domingo, 25 de abril de 2010

Interactions in Ecosystems

You are a conservation biologist (ecologist) who has been assigned the contract to research the reintroduction of the Ecosystem Interaction, so will investigate about this Situation in the field, you mission is to get information about:

· What is an ecosystem?

· How do organism interact?

· What is Symbiosis?

· How does energy move in ecosystems?

· Energy Pyramids

An ECOSYSTEM consists of the non-living (or abiotic) environment (rocks, soil, water, climate) and the populations of living organisms that reside in that environment. Let us look at how we organize the interactions between living organisms in an ecosystem.

First of all, consider what living organisms need in order to live.

Some of the things they need are food, water, oxygen and a method to remove waste products. Water and oxygen can be obtained from the abiotic environment and waste products can be expelled into the environment. An organism needs to obtain food to convert into energy, and the energy is used in life processes, such as breathing, moving, maintaining organs and reproducing.
So an organism needs to eat food; that same organism could be eaten by another bigger organism. This "who eats whom" can be organized into what is called a FOOD CHAIN.

Here is an example of a FOOD CHAIN:

algae --> krill --> codfish --> leopard seal --> killer whale


- Your Science Book pages from 127 to 147

- Evaluation for the Exposition
a) Material
b) Good knowlege
c) Hability of speech (fluency)
d) Use of vocabulary