Download Ecology Notes

SCIENTIFIC NAME:
PERIOD _____
USE THE ECOLOGY POWERPOINT FOUND
UNDER UNIT 3 OF MY TEACHER PAGE TO FILL IN
IMPORTANT ECOLOGY VOCABULARY:

___________________- The scientific study of interaction between organism and their environments.
o Environments:
 __________ __________–all the living organism that inhabit an environment
 _______________________ – the nonliving parts of the environment
 Ex: air currents, temperature, moisture, light, and soil

___________________– is a group of organisms of one species that interbreed and live in the same place at
the same time

________________- The interacting system of a biological community and its nonliving environment.

____________________– is a collection of interacting populations
o A change in one population in a community will cause changes in the other populations

_______________- Place where an organism lives;
o Even in the same ecosystem, different organisms differ in their habitats.
SPECIES RELATIONSHIPS:

Producer- Organisms that produce their own food are called _________________.
o Ex: Plants
o all of the species of the ecosystem depend on autotrophs for nutrients and energy.

Consumer- They obtain food by eating other organisms.
o All the organisms that cannot make their own food (and need autotrophs) are called
_______________________.
o There are different levels of consumers:
 Those that feed directly from producers, i.e. organisms that eat plant or plant products
are called primary consumers.
 How do you think we can classify consumers? ……………Based on what they eat!!
1. _________________- consumer that eats only plants
Ex: grasshoppers, mice, rabbits, deer, beavers, moose, cows, sheep, goats and groundhogs
2. _________________- consumer that eats only other animals.
Ex: Foxes, frogs, snakes, hawks, and spiders.
3. _________________– consumer that eat the remains of dead animals.
Ex: vultures, buzzards, crows, ants, beetles
4. ________________- eat both plants (acting a primary consumers) and meat (acting as secondary or
tertiary consumers).
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Ex: Bears --They eat insects, fish, moose, elk, deer, sheep as well as honey, grass
5. __________________- organisms that break down the remains of other organisms.
o found at the bottom of the food web.
Ex: Bacteria, yeast, fungi, worms and many insects
RELATIONSHIPS FOR SURVIVAL:

___________________ – permanent, close association between two or more organisms of different
species
o 3 types:
1.____________________ – one species benefits and the other species is neither harmed nor
helped
Ex: an orchid growing on the branch of a larger plant
2.____________________ – relationship that is beneficial to both species
Ex: acacia trees (provides food/shelter for ants) and ants (protect tree by attacking any
herbivore)
3.____________________– one species benefits at the expense of the other species
Ex: ticks, tapeworms live on or in the organism
MATTER & ENERGY IN ECOSYSTEMS:

________________________- Show one prey-predator relationship and how each living thing gets its food.
o Some animals eat plants and some animals eat other animals.
o Ex: Trees/shrubs  giraffes  lions
o Each link in this chain is food for the next link.
o Always starts with plant life and ends with an animal.
o __________________________-link represented by each organism in a food chain;
 Represents a feeding step in the transfer of energy and matter in an ecosystem.
 All energy in an ecosystem originates with
the_____________.
 The solar energy is transformed by green
plants through photosynthesis into stored
chemical energy.
 This is consumed by plant-eating animals,
which are in turn consumed as food.
 The total energy transfer form one trophic
level to the next is only about_______, the
other 90% is lost as
____________(organisms fail to capture and
eat all food available at the trophic level
below them, not all food that is captured and
eaten GETS ___________________.
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Digested food is ________________by the organism as a source of energy.)
 The concept of the food chain explains how some persistent contaminants accumulate in an ecosystem and
become biologically magnified.

______________________- model used to express feeding relationship among the members of a
community.
o A group of interlinked food chains
o Illustrates:
1. Who eats who?
2. Energy flow through the community
3. Functional feeding groups
4. Important ecological interactions
Differences between a food web & food chain:
1. Food chains only show _______________ prey-predator relationship. The source of food is also often
seasonal with many animals adapting to changes in the season by eating different types of food.
2. A better picture of these interrelationships between plants and animals can be found in a food web.
: The process of increasing a chemical concentration
through the food chain (Examples: DDT and PCB)
o
Animals that eat other animals have
that eat plants.
o
Some
there for a long time.
levels of contaminants than animals
are persistent - once they are in the animal's body, they stay
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o
So when smaller animals are eaten by bigger animals, all the contaminants stored in their tissues are then
on to the bigger animal.
o
The result of biomagnification is that animals at the "top" of their food chain have
than animals at the
"bottom".
o
The top predators at the end of a long food chain, such as lake trout, large salmon and fish-eating gulls, may
accumulate concentrations of a toxic chemical high enough to cause serious
or
even though the concentration of the chemical in the open water is
extremely low.
o
The concentration of some chemicals in the
millions of times higher than the concentration in the open water.
o
The
of aquatic birds often have some of the highest concentrations of toxic
chemicals, because they are at the end of along aquatic food chain, and because egg yolk is rich in
material. Thus, the first harmful effects of a toxic chemical in a lake often
appear as dead or malformed chicks.
tissues of top predators can be
Research of this kind is important to
humans as well, because they are
consumers in the Great Lakes food chain.
Humans are at the
of many
food chains, but do not receive as high an
exposure as, for example, herring gulls.
This is because humans have a
varied diet that consists of items from all
levels of the food chain, whereas the
herring gull depends upon _____________
as its sole food source. Nevertheless, the
concerns about long-term effects of lowlevel exposures in humans, as well as
impacts on people who do eat a lot of
contaminated fish and wildlife, highlight
the importance of taking heed of the welldocumented adverse effects already seen in
the ecosystem.
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