Ecosystems, Food Chains, Predator/Prey Cycle Flashcards
What services do ecosystems provide?
- Provisioning services: physical things that we take from nature. (Cutting down trees for wood, picking berries.)
- Regulating services: provides necessary things for nature (pollination, etc.)
- Cultural services: benefits to humans from the ecosystems (water filtration, etc.)
- Supporting services: like regulating services, but on a chemical level (photosynthesis, etc.)
Energy transfer
How nutrients get transferred from one organism to the next
Trophic levels
Positions in a food chain
Producer
Organism that produces its own nutrients (photosynthesis)
Consumer
Organism that eats nutrients
10% Rule
An organism only get 10% of the nutrients from the organism that they ate
What are the energy transfer levels
- Producer (produces own nutrients)
- Primary consumer
- Secondary consumer
- Tertiary consumer
- Quaternary consumer
Etc.
How do the predator/prey population affect each other?
More predator -> less prey -> less predator -> more prey -> repeat.
The more predators there are, the more prey will be eaten. If the prey keeps getting eaten before they can procreate, the prey population decreases. If the prey population decreases, the predators will have less food and a more difficult time surviving, so their population will decrease. Now that there are not as many predators, prey will be able to recover and their numbers will increase because they are able to live longer lives and have more children. Repeat cycle.
Bioaccumulation
The accumulation (build-up) of bad chemicals in organisms that gets passed down the food chain because the organisms are unable to break down the chemical.
Keystone Species
A species that keeps an ecosystem balanced by preventing the overpopulation of other species.
