Ecology concept pre assessment (unfinished)

What could suddenly go extinct within the ecosystem to cause the ecosystem to collapse?

• The green plants because it is at the base of the food web

• The mouse or the wild cat because they have the most connections within the ecosystem

• Any of them could cause the ecosystem to collapse because everything would be thrown of balance

• None of them because everything would just adapt to fill the void

Tags

NGSS.MS-LS2-1

NGSS.MS-LS2-2

NGSS.MS-LS2-4

1. What happens to the energy levels as you work your way up the food web?

• It increases because predators need more energy to hunt prey

• It decreases because some energy gets lost as heat and biological processes

• It stays the same because energy is conserved (stays the same)

• It increases because the animal sizes tend to increase as you go up the food web

Tags

NGSS.MS-LS1-6

NGSS.MS-LS2-3

Which of the following is an example of the predator prey relationship?

• A buffalo eating grass on the plains because the grass dies to feed the buffalo

• A lion hunting down a zebra because the zebra dies to feed the lion

• Horsehair worm eating its way out of a grasshopper after growing inside because the grasshopper dies to feed the horsehair worm

• All of the above, because an organism dies to feed another

Tags

NGSS.MS-LS2-2

NGSS.MS-LS2-3

1. A population of warblers live in an area of the forest and eat the seeds of trees. They can eat a large variety of seeds, but tend to prefer larger ones because it is easy for them to break. A new, larger species of warbler enters this area of the forest and they only eat the big seeds. What happens to the smaller birds when they can no longer get to the seeds they prefer. 

• They leave and go to a different place that is unoccupied and has larger seeds

• The older species evolve smaller beaks so they can more easily eat the smaller seeds

• They can no longer eat as much so their population shrinks until it gets absorbed into the population of larger warblers

• The two warblers' populations compete until the older species of warblers wins, because they know the area better.

Tags

NGSS.MS-LS2-1

NGSS.MS-LS2-2

NGSS.MS-LS2-4

When an ecologist is studying a specific species and how it behaves within its own environment, they are studying what?

• Habitat

• Ecosystem

• Biome

• Communities

Tags

NGSS.MS-LS1-4

If a disease were to sweep through the lion population, and greatly reduce its numbers before the lions developed a resistance, how would ecologists react to the situation?

• They would ignore it. As long as there are some lions, the ecosystem should remain stable

• They would worry about the lions going extinct, because the numbers have gone down

• They would worry about the wild cat and jackal populations being reduced, because they are next to the lion on the food web

• They would worry about the jackals and wild cats causing the rabbit populations to reduce, because the jackal and wild cat populations would increase without predators

Tags

NGSS.MS-LS2-1

NGSS.MS-LS2-2

NGSS.MS-LS2-4

What happens to the population size as you work your way up the food chain?

• They get bigger because most predators hunt in packs

• They get bigger because because there is more energy to disperse among the individuals

• They get smaller because because there is less energy to disperse among the individuals

• They stay the same because the populations need to stay in balance

Tags

NGSS.MS-LS2-3

How do scientists organize the food/energy relationships in an ecosystem?

• Food chain because it accurately describes what eats what, and that is how you analyze an ecosystem

• 1. Food web because ecosystems are complicated and you sometimes need to combine multiple food chains to accurately describe what eats what in an ecosystem

• A food pyramid because it accurately represents how the energy levels change from one level to the next

• A venn diagram because it that is how you compare multiple things together

Tags

NGSS.MS-LS2-3

1. What happens to the population of a species as time goes on?

• 1. The population stays the same until a local extinction event occurs

• The population stays at whatever level it was at when the last dynamic shift occurred

• The population fluctuates around a threshold as resource limits put pressures on the population size.

• The population increases as long as they are having babies

Tags

NGSS.MS-LS2-1

NGSS.MS-LS2-4

What situations occur that lead to the evolution of cooperation between species?

• Resources become scarce, so the species’ face evolutionary pressures to cooperate

• As a response to new species moving in to directly compete with older populations

• It happens randomly, as the right mutations occurWhen humans interfere in ecosystems

• When humans interfere in ecosystems to force species to cooperate

Tags

NGSS.MS-LS2-1