Unit 2: Ecology Flashcards
How do consumers obtain energy and nutrients?
Consumers eat primary producers or lower level consumers.
What is the relationship between abiotic and biotic factors?
Biotic factors need abiotic factors to live and abiotic factors need biotic factors to be useful.
Describe the two ways primary producers obtain energy.
Primary producers obtain energy through photosynthesis and chemosynthesis.
What is the difference between an autotroph and a heterotroph?
A heterotroph obtains its food from other organisms and autotrophs make their own food
Describe the difference between a food chain and web.
A food web is a diagram with complex lines that shows how organisims obtain obtain energy. A food chain is a simple line showing how organisms
Contrast how energy flows and matter cycles?
Energy starts at 100%, but goes down exponentially by 10. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed.
What do ecological pyramids illustrate?
It illustrates the relative amount of energy at each trophic level.
Explain how energy is lost as heat in each trophic level.
It is a product of respiration, movement, and growth
How does matter move through the biosphere?
Water cycle, nitrogen cycle, and carbon cycle.
What factors determine global climate?
Latitude and solar energy, wind and ocean currents, earths rotation, and the Greenhouse effect
How does competition shape communities?
Competition determines which species live and how others adapt
How doees predation and herbivory shape communities?
Predators eliminate lower level consumers and herbivory eliminates some producers
Describe the 3 main symbolic relationships.
Mutualisim, Parasitisim, commensialism
How do communities change over time?
Species replace one another over time
Compare primary succession to secondary succession
Primary succession involves barren ground while secondary succession involves other places that have been lived in before.
