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
2. Which organisms are second-order and third-order heterotrophs?
Fox, owl, hawk
3. 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)
4. What sequence shows a correct pathway for the flow of energy in a
food chain?
grass→ grasshopper → mouse → hawk
5. Which organisms would most likely be adversely affected by a
continuous decrease in the population of rabbits?
Owl and fox
6. Which organisms would represent the group with the least biomass?
Hawk, owl, fox
7. If pesticides were used that killed grasshoppers, which organisms
would have the most bioaccumulation of pesticides?
Third order heterotrophs (owl, fox, hawk)
8. 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?
Owl
Robin
Grasshopper
Grass
9. If the grasshopper population decreased, what would happen to the
grass population?
It would increase
10. 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:
2
1
Population A
3
1
Population B
11. What type of graph is represented for population A?
S-shaped
12. How would you describe the growth rate of populations A and B at the
time of # 1?
Exponential
13. How would you describe the growth rate of population A during the
time of # 2?
Leveling off
14. How would you describe the growth rate of population A at the time
of # 3?
Carrying capacity
15. What could be some abiotic limiting factors for population A?
Water, space, temperature
16. What could be some biotic limiting factors for population B?
Food availability, predator population size
17. What type of graph is represented for population B?
18. What shape graph would humans have?
J-shape, exponential
19. What shape graph would antibiotic resistant bacteria have?
J-shape, exponential
20. What shape graph would represent a deer population?
S-shape, with carrying capacity
21. 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
22. 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
23. In the above question, are these limiting factors biotic or abiotic?
Abiotic
24. Examine the diagram below.
Which two processes are involved in the cycling of matter shown in
the diagram?
Photosynthesis (using CO2 and giving off O2
And Cellular Respiration (using O2 and giving off CO2)
Use the following terms to answer the questions below:
Population Biosphere Community Ecosystem
25. 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)
26. Put the above terms in order from smallest to largest.
Population
Community
Ecosystem
Biosphere
27. In question 26, which term includes the other three?
Biosphere
28. Which term includes only one species?
Population
29. Which term includes all of the abiotic and biotic factors that
interact?
Ecosystem
30. 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.
31. Ants and the acacia tree both help each other. What is this type of
symbiotic relationship?
Mutualism
32. A mosquito drinks blood from a human. What is this type of symbiotic
relationship?
Parasitism
33. 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
34. 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.
35. Draw a graph that represents a predator-prey relationship.
Use the graph above to answer the following questions:
36. 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
37. Once the predator population goes down, what will happen to the
rabbit population?
It will increase again
38. What greenhouse gas causes acid rain? Where does it come from?
Sulfur dioxide emitted from smoke stacks of factories
39. What contributes to global warming?
The burning of fossil fuels
Animal Behavior
1. What are chemicals used to communicate called?
Pheromones
2. What is an example of imprinting?
Young gozzlings (geese) follow their mother
3. 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
4. How do animals communicate?
Sounds, touches, visual (body language), and smells
5. 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
6. Why do raccoons come out mostly at dawn and dusk?
Cirdadian rhythm (internal 24 hour clock)
7. Who first demonstated conditioning in dogs?
Pavlov
8. 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.
9. What is rutting behavior in deer an example of?
Territoriality (defending space)
A form of Aggression
10. 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
11. When some chickens are subservient, while one chicken always gets to
eat first, what is this an example of?
Pecking order (dominance hierarchy)
12. 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
13. 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)
14. 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.
15. 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