CP Biology
Name:
THE LIVING WORLD
Use your text books to answer the following questions. Start in chapter 3 (page 64)
In nature, everything is connected. Remember the hierarchy of organization in the living world?
Atom molecule  organelle  cell tissue  organ  organ systems  organism 
Species  population  community  ecosystem  biome  biosphere
1. What is an ecosystem?
2.
Give an example of an ecosystem.
3.
An ecosystem is made up of both biotic and abiotic factors. What is a biotic factor? Give
some examples.
4. What is an abiotic factor? Give some examples.
5.
Classify the following as biotic or abiotic or both:
a. Rocks:
b. Pine trees:
c. Waterfalls:
d. Clouds:
e. A mushroom in the soil:
f. A fish swimming in a lake:
6. Give an example showing how a biotic factor and an abiotic factor interact with one another.
7.
Define organism.
8. What is a species?
9.
What is a population?
10. What is a community?
11. Explain the difference between a population and a community?
Materials and energy move between the living (biotic) and nonliving (abiotic) parts of
ecosystems. Materials (atoms, molecules) must be recycled, but energy is NOT! So, a constant
supply of energy must enter every ecosystem.
12. On Earth, what supplies our energy?
Remember from unit 1, organisms must be able to produce or obtain nutrients, convert the
nutrients into usable forms of chemical energy (cellular respiration – producing ATP!!),and
then use these forms of energy to power their life processes.
13. Through what process does the sun enter an ecosystem? (hint: In this process, the plant uses
sunlight to make sugar molecules.)
Organisms obtain their food in different ways. Some organisms are producers, while others are
consumers.
14. What is a producer? What is another term for producer? Give some examples of
organisms that are producers.
15. What is a consumer? What is another term for consumer? What are some examples of
organism that are consumers?
16. What is a decomposer? Why are decomposers so important to ecosystems?
17. There are several different types of consumers in ecosystems: herbivores, carnivores,
omnivores, decomposers, detritovores and scavengers. Fill in the following table describing
how each type of consumer gets its food, and give some examples of each.
Type of consumer
Herbivore
Carnivore
Omnivore
Decomposer
Detritovore
Scavenger
Energy Source
Examples
Energy Transfer
Each time an organism eats another organism, a transfer of energy occurs. We can trace the
transfer of energy as it travels through an ecosystem by studying food chains, food webs, and
trophic levels. These tell us how and how much energy is transferred between organisms in an
ecosystem.
18. What is a food chain?
19. What is a food web? Why is a food web really a better way than a food chain to depict
energy transfer in an ecosystem?
20. What is a trophic level?
21. What does an energy pyramid show us?
22. In an energy pyramid, which trophic level has the most energy available to it? What
happens to the amount of energy available to the organisms as the trophic levels go up? much
Explain why this happens.
23. Draw an energy pyramid for a four step food chain.
(make sure to show the producer and each level of consumer)
24. If 100% of the energy is available at the first trophic level, what percentage of that energy is
available at each of the next trophic levels?
25. Let’s use calories. If 8000 calories of energy are available at the first trophic level, how
many calories are available at each of the next trophic levels?
26. _____________always make up the first trophic level in a food web.
a. producers
b. primary consumers
c. secondary consumers
27. Energy pyramids show the relative amount of energy contained within each trophic level in a
given food web.
a. true
b. false
28. On average, about __________ percent of the energy available within one trophic level is
transferred to the next trophic level.
a. 90%
b. 10%
c. 50%
d. 100%
29.Fill in the pyramid below using the following food chain:
grass mice snake hawk.
Indicate which organism is the producer, primary consumer, secondary consumer and
tertiary consumer:
Use the following food chain to answer the questions below.
Algae  flag fish  largemouth bass  anhinga  alligator
30. Which organism is the producer?
31. Which organism is an herbivore?
32. Which organism is a secondary consumer?
33. Which organism is at the third trophic level?
34. Which organism(s) is/are carnivores?
35. Which organism is a tertiary consumer?
36. Which organism is at the second trophic level?
37. What would happen to the population of largemouth bass if the population of alligators
suddenly decreased a great deal?
38. What type of pyramid is shown below?
39. Producers have the _______________ biomass, while the top consumers have the least.
Pyramid of Numbers
40. Pyramids of numbers show the numbers of organisms at each trophic level. According to the
pyramid of numbers in the diagram above, which trophic level has the fewest number of
organisms?
41. What can you conclude about the size of the elder tree in the pyramid above? How do you
know this?
42. Arrange the following in order from most broad to least broad:
Biome, biosphere, organism, community, population, ecosystem
43.The place where an organism lives is called its ___________________.
44.What an organism does in its habitat, how it interacts with its environment, and how it
contributes to an ecosystem is known as the organism’s ___________________.
45.Give an example of a biological aspect of an organism’s niche, and give an example of a
physical aspect of an organism’s niche.
46.Describe what happens if two different species try to occupy the same niche at the same time
47. In which biome do you live?