Ecosystems / Food Chains / Food Webs

Question 1

 Producers

Answer 1

organisms that make their own food; they are also known as autotrophs

Question 2

Autotrophs

Answer 2

an organism that can produce its own food using light, water, carbon dioxide, or other chemicals

Question 3

Photosynthetic

Answer 3

an organism capabale of doing photosynthesis

Question 4

Chemoautotrophs

Answer 4

microorganisms that use inorganic chemicals as their energy source and convert them into organic compounds

Question 5

Consumers

Answer 5

An organism that generally obtains food by feeding on other organisms or organic matter

Question 6

Heterotrophs

Answer 6

organisms that consume other organisms for energy

Question 7

Herbivores

Answer 7

an animal anatomically and physiologically evolved to feed on plants, especially upon vascular tissues such as foliage, fruits or seeds, as the main component of its diet

Question 8

Carnivores

Answer 8

an organism that eats meat, or the flesh of other animals

Question 9

Omnivores

Answer 9

an organism that regularly consumes a variety of material, including plants, animals, algae, and fungi

Question 10

Decomposers

Answer 10

An organism, often a bacterium, fungus, or invertebrate that feeds on and breaks down dead plant or animal matter, making organic nutrients available to the ecosystem

Question 11

Saprotrophs

Answer 11

Any organism that feeds by absorbing dead organic matter

Question 12

Detritivores

Answer 12

organisms that break-down and feed on dead and decaying organic material

Question 13

Scavengers

Answer 13

animals that consume dead organisms that have died from causes other than predation or have been killed by other predators

Question 14

Carcass

Answer 14

the decaying flesh of dead animals

Question 15

Food chain

Answer 15

the order of events in an ecosystem, where one living organism eats another organism, and later that organism is consumed by another larger organism

Question 16

Trophic levels

Answer 16

The position of an organism in a food chain, food web or pyramid

Question 17

Food web

Answer 17

a complex network of interconnecting and overlapping food chains showing feeding relationships within a community

Question 18

Ecological pyramid

Answer 18

a diagram that shows the relationships between organisms in an ecosystem by organising them into trophic levels based on how much energy they consume

Question 19

Pyramid of energy

Answer 19

a diagram that shows the flow of energy through an ecosystem’s food chain, from one trophic level to the next; uses units of kg/m2/yr

Question 20

Pyramid of numbers

Answer 20

shows the total number of individual organisms at each level in the food chain of an ecosystem

Question 21

Pyramid of biomass

Answer 21

a diagram that shows the amount of organic material, or biomass, in each trophic level of a food chain; uses units of g/m2 or kg/m2

Question 22

10% rule

Answer 22

a fundamental principle that describes how energy flows through ecosystems and food chains. It states that at each trophic level in an energy pyramid, only 10% of the energy is passed on to the next level, while the remaining 90% is lost as heat or used for metabolic activities.