Populations and Ecosystems Review Guide
Investigation 1: Milkweed Bugs
- Differentiate between organism, species, and population.
- Define habitat.
- Observe organisms in their habitats and record observations.
Investigation 2: Sorting Out Life
- Define and use the following terms: individual, population, community, and
ecosystem.
- Describe biotic factors in an ecosystem.
- Describe abiotic factors in an ecosystem.
- Explain the defining characteristics of an individual, population, community, and
ecosystem.
Investigation 3: Mini-Ecosystems
- Distinguish between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.
- Define an ecosystem.
- Describe how organisms depend on the abiotic elements in their ecosystem.
Investigation 4: Mono Lake
- Use a food chain to describe the sequence of how organisms eat one another to get
food.
- Use feeding relationships and a food chain to create a food web for an ecosystem.
- Describe how an ecosystem is defined by the interactions among its organisms and
physical factors.
- Diagram a food web, using arrows to indicate what eats what.
- Explain the functional roles and feeding relationships that constitute a food web.
Investigation 5: Finding the Energy
- Define food
- Describe how energy in food is measured.
- Outline photosynthesis
- Feeding Relationships define trophic levels: producer, consumer, and decomposer
- Explain how organisms get the energy they need for life.
- Discuss how photosynthesis makes energy available to organisms.
- Describe how energy moves from one trophic level to another in an ecosystem.
- Describe how every activity undertaken by living organisms involves expenditure of
energy.
Investigation 6: Population Size
- Describe reproductive potential.
- Identify limiting factors in an ecosystem.
- Discuss how biotic and abiotic factors in an environment can limit a population.
- Explain the roles of both lab experiments and field observations in the study of
populations.
- Describe the population fluctuations in Mono Lake in terms of limiting factors and
feeding relationships.
Investigation7: Ecoscenarios
- Define ecosystem.
- Identify common characteristics that all ecosystems share: trophic levels –
producers, consumers, and decomposers.
- Describe ways that all ecosystems are alike.
- Describe factors that make ecosystems different from one another.
- Discuss ways that activities of humans affect natural ecosystems.
Investigation 8: Adaptations
- Define adaptation.
- Distinguish between a feature and a trait.
- Explain variation as it relates to features of organisms.
- Explain how adaptations help organisms survive in an environment.
- Describe how a population can change over time in response to environmental
factors.
Investigation 9: Genetic Variation
- Explain how individuals in a population vary by trait.
- Define heredity, chromosomes, genes, and alleles.
- Explain dominant and recessive alleles.
- Define and differentiate between genotype and phenotype.
- Use the terms homozygous and heterozygous.
- Use Punnett squares to predict the proportions of offspring that will have certain
traits.
- Explain how organisms inherit features and traits from their parents.
- Describe how dominant and recessive alleles interact to produce traits in a
population.
Investigation 10: Natural Selection
- Explain how environmental factors put pressures on populations.
- Define natural selection.
- Describe how selective pressure can affect the genetic makeup of a population.
- Explain how the traits expressed by the members of a population can changes
naturally over time.