1. Communities and Ecosystems

Question 1

4 laws of ecology

Answer 1

1. Everything is connected to everything
2. Nature knows best
3. there is no such thing as a free lunch
4. everything goes somewhere

Question 2

Where do autotrophs get their energy if they get
their building blocks (matter) from the
environment (ie. soil, water etc)?

Answer 2

The sun

Question 3

What returns the inorganic
building blocks to the environment
so that they are available for
autotrophs?

Answer 3

decomposers

Question 4

Can populations
participate in more
than one trophic
level?

Answer 4

yes

Question 5

Is there a maximum
number of trophic
levels in an
ecosystem?

Answer 5

yes, depedning on the environment

Question 6

Autotrophs

Answer 6

obtain inorganic nutrients from the environment
(“self feeders”) to build their organic components

Question 7

What inorganic supply of nutrients do autotrophs maintain and how

Answer 7

Supply of inorganic nutrients, such as
phosphorus, carbon and nitrogen is maintained
by nutrient cycling between biotic and abiotic
components of the ecosystem.

Question 8

What is a trophic level

Answer 8

A feeding level

Question 9

Primary Producers are called..?
Most are… (3 examples)
A few are…(1 example, explain their process and where they live)

Answer 9

autotrophs
Photosynthetic: Plants, algae, cyanobacteria
Chemoautotrophs: methanogenic archae
-in deep sea vents
-split hydrogen sulfide molecules producing sulfuric
acid as a by-product
-Capture the energy stored in chemical bonds

Question 10

Photsynthetic

Answer 10

use light energy to make organic compounds
from inorganic compounds

Question 11

Chemoautotrophs

Answer 11

make organic compounds from inorganic chemicals using the energy from the chemicals themselves

Question 12

Consumers are called…?
What energy is passed on and how?
Process

Answer 12

Hetrotrophs
Chemical energy stored in carbon is passed on by feeding
-primary consumers are herbivores, eat producer
-secondary are carnivores, eat primary
-tertiary at secondary
-sometimes there is even quaternary

Question 13

How do we represent energy transfer (3 ways)

Answer 13

food chain, food web, energy pyramaid

Question 14

Food chain

Answer 14

a linear pathway that shows the energy transfer throughout trophic levels