. The experiment with the trees and weighing the soil at the start and end of the experiment proved that plants don't eat soil since the weight didn't change.
They use the energy from the sun to make their own food during photosynthesis
In an ecosystem, how are food webs and food chains different?
Food webs show the relationship between many different food chains in a single ecosystem.
Why do you have to clean a fish tank but not a pond?
A fish tank doesn't have decomposers to break down waste or plants to produce oxygen, so you need a filter otherwise, too much carbon dioxide that would cause fish to not be able to breathe.
Would a carnivore go extinct without the sun? Explain your reasoning.
Yes, because they get their energy from the sun. Even though carnivores do not produce their own food or eat plants, the organisms they do eat get their energy from plants, which get their energy from the sun.
EVERYTHING CAN BE TRACED BACK TO THE SUN!
What are organisms that break down waste and dead material into nutrients for plants?
Decomposers
What would happen if you covered the stomata of a plant?
It would die because it isn't getting air through the stomata and plants need carbon dioxide in order to survive (it is used during photosynthesis to make "matter" or energy for the plant).
Where do producers get their energy from?
What would happen if this energy source disappeared? Explain your reasoning.
The Sun
The entire ecosystem would collapse. Without the sun, producers would die. Without producers omnivores and herbivores would complete with each other and start to die. Without a food source, carnivores would struggle to find food and would eventually die off.
Why are decomposers important for the food chain?
Decomposers are important to the food chain for many reasons. They break down dead plants and animals, release, carbon dioxide into the air, and release nutrients back into the soil. If there world didn't have decomposers, plants would not thrive and the world would be covered by dead plants and animals.
How many life processes are there?
List all of the life processes and give examples of each one!
There are 6:
1. Get energy
2. Use energy
3. Reproduce
4. Get rid of waste
5. React to change
6. Grow