Study Guide for Ecosystems

Essential Question: Why is sunlight critically needed on Earth?

Our world truly is a fragile place to live. Everyone needs to do their job to maintain balance between the geosphere (where the solid ground is on Earth), biosphere (where life exists on Earth), and the hydrosphere (where all the water is on Earth).

All living things have to have to learn to survive in these three main locations. We need to keep adapting to how it always changes to survive. This is called evolution.

In this theme you will learn how plants and animals rely on one another in multiple ways. You will create a basic food web showing how food and energy is transferred between organisms in various ecosystems.

You will learn that and ecosystem in a small area where all living things like plants and animals get along and interact with one another.

Some other examples of ecosystems include deserts, rain forest, freshwater rivers and lakes, grasslands, mountain forests, and the tundra to name a few. You are going to learn about biotic and abiotic factors in ecosystems and biomes. Biotic factors are results from living things that are alive. Abiotic factors about things that are not alive. Here are the six requirements to be living.

-Must be made of cells -Must use energy -Must reproduce

-Must grow and develop -Respond to environment -Must be organized

Here is a link that explains it better. LINK

Here is a You Tube video that explains characteristics of life: LINK

You will learn that biomes are just like ecosystems, just on a larger scale. Biomes are regions in the world with similar climate and similar plants and animals. Think large areas when it comes to biomes. Here are some major biomes around the world. You will learn there are three parts to ecosystems and biomes. They are the producers, consumers, and decomposers. Producers are plants that take in water, air, and sun and produce food for the animals to eat. Consumers are all the animals in the ecosystem or biome that eat other animals (called carnivores). Some animals only eat the plants and are called herbivores. And there are animals that eat both plants and animals called omnivores.

The final group of animals is called decomposers. These are animals like flies, bacteria, dust mites, and snails that break down dead creatures. Even mushrooms is an example of decomposers.

You will also study how advancements in human evolution with all this new technology maybe harming ecosystems and biomes during this theme. Did you know that driving a car can affect the weather.

You will also watch and learn how plants and animals get along in a process called symbiosis. There are different kinds of symbiosis. The first is called parasitism. This is where one species (the parasite) feeds off of or is dependent on the other species (the host) in a way that may hurt or even kill the host. An example of parasitism is fleas on a dog

Another example of parasitism is called brood parasitism. This is when a bird lays its eggs in another bird’s nest rather than building its own nest and sitting on the eggs. Cuckoo birds and cowbirds lay their eggs in another bird’s nest and have the host bird “babysit” the egg. This doesn’t always work out for the host, because the cuckoo sometimes shoves the host’s eggs overboard to try to fool the host! If the host and the parasite benefit from the relationship, we call that mutualism. An example of that would be bacteria in the gut of cows. The cows need the bacteria to help them digest their food; the bacteria need the cow to provide them nutrients.

Another example of mutualism is the relationship between the clown fish and the sea anemone. The anemones protect the fish from predators that would eat the clown fish but don’t want to mess with the stinging tentacles of the anemone. The clown fish in turn protects the anemone from a fish called the butterfly fish that eats anemones.

A food chain is the sequence of who eats whom in a biological community (an ecosystem) to obtain nutrition. A food chain starts with the primary energy source, usually the sun or boiling- hot deep sea vents. The next link in the chain is an organism that makes its own food from the primary energy source. These are called autotrophs or primary producers. Next come organisms that eat the autotrophs; these organisms are called herbivores or primary consumers -- an example is a rabbit that eats grass. The next link in the chain is animals that eat herbivore - these are called secondary consumers -- an example is a snake that eats rabbits. In turn, these animals are eaten by larger predators -- an example is an owl that eats snakes. The tertiary consumers are eaten by quaternary consumers -- an example is a hawk that eats owls. Each food chain ends with a top predator and animal with no natural enemies (like an alligator, hawk, or polar bear). Vocab Words:

Hypothesis: When you always start a lab you need a guess or prediction about how you think the lab will end. It’s basically a guess or prediction about something that you can test to find the answer to.

Control: When you do a lab you need to run multiple tests and keep things the same between each test. When you keep things the same in a lab that is call the control.

Variable: When you do a lab you keep everything the same but one choice. For example if your hypothesis is that sausage pizza made you sick at supper, then you would run some tests. During the tests you would keep the drink the same, same plate, same fork, same maker of the pizza, and the same breadstick for each test. You can only change one thing during a lab and that is called the variable. So you might want to try a cheese pizza by the same maker of the pizza, and the sausage pizza again. If you get sick on the sausage pizza again your hypothesis is correct.

Dependent Variable: This type of variable is what is affected during the experiment. This variable responds to the independent variable. This variable is also what you test for during the lab and measure the data from. Example: You are testing to see if the sunlight affects how fast a plant grows. You have control of the amount of light, but no control over the rate of photosynthesis. The rate of plant growth would be your dependent variable, and your amount of sunlight would be you independent variable.

Independent Variable: This is a variable that isn’t affected by anything else and can stand by itself. This variable is changed by scientist, yet not measured.

Evolution: Is when you have to change to your surroundings to survive.

Photosynthesis – process plants use light energy to change into chemical energy to produce food and oxygen.

Producer – green plant that makes its own food.

Consumer – gets energy from eating other organisms. Decomposer – breaks down dead organisms.

Herbivore – animal that eats only plants.

Carnivore – animal that eats only other animals.

Omnivore – animal that eats both plants and animals.

Food Chain - how different organisms eat each other, starting out with a plant and ending with an animal. For example, you could write the food chain for a lion like this: grass ---> zebra ---> lion

Food Web – several food chains mixed together.

Niche – The role and animal plays in the community. Like the job we do in our communities.

Community – Animals of the same kind that make up an area. For example all the rabbits in north west Iowa.

Symbiosis – the relationship between two different kinds of living things that living together and depend on each other.

Commensalism – a relationship in which one organism benefits and one organism is neither harmed nor helped.

Mutualism – a relationship in which both organisms benefit.

Parasitism – a relationship in which one organism benefits and the other is harmed.

Invasive Species – a species that is not native to a region and has a negative effect on the ecosystem.

El-Nino – When the ocean currents slow down and cause the ocean water to heat up faster causing severe weather.

La Nina – When the ocean currents speed up cycling the water faster and not giving the ocean water a chance to warm up causing cooler weather. Abiotic Factors – All of the non-living things that are in an ecosystem that play a role in animal survival. (Examples: rain, wind, temperature, pollution, and sunlight)

Biotic Factors – All of the living things that make up an ecosystem.

Predator – A carnivore creature that hunts for its food.

Prey – The creature that is being hunted and turned into a meal.

Interdependence – When multiple creatures or groups rely on each other for survival. Each has a role that helps the other creature out.

STANDARDS THAT WILL BE ADDRESSED