1. This shows the members of an ecosystem
This shows the members of an ecosystem. What do you think an ecosystem is?
Why would we want to study ecosystems?
What are some abiotic factors?
What are some biotic factors?
What does the word producer mean?
Decomposer?
Herbivore?
Carnivore?

2. Ecology
is the scientific study of organisms and how they interact with their environment

3. We can study the environment on many levels from microscopic organisms in a drop of water to…

4. the largest animals…

5. …and plants

6. Levels of Organization

7. Ecological Methods
Because this is not a controlled experimental laboratory…
Observing the ecosystem (footprints, scat, counting organisms, signs of life)
Experimental simulations of nature in a lab
Computer models based on past data to predict future trends

8. Interactions and interdependence in an ecosystem are all about
Energy Transfer

9. What is the main source of energy for all Ecosystems?

10. From the sun, plants can make their own food by photosynthesis and other organisms can feed on them.
Some other organisms can make their own food from inorganic compounds (chemicals not containing carbon) using chemosynthesis.
Plants use the energy they get from the sun to do photosynthesis and make their own food. Other organisms will eat the plants to get their energy. This begins the flow of energy through and ecosystem. There are other organisms that can use inorganic compounds to make their own food. Some examples would be bacteria or archaea that use methane or nitrogen to make their own food.

11. Feeding Relations

12. Autotrophs/Producers-
organisms that can make their own food from the sun or chemicals
Plants capture sunlight and convert CO2 and water into sugar (food) and O₂ by photosynthesis.
What was the formula again?
Plants use the energy from the sun to make their own food. They capture sunlight and convert CO2 and water into sugar and O2. This process is called photosynthesis. You learned about this during cellular respiration.

13. Types of Autotrophs
Photoautotrophs- capture energy from sunlight and convert it to carbohydrates
Plants, algae, cyanobacteria
Chemoautotrophs- capture energy from heat and inorganic compounds and convert it to carbohydrates
Archaebacteria living in deep sea vents

14. Autotrophs/Producers-
Some bacteria in extreme environments capture energy from inorganic compounds by chemosynthesis
Instead of using the sun for energy, these organisms use inorganic compounds.

15. Heterotrophs/Consumers
Organisms that eat OR absorb food to obtain energy
Organisms that eat plants, organisms that eat animals, organisms that absorb nutrients from their surroundings. Fungi secrete digestive enzymes into the area around them and absorb the digested materials.

16. Herbivores Eat only plant life ex. cows, deer, insects
Deer only eat plants, they do not eat any kinds of meat. Most insects are herbivores that only feed on plant life.

17. Carnivores- Feed on other consumers Ex: snakes, dogs, anteaters
The water buffalo is a consumer of plant life. It is then eaten by the lions. The moth is a consumer of plant life. It is then eaten by the ants.

18. Omnivores Eat both producers and other consumers
Bears eat berries, which are producers but they also eat fish and other animals that are consumers. Sloths eat plants most of the time, but they also eat insects.
Ex: humans, bears, crows

19. Detritivores and Scavengers:
Feed on dead materials
Woodlice eat damp, dead rotting wood. Detrivores usually eat small amounts of decaying matter. Scavengers usually eat the left overs from dead animals. Like buzzards or hyenas eating the remains of a water buffalo after the lions have left.
Ex: mites, earthworms, crabs

20. Decomposers
Break down organic matter and return it to the earth as inorganic matter
Ex: bacteria, fungi, fungus-like protists
Fungi and many bacteria are examples of decomposers. They break down organic matter smaller than any other type of feeder and return it to the earth as inorganic comounds

21. Detritivore vs. Decomposer
Break down dead organic materials
Can break down more complex molecules
Break down matter more fully
Break down dead organic materials
Only break down some molecules
Detrivores and decomposers all break down organic materials. Detrivores only break down some molecules and usually they do not get broken down very much. Decomposers break down many more complex molecules and can break them down to the point where they return to the soil as inorganic compounds.

22. Feeding Relationships
Herbivores- eat vegetation
Carnivores- eat other consumers
Omnivores- eat vegetation and other consumers
Detritivores and scavengers- feed on dead material
Decomposers- decompose dead material and return organic matter to earth

23. What is each organism? Heterotroph & Omnivore Heterotroph & Carnivore
Heterotroph & Decomposer
Autotroph/ Producer

24. Food Webs and Food Chains

25. Purpose of food webs and chains:
Show how energy flows in an ecosystem
Direction of the arrow is the direction of the flow of energy- do NOT mix this up!
We use food webs and food chains to show how energy flows through an ecosystem. What is an ecosystem?

26. Energy Flow Energy flows in one direction through an ecosystem:
Sun  Producers  Consumers  Decomposers
Along the way, some energy is “lost” as heat (thermal energy)
Autotrophs use the energy from the sun to make their food and they are eaten by hetertrophs who get the energy from the autotrophs they consume. The energy is used by the organisms for many things. In the case of plants it may be to produce seeds and pollen and to make food. In the case of animals it may be used to move or to mate or to care for young. Much of the energy in the ecosystem is lost as heat. Heat energy is called thermal energy.

27. What do you mean “lost as heat”?
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another
Light energy is converted to chemical energy stored in food (during photosynthesis)
Is all of the energy this plant makes available to the organism that eats it?

28. What do you mean “lost as heat”?
No! The plant USES some of it to grow, to reproduce, to help make food, etc.
Remember back to biochemistry, what happens when we break chemical bonds?
Energy is released as HEAT
Hence through a food chain, much of the energy is lost to the environment as heat.

