Lesson Summary
- Each species fills a niche within an ecosystem. Each ecosystem has the same niches,
although the same species doesn’t always fill them. - Eachecosystemhasproducers, consumers, anddecomposers. Decomposersbreakdown
dead tissue to make nutrients available for living organisms. - Energy is lost at each trophic level, so top predators are scarce. Feeding relationships
are much more complicated than a food chain, since some organisms eat from multiple
trophic levels. - As a result, food webs are needed to show all the predator/prey interactions in an
ecosystem.
Review Questions
- What is the difference between a population, a community and an ecosystem?
- What is the difference between a niche and a habitat?
- Why are the roles in different ecosystems the same but the species that fill them often
different? - Why are there no producers in the deep sea ecosystem? Without producers, where
does the energy come from? What is the ultimate source of the energy? - Is a predator an herbivore, carnivore or omnivore? How about a prey?
- Biologists have been known to say that bacteria are the most important living things
on the planet. Why would this be true? - Why are you so much more likely to see a rabbit than a lion when you’re out on a
hike? - How much energy is available to organisms on the 5th trophic level compared with
those on the 1st? How does this determine how long a food chain can be? - Why is a food web a better representation of the feeding relationships of organisms
than a food chain? - Why is energy only transferred in one way in an ecosystem, but nutrients cycle around?
- Why does a predator kill its prey but a parasite rarely kills its host?
Vocabulary
abiotic Nonliving features of an ecosystem include space, nutrients, air, and water.
biotic Living features of an ecosystem include viruses, plants, animals, and bacteria.
carnivore Animals that only eat other animals for food.
chemosynthesis The creation of food energy by breaking down chemicals.