Download Ecology project Name Period ______ Instructions: Part 1: What is t

Ecology project
Name ______________________________________________________ Period _________
Instructions:
Part 1: What is the biosphere?
Life on Earth extends from the ocean depths to a few miles above the land’s surface. Ecologists call this
area the biosphere. The biosphere is an extremely complex system and difficult to understand. So,
scientists have divided up the biosphere into ecosystems which are smaller and easier to study.
You are the scientist and about to set up your ecosystem to help you understand the biosphere as a
whole. Ecosystem is a physically distinct, self-supporting unit of interacting organisms and their
surrounding environments.
Questions:
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What is the biosphere?
How do scientists study the biosphere?
Part 2: What is an ecosystem?
An ecosystem is a physically distinct, self-supporting unit of interacting organisms and their surrounding
environment. For example, a forest is an ecosystem its physical boundaries are the areas where the
trees give way to other types of vegetation.
Set up your ecosystem and make initial observations
Materials:
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1.
4 wooden sticks
Meter stick
String
thermometer
Shovel
Plastic bag for soil sample
Plastic bag for water sample, if necessary
Camera
After gathering materials, your group will pick out a meter square area ecosystem. You will
measure out the area with the meter stick and rope off the boundary with string and wooden
sticks.
2. Take several pictures of your ecosystem (each group member must have at least one picture in
their report.
3. Make initial observations of your ecosystems. These observations should include all living and
non-living things. Describe the location, what areas surround your ecosystem, what is the
temperature; investigate hidden places in your ecosystem.
4. Take a soil sample and/or water sample in your ecosystem. Empty the bag on a sheet of
newspaper. Probe through the soil and look for hidden organisms. List the organism and record
the approximate numbers of each type of organism.
5. Questions
1. Consider the variety of living and non-living things in your ecosystem. Which was the largest
population?
2. How are the survival needs of your organisms being met in your ecosystem? Air? Food?
Water? Sunlight?
3. What are other organisms could survive in your ecosystem. Think of organisms that could
not.
Part 3: How is an ecosystem organized? Levels of organization in your ecosystem
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Read the definitions of the species, population, community, and ecosystem from this website:
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/9d.html
Habitat is where a population lives. Describe the habitat of your population.
Niche is the relational position of population in its ecosystem to each other. A niche describes
how a population responds to different resources or competitors. For example, two groups of
dolphins may be in two different niches depending on how the two niches compete for food and
other needed resources. Two different populations cannot occupy the same niche at the same
time. If that should happen, then the processes of competition, predation, cooperation and
symbiosis will occur.
Habitat- an area where an organism lives
Niche- full range of physical and biological conditions in which an organism lives and the way in
which the organism uses those conditions. Includes where in the food chain it is, where an
organism feeds
Habitat is like an address in an ecosystem and a niche is like an occupation in an ecosystem.
Questions:
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Identify one species in your ecosystem. Explain why it is a species.
Identify a population in your ecosystem. Explain why it is a population.
Explain why your ecosystem is an ecosystem.
How might your ecosystem change?
Describe the niche of your population. This description should be very different from your
habitat answer.
Part 4: What are biotic and abiotic systems in an ecosystem?
Make a list of your abiotic and biotic factors that may affect a population in your ecosystem.
Questions: What two factors are necessary in order to identify an area as an ecosystem?
How might some these factors affect your population in your ecosystem?
Part 5: How do organisms obtain the essential and life-sustaining materials?
All organisms need certain chemicals in order to live. Chief among these are water, oxygen, carbon, and
nitrogen. Organisms use these substances in the molecules that supply nutrients and make up the
materials of their bodies. When an organism dies, these chemical materials are returned to the earth
and the atmosphere. Other organisms then take up and use these same chemicals. The continuous
movement of chemical throughout the ecosystem is called recycling. The pathway through which a
chemical substance is recycled is it biogeochemical cycle.
Water cycle: http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/earthguide/diagrams/watercycle/
How is water recycled in your ecosystem? Explain the cycle and how it works in your ecosystem
Carbon cycle:
http://www.nodvin.net/snhu/SCI219/demos/Chapter_3/Chapter_03/Present/animations/51_1_2_1.ht
ml
How is carbon recycled in your ecosystem? Explain the cycle and how it works in your ecosystem
Nitrogen cycle:
http://www.classzone.com/books/ml_science_share/vis_sim/em05_pg20_nitrogen/em05_pg20_nitrog
en.html
How is nitrogen recycled in your ecosystem? Explain the cycle and how it works in your ecosystem.
What is the role of decomposers in the nitrogen cycle?
Why are cycles important?
Part 6: How is energy transferred in an ecosystem?
Individual organisms within a biotic community survive either by producing food or by feeding on other
organisms. Plants, the chief producers, make food by the process known as photosynthesis. This food
may be consumed by animals. Food energy thus moves from one organism to another. The process of
the transfer of energy is not haphazard, however. It is part of an organized system of energy flow
throughout the ecosystem.
http://www.marietta.edu/~biol/102/ecosystem.html#Energyflowthroughtheecosystem3
Create a food chain that might be present in your ecosystem.
Create a food web that might be present in your ecosystem.
Create an ecological pyramid for your ecosystem and explain your reasoning behind the drawing.
http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/fancher/TrophicPyramids.htm
Questions:
What role do decomposers have in the energy flow in ecosystem?
Where does the energy come from for your ecosystem?
What ultimately happens to energy in your ecosystem?
What is the difference between a food chain and food web?
Part 7: How do the species in an ecosystem interact?
All organisms must live side by side with many other organisms. The evolutionary process has shaped
ecosystems so that each ecosystem’s organisms constantly interact with on another. Many different
kinds of interactions exist among the organisms in an ecosystem. The result is a dynamic system that
supports each population’s requirements for natural resources.
http://staff.tuhsd.k12.az.us/gfoster/standard/bbiotic.htm
Describe the following and give an example from your ecosystem if possible:
Predation: (predator and prey)
Mutualism:
Commensalism:
Parasitism:
Question:
How do competition, predation, and symbiosis differ?
Part 8: How does an ecosystem develop?
Just as individual organisms grow and change with time, so do the ecological communities of the earth
on which we live. A community is a group of different types of organisms that coexist. Such communities
replace, or succeed, each other in predictable, orderly, way. The process or replacement is call
ecological succession.
http://nsm1.nsm.iup.edu/rwinstea/succession.shtm
http://www.morning-earth.org/graphic-e/Transf-Success.htm
http://envirosci.net/111/succession/succession.htm
Questions
1. Compare primary succession and secondary succession.
2. What is a climax community?
3. What is the ecological role of weeds?
4. How does secondary succession proceed in an abandoned farm field?
5. If there was a fire and burned everything in your ecosystem, explain how your ecosystem would
change? Please make sure the steps are included.
Part 9: What factors affect the growth of a population?
Some populations are made up of less than a dozen individuals. Others are composed of millions, even
billions of individuals. Every population has a specific potential for growth and it subject to
environmental pressures that control how fast it grows and how large it can be.
Textbook: Pages 90-99
Questions:
1. Give four examples of limiting factors that control population growth.
2. Compare a J-curve and a S-curve.
3. What is the difference between density-independent factors and density-dependent factors?
4. Explain the five phrases of a predictable pattern of population growth. Use an example of
population in your ecosystem.
General websites to help you
http://www.phschool.com/science/ca_sci_exp_transparencies/earth_sci_unit5.pdf
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Ecosystem?topic=58074#gen3