BIOLOGY STUDY GUIDE—CHAPTER 3

BIOLOGY STUDY GUIDE—CHAPTER 3—THE BIOSPHERE

Define the following terms:

1. Nutrients—

2. Nitrogen fixation—

3. Photosynthesis—

4. Ecology—

5. Biosphere—

6. Species—

7. Population—

8. Community—

9. Ecosystem—

10. Producer—

11. Consumer—

12. Autotroph—

13. Heterotroph—

14. Decomposers—

15. Herbivore—

16. Carnivore—

17. Omnivore—

18. Food chain—

19. Food web—

20. Biomass—

21. Trophic level—

22. List the levels of organization in the biosphere from the highest/largest to the lowest/smallest.

23. Which level of organization represents the simplest grouping of more than one kind of organism.

24. What is the role of plants in the flow of energy?

25. What is the original source of energy in most ecosystems?

26. What is the role of the organisms at the bottom of any food chain?

27. What are algae?

28. What is the role of algae in a water ecosystem?

29. What two terms would be used to identify the role of a lion in its food web?

30. Draw a food chain and label the following:

Producer, first level consumer, second level consumer, third level consumer.

31. What does each of the following eat?

First level consumer—

Second level consumer—

Third level consumer—

32. What is shown by an ecological pyramid?

33. Which level of the ecological pyramid should be the largest in a typical model?

34. What happens to the energy in an organism that is not used for the organism’s life processes?

35. What is found in each of the following ecological pyramids?

Energy pyramid—

Biomass pyramid—

Pyramid of numbers—

36. Draw one of each of the pyramids in the above question.

37. What does the size of each level in an ecological pyramid tell you?

38. What is the water cycle?

39. What processes are part of the carbon cycle?

40. How is carbon stored in the biosphere?

41. What organisms carry out nitrogen fixation?

42. How do the movements of energy and nutrients through living systems differ?

43. What causes a nutrient to be a limiting nutrient?

44. What is true about the animals in a population?

45. In a food chain, which organisms have the smallest numbers and smallest total biomass?

46. In a food chain, which organisms have the greatest numbers and greatest total biomass?

47. How does the energy from the sun finally get to a lion?

48. How can you use a food web to show how many energy-transferring steps an organism is from the sun?

49. How can you tell the number of first-level consumers in a food web?

50. How can you tell which animals are in the same food chain when looking at a food web?

51. How can you tell an animal is a third-level consumer in a food web?

52. How can you tell which animals eat which animals or plants in a food web?

53. How does the energy available to an organism differ if it eats only first-level consumers compared to eating only second-level consumers?

54. At which level of ecological organization do the nutrient cycles function?

55. When does the carbon cycle pass through living systems?