Ecology

Question 1

What is Ecology?

Answer 1

The study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their environment.

Question 2

What are the Ecological levels in order?

Answer 2

Species - Population - Community - Ecosystem - Biome - Biosphere

Question 3

What organisms captures energy from sunlight and uses it to produce food?

Answer 3

Autotrophs

Question 4

What other word can be used for Autotrophs?

Answer 4

Producers

Question 5

What is a Heterotroph what do they do?

Answer 5

Organisms that must obtain energy from other living things.

Question 6

What are consumers?

Answer 6

They are organisms that must eat, or consume, other organisms for food.

Question 7

Heterotrophs that only eat plants are called what?

Answer 7

Herbivores

Question 8

Heterotrophs that only eat other animals are called what?

Answer 8

Carnivores

Question 9

Carnivores that hunt and kill their own prey are called what?

Answer 9

Predators

Question 10

What are scavengers?

Answer 10

Carnivores that feed on dead animals.

Question 11

Heterotrophs that eat both plants and animals are called what?

Answer 11

Omnivores

Question 12

What are decomposers?

Answer 12

Heterotrophs that break down organic matter and return it to the environment.

Question 13

Which way does energy flow through?

Answer 13

Energy flows through one direction.

Question 14

What is a food chain?

Answer 14

Series of organisms through which energy is passed.

Question 15

What does a food chain start with?
(Not the sun)

Answer 15

It starts with the primary producer.

Question 16

What is a food web?

Answer 16

A complex network of many different food chains and feeding interactions.

Question 17

What do the arrows indicate on the a food web or food chain?

Answer 17

It indicates the direction of the energy flow.

Question 18

What is each step in a food chain or food web called?

Answer 18

Trophic Level

Question 19

What is the first trophic level ALWAYS made of?

Answer 19

Producers

Question 20

What is the second trophic level made of?

Answer 20

Herbivores
Omnivores
Primary Consumer
(all the same)

Question 21

What are the other trophic levels made of?

Answer 21

Secondary consumers
Tertiary consumers
Carnivores
Omnivores

Question 22

What is a diagram that shows relative amounts of energy or matter found within each trophic level?

Answer 22

Ecological pyramid

Question 23

What does trophs/troph mean?

Answer 23

Feeding Level
(same things as trophic level)

Question 24

What shows the relative amounts of energy available at each trophic level?

Answer 24

Energy pyramid

Question 25

What shows the amount of living organic matter, or biomass, at each trophic level?

Answer 25

Biomass pyramid

Question 26

What shows the relative number of individual organisms at each level?

Answer 26

Pyramid of numbers

Question 27

Unlike the one-way flow of energy what does matter do?

Answer 27

It is recycled within an ecosystem.

Question 28

Water from the surface enters the atmosphere through evaporation and transpiration. Water returns to the surface through condensation and precipitation. What is this called?

Answer 28

The Water Cycle.

Question 29

Carbon(CO2) enters the atmosphere during what? What is this process called?

Answer 29

During human activity, cellular respiration and decomposition. The carbon Cycle.

Question 30

When does Carbon(CO2) return to the ecosystem? What is this process also called?

Answer 30

It returns during photosynthesis. The Carbon Cycle.

Question 31

How does nitrogen enter the amosphere?

Answer 31

Enters through the activity of certain types of soil bacteria.

Question 32

How is nitrogen returned back to the soil?

Answer 32

Human Activity Excretion Decomposition Nitrogen Fixation (By certain bacteria)

Question 33

What does Nitrogen Fixation convert?

Answer 33

Its converts atmospheric nitrogen into a form plants can use.