Download 12BCDF Environmental Interactions and Effects

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Review
B.12BCDF: Environmental Interactions and Effects
B.12B: Compare variations and adaptations of organisms in different ecosystems.
Supporting Standard
B.12C: Analyze the flow of matter and energy through trophic levels using various models,
including food chains, food webs, and ecological pyramids.
✪ Readiness Standard
B.12D: Recognize that long-term survival of species is dependent on changing resource
bases that are limited. Supporting Standard
B.12F: Describe how environmental change can impact ecosystem stability.
✪ Readiness Standard
1. Adaptations are genetic characteristics that allow organisms to survive and
reproduce in their ecosystem. Adaptations refer to populations, but individual
species may have variations of a particular trait.
2. Some adaptations are structural, like the webbed feet of a duck. Others are
behavioral, like the migration of birds, or hibernation of small mammals. Trees
losing their leaves and undergoing dormancy is an example of a plant’s physiological
adaptation to surviving a cold winter.
3. As organisms consume energy through eating plants and other organisms, energy
flows from the Sun through trophic levels creating a food web. Matter is ultimately
recycled through decomposers, but the amount of available energy decreases from
one trophic level to the next (energy pyramid).
4. The amount of natural space, food, shelter, and water are limited and competed
for as species struggle to survive. These aspects are known as limiting factors and
can effect every level of organization from organism to ecosystem.
5. Environments contain a balance of abiotic and biotic factors that are
interdependent; organisms rely on natural resources in that environment for
survival. Changes in the environment can affect its stability, or change the
equilibrium of that ecosystem.
Vocabulary
abiotic, biome, biotic, consumer, decomposer, desert, ecological pyramid, extinction,
food chain, food web, grassland, primary consumer, producer, quaternary consumer,
rain forest, scavenger, secondary consumer, taiga, temperate forest, tertiary consumer,
trophic level, tundra
Fundamental Questions
Use the Key Concepts information as well as the information in your Stemscopedia
beginning on page 177 to answer the fundamental questions below.
1. How are variations and adaptations of organisms different among ecosystems?
2. How does matter and energy flow through trophic levels?
3. What affects the long-term survival of species?
4. What is ecosystem stability, and how is it affected by environmental change?
Analysis
Complete the following in the space provided.
1. Identify an adaptation that animals have that live in the desert and explain its
importance.
2. Identify an adaptation that plants have that live in the rainforest and explain its
importance.
3. Describe how plants from different biomes have different adaptations.
4. Diagram the energy flow through a food web.
A Food Pyramid
5. Explain how limiting the amount of space for shelter can have a long-term affect on a
species survival rate.