29. Food Chains
Linear display of energy transfer in an ecosystem. Arrows point in the direction of energy flow.

30. Secondary consumer Producer Primary consumer Tertiary consumer
Put this one in your notes 
Producer
Secondary consumer
Primary consumer
Tertiary consumer

31. Food Webs Link together several food chains within the same ecosystem.
We can pick out a food chain within the food web. The fern is a producer. It is consumed by the insect which is the primary consumer. The insect is consumed by the mouse which is the secondary consumer and the mouse is consumed by the weasel which is the tertiary consumer. If we look at the mouse we see that it is also a primary consumer because it eats grass. Since the mouse eats both plants and animals, what is another name for it? Omnivore.

32. Tertiary consumer
Secondary consumer
Secondary consumer
Primary consumer
Secondary consumer
Primary consumer
Producer

33. 3 2 2 1 2 1

34. Trophic Level
Steps or levels in a Food Web, Food Chain, or Food Pyramid
Each consumer depends on the trophic level below it for energy
The first trophic level always includes producers, the second always includes primary consumers, etc.

35. Terrestrial Ecosystem
Marine Ecosystem

36. Food Web Analysis

37. Which organisms occupy more than one trophic level? Explain. 3 2 1 2 3
Warm up: 1
Which organisms occupy more than one trophic level? Explain. 3 2 1 2 3 1 2 2
Scavenger
The cougar is both a secondary and tertiary consumer.

38. Energy Flow Activity
Energy Flow Activity – day 2

39. Energy from the sun enters the first trophic level

40. ONLY 10% of the total energy available goes to the next level
But how much energy?
Energy goes from the Producers to the first level consumers

41. It’s used for life processes or lost to the atmosphere as heat (thermal energy)
What happens to the other 90%?

42. Ecological Pyramids
The direction of energy flow through the trophic levels can be shown through food chains and food webs.
To show relative amounts of matter and energy per trophic level, we can use a pyramid

43. Ecological Pyramids
Energy Pyramid: the producers are at the bottom with the total amount of sun energy captured.
Each trophic level that the energy flows into only receives 10% of the energy from the previous level.
The other 90% is used for life processes or lost as heat

44. If 5600 kCal were available at the producer level, how much would be available at each of the other trophic levels?

45. 5.6 kCal
56 kCal
560 kCal
5600 kCal
56 kCal x 10% = 5.6 kCal
5600 kCal x 10% = 560 kCal
560 kCal x 10% = 56 kCal

46. Biomass Pyramids
shows the amount of food or biomass (organic matter) at each trophic level

47. Pyramids of Numbers
shows the number of organisms at each trophic level in an area

48. Tertiary consumers Secondary consumers Primary consumers Producers
Warm up – Study the energy pyramid and then predict what would happen to the following ecosystem:
Producers
Primary consumers
Secondary consumers
Tertiary consumers

49. Biogeochemical Cycles

50. Biogeochemical Cycles
While energy is transferred in one direction in an ecosystem, matter is cycled through the ecosystem in the biogeochemical cycles

51. Biogeochemical Cycles
Water cycle- how water moves through the air, land, and organisms
Evaporation- water vapor from surface of bodies of water
Transpiration- water vapor from plants
Condensation- vapor water in clouds

52. Biogeochemical Cycles
Water cycle- how water moves through the air, land, and organisms
Precipitation- clouds become too full and rain, snow, etc. fall to the earth
Runoff- water collects into bodies of water
Infiltration/Seepage- water from the surface sinks into ground water storage

54. Biogeochemical Cycles
Carbon Cycle: Carbon dioxide (CO2) cycles through the ecosystem through air, water, land, and organisms

55. Biogeochemical Cycles
Carbon Cycle:
Photosynthesis brings CO2 from air to carbohydrates in plants
Carbon moves through all organisms by consumption
Carbon is returned to the soil through decomposition
Released to the air through volcanic eruptions, burning of fossil fuels, and respiration of all organisms
CO2 also found dissolved in water, and in deep underground deposits of fossil fuels

56. Biogeochemical Cycles
Nitrogen Cycle: nitrogen (N) cycles through the atmosphere, organisms, and soil

57. Biogeochemical Cycles
Nitrogen Cycle:
-Nitrogen fixation- bacteria take nitrogen (N2) from the atmosphere and change it into a form that plants can take up from the soil called ammonium (NH4).
-Nitrification- ammonium not taken up by plants are converted to nitrates and nitrites by bacteria which other plants can take up

58. Biogeochemical Cycles
Nitrogen Cycle:
-Consumers then eat and take in N in order to make proteins.
-Dead organisms can return N to the soil or to the atmosphere with the help of bacteria
-Denitrification- bacteria can turn the ammonium back to atmospheric nitrogen

59. Biogeochemical Cycles
Phosphorus Cycle: it does not enter the atmosphere, but rather is cycled through the soil, oceans, and organisms through consumption and decomposition

60. Nutrient Limitations
An ecosystem needs a particular amount of each nutrient to thrive. A single nutrient can limit its success.
An excess of a particular nutrient can cause over production of algae and plant growth

61. Human Effects on Biogeochemical Cycles
Carbon- burning fossil fuels releases previously isolated carbon back to the atmosphere
Nitrogen and Phosphorus- we add fertilizers to assist crop growth and much of it gets washed away into rivers, lakes and oceans

62. Eutrophication- overgrowth of photosynthetic organisms in a body of water due to an excess of nitrates and phoshates from urban or agricultural runoff
In oceans
In lakes

63. Eutrophication- overgrowth of photosynthetic organisms in a body of water due to an excess of nitrates and phoshates from urban or agricultural runoff
Can choke the waters of gas exchange
In estuaries