Estructura y Guía Conceptual
Concepto Central: Ecosystems and Food Webs
An ecosystem includes living organisms and the nonliving parts of their environment, such as water, air, and sunlight. A food web shows how organisms are connected by feeding relationships and how energy moves through the ecosystem.
Ecosystem Components
- Biotic factors are living things, including plants, animals, fungi, and microorganisms.
- Abiotic factors are nonliving parts of the environment, such as sunlight, water, soil, and temperature.
- Organisms interact with one another and with abiotic factors to meet their needs.
Roles in a Food Web
- Producers, such as plants, use sunlight to make their own food.
- Consumers get energy by eating plants or other animals; herbivores eat plants, while carnivores eat animals.
- Decomposers, including fungi and many bacteria, break down dead matter and return nutrients to the environment.
Energy and Feeding Relationships
- An arrow points from the organism being eaten to the organism that receives the energy.
- A food chain shows one pathway of energy transfer; a food web connects several food chains.
- Energy becomes less available at each feeding step, so food webs usually have fewer top consumers than producers.
Ecosystem Change and Protection
- A change in one population can affect other organisms connected to it in the food web.
- Pollution, habitat loss, and changes in water or temperature can disrupt ecosystem relationships.
- Protecting habitats and reducing pollution can help maintain biodiversity and stable food webs.
Preguntas de Reflexión y Repaso:
- How do biotic and abiotic factors interact in an ecosystem? Give one example.
- In a food web, what does an arrow from grass to a rabbit show, and why?
- If a disease greatly reduces a plant population, predict two possible effects on the food web and explain your reasoning.
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