ECOLOGY, POPULATION, AND BEHAVIOR STUDY GUIDE

Answer the following questions based on the food web above.

  1. Which organisms are primary consumers (first-order heterotrophs)?

Rabbit, deer, grasshopper, chipmunk, caterpillar

  1. Which organisms are second-order and third-order heterotrophs?

Fox, owl, hawk

  1. What is the original source of energy for all organism in the diagram?

Sun

(use the diagram from the first page to answer the following questions)

  1. What sequence shows a correct pathway for the flow of energy in a food chain?

grass→ grasshopper → mouse → hawk

  1. Which organisms would most likely be adversely affected by a continuous decrease in the population of rabbits?

Owl and fox

  1. Which organisms would represent the group with the least biomass?

Hawk, owl, fox

  1. If pesticides were used that killed grasshoppers, which organisms would have the most bioaccumulation of pesticides?

Third order heterotrophs (owl, fox, hawk)

  1. In the above diagram, a student notices that the grasshopper population is really high. Grasshoppers feed on plants. Robins feed on the grasshoppers. Owls feed on robins. Draw a pyramid of energy correctly illustrates these relationships?

  1. If the grasshopper population decreased, what would happen to the grass population?

It would increase

  1. By observing the diagram above in # 8: at each successive level from Grass to Owl, what happens to the amount of available energy?

Decreases

Use the graphs below to answer the following questions:

Population APopulation B

  1. What type of graph is represented for population A?

S-shaped

  1. How would you describe the growth rate of populations A and B at the time of # 1?

Exponential

  1. How would you describe the growth rate of population A during the time of # 2?

Leveling off

  1. How would you describe the growth rate of population A at the time of # 3?

Carrying capacity

  1. What could be some abiotic limiting factors for population A?

Water, space, temperature

  1. What could be some biotic limiting factors for population B?

Food availability, predator population size

  1. What type of graph is represented for population B?
  1. What shape graph would humans have?

J-shape, exponential

  1. What shape graph would antibiotic resistant bacteria have?

J-shape, exponential

  1. What shape graph would represent a deer population?

S-shape, with carrying capacity

  1. The graph below shows the changes in two populations of herbivores in a grassy field.

What is a possible reason for these changes in each population over

time?

Population B competed more successfully for food than population A

  1. An environment can support only as many organisms as the available energy, minerals, and oxygen will allow. Which term is best described by this statement?

Carrying capacity

  1. In the above question, are these limiting factors biotic or abiotic?

Abiotic

  1. Examine the diagram below.

Which two processes are involved in the cycling of matter shown in the diagram?

Photosynthesis (using CO2and giving off O2

And Cellular Respiration (using O2and giving off CO2)

Use the following terms to answer the questions below:

PopulationBiosphereCommunityEcosystem

  1. Beneath a log, you will find fungi, termites, pill bugs, ants, millipedes, earthworms, and beetles. What do these organisms represent as a whole?

Community (group of different species living together)

  1. Put the above terms in order from smallest to largest.

Population

Community

Ecosystem

Biosphere

  1. In question 26, which term includes the other three?

Biosphere

  1. Which term includes only one species?

Population

  1. Which term includes all of the abiotic and biotic factors that interact?

Ecosystem

  1. What is the difference between niche and habitat?

A habitat is the place where an organism lives.

A niche is the role that organism plays in the environment.

  1. Ants and the acacia tree both help each other. What is this type of symbiotic relationship?

Mutualism

  1. A mosquito drinks blood from a human. What is this type of symbiotic relationship?

Parasitism

  1. Spanish moss grows on a water oak tree, but it does neither harm nor benefit to the tree. What is this type of symbiotic relationship?

Commensalism

  1. What are decomposers and why are they important?

Decomposers are heterotrophs that break down dead organisms. They are important in cycling materials by returning nutrients back to the soil, such as nitrogen.

  1. Draw a graph that represents a predator-prey relationship.

Use the graph above to answer the following questions:

  1. In the above graph, what happens if the prey (rabbits) decrease?

The predator population will decrease because there are not enough rabbits to feed the predators

  1. Once the predator population goes down, what will happen to the rabbit population?

It will increase again

  1. What greenhouse gas causes acid rain? Where does it come from?

Sulfur dioxide emitted from smoke stacks of factories

  1. What contributes to global warming?

The burning of fossil fuels

Animal Behavior

  1. What are chemicals used to communicate called?

Pheromones

  1. What is an example of imprinting?

Young gozzlings (geese) follow their mother

  1. What is an example of trial-and-error learning?

A mouse that has been trained to go through a maze to receive an award at the end

  1. How do animals communicate?

Sounds, touches, visual (body language), and smells

  1. If a chimpanzee figures out that he can screw two poles together in order to reach a banana far away from his cage, and he has never seen this done before, what type of learned behavior is this?

Insight

  1. Why do raccoons come out mostly at dawn and dusk?

Cirdadian rhythm (internal 24 hour clock)

  1. Who first demonstated conditioning in dogs?

Pavlov

  1. What did the biologist above do to make the dog drool?

Train the dog to associate that every time it hears a bell, it gets fed. Eventually, all it took was for the dog to hear a bell ring, and it would drool for food that it knows is coming soon.

  1. What is rutting behavior in deer an example of?

Territoriality (defending space)

A form of Aggression

  1. When a bird sings to signal to other birds to keep away, what is this an example of?

Territoriality (defending space)

A form of Aggression

  1. When some chickens are subservient, while one chicken always gets to eat first, what is this an example of?

Pecking order (dominance hierarchy)

  1. What is the difference between hibernation and estivation?

Hibernation: slowing of one’s metabolism during COLD weather

Estivation: slowing of one’s metabolism during HOT weather

  1. If a dog is taken on a walk every day along a sidewalk with very noisy traffic and is no longer scared of the noise, what has taken place?

Habituation (ignoring the sounds since they do not pose a threat or reward)

  1. How do honeybees communicate to each other where a good food source is located?

A waggle dance; bees make a figure-8 shape dance, angled the # of degrees away from the sun to indicate direction and waggling the number of times indicating distance.

  1. What is the difference between negative and positive phototaxis?

When an organism moves towards light, it is positive phototaxis

When an organism moves away from the light, it is negative phototaxis