Life In A Bottle
Your assignment for this unit is to create a self-sustaining closed ecosystem. To receive
full credit on this project your ecosystem needs to be able to live on its own without any
input from you or anyone else for one week.
You will need to supply all of the materials you include in your ecosystem. The only
required piece of material is a 2 L bottle to hold your ecosystem. Otherwise the materials
that you include in your ecosystem are only limited by your creativity.
When you turn in your ecosystem you will also need to include a written explanation of
how your ecosystem works. You will need to include explanations of the following:
 A list of materials you included in your ecosystem and label them
as biotic or abiotic.
 Include a food web for your ecosystem
 Include all possible food chains in your ecosystem.
 Identify your producers
 Identify your consumers
 Identify your decomposers
 How water cycles in your ecosystem
 How nitrogen cycles in your ecosystem
 How carbon cycles in your ecosystem
 How oxygen cycles in your ecosystem
 Explain how energy flows through your ecosystem
 Draw an energy pyramid for your ecosystem
 Identify the type of habitat your ecosystem represents.
 Compare the biodiversity of your ecosystem to the biodiversity of
the Oxnard community.
 Explain what will happen to the biodiversity of your ecosystem if
the living organisms were moved to a different habitat.
 Explain how the decomposers and producers you have included
maintain the stability of your ecosystem.
o What would happen if one was removed?
This project will be due: Wednesday, September 28th
Your unit test on Ecology will be: Wednesday, October 5th