Topic 9 - Ecosystems Flashcards
What are the levels of organisms caled?
Trophic levels.
What is biotic?
Alive.
What is abiotic?
Not alive so like rocks.
How we can show how energy is lost through individual organisms?
Sankey diagrmas.
What is some of the ways energy is lost?
Urine, faeces, heat, new biomass, and also not all of t hem is eaten but be careful with that one.
What is a habitat?
An environment in which an organism lives.
What is a population?
Total number of organism of a species living in the same habitat.
What is a community?
Populations of all different species living in a habitat.
What is a primary consumer?
A herbivore.
What is a secondary cosumer?
A carnivore.
What is a tertiary concsumer?
A carnivore that feeds only on secondary consumers.
How can we display biomass?
Pyramid of biomass.
What resources are competed for?
Light, heat, space, water and mineral ions.
What is a stable community?
Populations pf species are in balance and stay roughly constant.
What is a producer?
Get energy from sun and getting own energy.
What is interdependance?
Organisms rely on each other for resources or shelter.
Remember?
To put the arrows to show where the energy is going.
What are some abiotic factors?
Drought, flooding and altidue and pH and temperature and gradient.
What is the distribution of organisms?
Where they are found in the ecosystem.
What can distribution be affected by?
Physical and chemical factors such as temp, rainfall and substances in the soil.
What can the distribution of organisms be measured by?
A belt transect.
What is a belt transect?
Quadrats are placed along a line in a habitat, and the abundance of organisms is measured as well as the abiotic factors in each quadrant position. Changes is abundance can show which abiotic factor has the greatest affect on the organism.
What are substances that cause harm in the environment?
Pollutants# and these cause pollution.
What may the numbers of predators and its prey be closely related in?
A predator-pray cycle
What is an indicator species?
Organism that serves as a measure of the environmental conditions that exist in a given locale.
What is an exanple of an indicator species?
What is another example of an indicator species?
What is another example of an indicator species?
What is paratism?
A kind of feeding relationship in which one organism beenfits by feeding off a host cuasing harm to the host
What is mutualism?
Both beenfit.
Show two examples of parasites?
What is an example of mutualism?
flowers depend on insectrs for pollinations, flower can pordouce fertilised egg cells and insects get nectar or pollen for food.
What is eutrophication?
Addition of more nutrients to an ecosystem than it normally has like too much fertilisers
How much of the protein that humans eat comes form fish?
17
What problems does fish farming cause?
Uneaten food and fecies sinks causing parasites and disease.
What are native species?
Indigenous.
How would eutrophication be bad to aqua?
Anoxic?
No oxygen;
What is biodiversity?
The variety of plants and animals in the wolrd or a particular ecosystems.
Pest that ate sugar cane
Cane beetles in australia ate all the cane
What fixed the cane beetle problem
Cane toafs from the americas were introfuced, they produce posiing and it kills them when it gets on the tongue
What was the problem with cane toads?
They didnt eat the beetles and they became a problem themselve
Invasive speciex
Non native species that cuase massive damage to the ecosystem
Indigenous
Always been there
Non-indigenous
Organism that has been introduced
What is food security?
Having access t oenough safe and healthy food at all times
What does potable mean?
Safe for drinking
Why do plants need nitrogen?
Plants contain nitrogen compounds in proteins and DNA, they are needed to grow
What nitrogen do plants use?
They cannot use unreactive nitrogen from the air instead they absorb nitrogen compounds such as nitrates that are dissolved in soil water
How is soil fertility maintained?
By decomposers such as bacteria in the soil, these organisms release nitrogen compounds together with carbon compounds when they decompose dead plants and animals and their wastes
How do farmers increase amounts of nitrates>
They add manure or artificial fertilisers which contain nitrogen compounds that are soluble and dissolve in soil water
What are nitrogen-fixing bacteria?
Some soil bacteria can convert gas into nitrogen compounds
Why are peas special?
They have a mutualistic relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria as the bacteria are protected inside nodules in the plant roots and the plant gets nitrogen compounds directly from the bacteria
How can farmers keep there soil fertile using peas?
If they plant a crop of peas and then dig in the roots after the crop has been harvested, the following year a different crop will benefit from the additional nitrogen compounds in the soil, planting a sequence of crops in different years is called crop rotation
Show nitrogen cycle?
Methods of food preservation?
Reducing temp, reducing water content, irradiation, reducing oxcygen
reducing water content???
By salting and then drying meat to make ham or salami
reducing oxygen???
Storing foods in oil or packing them in unreactive gas like nitrogen (salal leaves need this as they decay easily)
Equation for rate of decomposition?
Mass lost/number of days
How is compost made?
Collect waste garden material into a heap and keep it until it is well-decayed forming compost. The compost contains many nutrients that were in the plant tissue but the decay process leaves them in a form that makes it easy for plants to absorb,
What does spreading compost on a garden do?
It increases soil fertility
