Changes to an Ecosystem

Changes to an Ecosystem

The effects change has on an ecosystem.

Survival

Organisms can survive only in environments that meet their needs.

Environments

The earth has many different environments, or biomes, and each has unique conditions. These conditions, which include temperature, rainfall, soil quality, and predators, present challenges to the living things born into that environment. 

Adapting

Organisms have evolved features (structures and behaviors) that make them well adapted to tackle the challenges of the environment they live in.

Structural Adaptation

Physical features of an organism that enable them to survive in their environment. Example: penguin has blubber to protect itself from freezing temperatures.

Structural Adaptation

During the 1800’s, Europe and America experienced the Industrial Revolution. Coal burning released large amounts of smoke and smog into the surrounding environment which resulted in layers of soot settling on trees. What happened to the light colored Peppered Moths?

Behavioral Adaptation

Behavioral adaptations are actions that help animals survive. They can be learned or instinctive.

Behavioral Adaptation

Emperor penguins form large huddles. Huddles allow them to share body warmth, and shelters many of the penguins from the wind. The huddle constantly moves so that all the penguins have a turn in the middle. Huddling can reduce heat loss by up to 50%.

Multiple Choice

Monarch butterflies cannot survive freezing temperatures, so they migrate from Canada all the way to Mexico. This is a type of _____________________ adaptation.

• Behavioral

• Structural

Multiple Choice

Succulents have adapted to their climate by storing water in their short, thick stems and leaves. This type of adaptation is _______________.

• Behavioral

• Structural

Multiple Choice

Some trees need to go dormant ("fall asleep") in order to survive. If they did not, the tree would die from a lack of water resources or not being able to produce enough energy to sustain itself. This type of adaptation is _____________.

• Behavioral

• Structural

Changes

Changes in an organism's ecosystem may result in death, migration, or survival of a few well-adapted individuals in the population.

Ecosystem Changes

Changes include habitat change, climate change, invasive species, overexploitation, and pollution. 

Habitat Change

Habitat change can occur naturally through droughts, disease, fire, hurricanes, mudslides, etc.

However, it generally occurs because of human activities such as land use change and physical modification of rivers or water withdrawal from rivers.

Climate Change

The average long-term changes in temperature, precipitation and the warming over the entire Earth.

Rising sea levels

Shrinking mountain glaciers

Ice melting at a faster rate

Changes in flower and plant blooming times.

Invasive Species

An invasive species can be any kind of living organism—animal, plant, insect, fish, fungus, bacteria, seeds or eggs—that is not native to an ecosystem and causes harm. 

The invasive species can outcompete the native species for food and habitats and sometimes even cause their extinction.

Invasive: Small Indian Mongoose

Brought to new ecosystem to help with control of rats and snakes.

They are blamed for the extinction of the bar-winged rail bird, Jamaica petrel, and the decline (endangered) hawksbill turtles, pink pigeon , Amami rabbit and many other birds, reptiles and mammals. Mongooses also carry rabies and other human diseases.

Overexploitation

Overexploitation means harvesting species from the wild at rates faster than natural populations can recover. Overfishing and overhunting are both types of overexploitation. 

Pollution

Streams full of toxic chemicals from industrial processes, rivers overloaded with nutrients from farms (fertilizer), trash blowing away from landfills, city skies covered in smog-all of these are examples of pollution that damage the balance of an ecosystem.

Multiple Choice

Because of waters warming, cold-water fish, including trout and salmon species, are losing their habitat. The reason the waters are warming is because of _________.

• Overpopulation

• Climate change

• Pollution

• Invasive Species

Multiple Choice

177,000 square kilometres of forests and woodlands are cleared each year to make space for farming or to harvest timber. Which type of ecosystem change is this?

• Overpopulation

• Habitat change

• Pollution

• Invasive Species

Multiple Choice

Overfishing has caused whitefish, walleye, and sturgeon populations to decline

• Overpopulation

• Habitat change

• Pollution

• Overexploitation