Ecology

• Living things are made of cells • Living things reproduce • Living things are based on a Universal Genetic Code • Living things grow and develop • Living things obtain and use energy • Living things respond to their environment • Living things maintain a stable internal enviornment

The scientific study of interactions between organisms and environments.

Important because of biodiversity (the variety of life forms that exist)

All living or once living things (e.g. cat, human, bacteria, fungi)

Nonliving things (e.g. water, soil, air, sunlight, temperature, minerals)

• No matter where you look on Earth, living things are connected and affect their environment and other living things. • As organisms change, evolve, move from one place to another, they affect their environment and other living things.

• Individual (A single organism) • Population ( A group of individuals that all belong to the same species and live in the same area) • Community (A group of all populations living in a defined area) • Ecosystem (All the organisms that live in a particular place together with their nonliving enviornemnt) • Biome (Tend to exist across latitude lines) • Biosphere (Contains the combined parts of the planet in which all life exists)

Any consumer that KILLS AND EATS another living organism in order to obtain energy. They organism being eaten is called PREY.

When different species are competing for the same resources (food, living space, etc.)

Interaction between members of two different species that live together in a close association. There are three close relationships.

• Mutualism (Positive relationship where both organisms benefit from each other) • Commensalism (Positive/neutral relationship where the organism benefits and the other is unaffected) • Parasitism (Positive/negative relationship where one benefits and other is harmed at a disadvantage)

What the specie eats, what eats it, and how the species behave. No two species have identical niches.

• Producer • Consumer

Organisms that make its own energy-rich compounds using the suns energy (ex. plants and sea slugs)

Organisms that obtain their energy from consuming other organisms. Consumers can be further divided depending on the organisms they eat.

• Herbivore • Carnivore • Omnivore • Scavenger

An animal that eats plants.

An animal that eats other animals.

An animal that eats plants and other animals.

An animal that eats the remains of another organism.

The easiest way to show feeding relationships that exist between different organisms in an ecosystem through a food chain and how energy gets transferred from one organism to another.

Food chains illustrate who eats whom in an ecosystem; it is a sequence of organisms, each following the next.

The position of an organism within a food chain.

Producers