7+Ecology

**7th Grade: Ecology **


Key Idea 5: Organisms maintain a dynamic equilibrium that sustains life. Key Idea 6: Plants and animals depend on each other and their physical environment. Key Idea 7: Human decisions and activities have had a profound impact on the physical and living environment.** ||~  ||
 * = **Month** || **November** ||~  ||
 * = **Duration** || **2 Weeks** ||~  ||
 * = **Content** || **Ecology: Food Chains, Food Webs, Energy Pyramids, Symbiotic Relationships, Predator-Prey Relationships, Biomes** ||~  ||
 * = **Key Ideas** || **Standard 4: The Living Environment
 * = **Standards** || * //**Performance Indicator 5.1: Compare the way a variety of living specimens carry out basic life functions and maintain dynamic equilibrium**//
 * **5.1d: The methods for obtaining nutrients vary among organisms. Producers, such as green plants, use light energy to make their food. Consumers, such as animals, take in energy-rich foods.**
 * **5.1e: Herbivores obtain energy from plants. Carnivores obtain energy from animals. Omnivores obtain energy from both plants and animals. Decomposers, such as bacteria and fungi, obtain energy by consuming wastes and/or dead organisms.**
 * //**Performance Indicator 6.1: Describe the flow of energy and matter through food chains and food webs.**//
 * **6.1a: Energy flows through ecosystems in one direction, usually from the Sun, through producers to consumers and then to decomposers. This process may be visualized with food chains or energy pyramids.**
 * **6.1b: Food webs identify feeding relationships among producers, consumers and decomposers in an ecosystem.**
 * **6.1c: Matter is transferred from one organism to another and between organisms and their physical environment. Water, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and oxygen are examples of substances cycled between the living and nonliving environment.**
 * //**Performance Indicator 7.1: Describe how living things, including humans, depend upon the living and nonliving environment for their survival**//
 * **7.1a: A population consists of all individuals of a species that are found together at a given place and time. Populations living in one place form a community. The community and the physical factors with which it interacts compose an ecosystem.**
 * **7.1b: Given adequate resources and no disease or predators, populations (including humans) increase. Lack of resources, habitat destruction, and other factors such as predation and climate limit the growth of certain populations in the ecosystem.**
 * **7.1c: In all environments, organisms interact with one another in many ways. Relationships among organisms may be competitive, harmful, or beneficial. Some species have adapted to be dependent upon each other with the result that neither could survive without the other.**
 * **7.1d: Some microorganisms are essential to the survival of other living things.**
 * //**Performance Indicator 7.2: Describe the effects of environmental changes on humans and other populations**//
 * **7.2a: In ecosystems, balance is the result of interactions between community members and their environment.**
 * **7.2b: The environment may be altered through the activities of organisms. Alterations are sometimes abrupt. Some species may replace others over time, resulting in longterm gradual changes (ecological succession).** ||  ||
 * = **Relevant Vocabulary** || **biomes, tundra, taiga, savannah, grasslands, arctic/polar, tropical, deciduous forest, coniferous forest, desert, ecosystem, community, population, habitat, niche, food web, food chain, energy pyramid, carnivore, omnivore, herbivore, heterotroph, autotroph, producer, consumer, decomposer, competition, predation, predator, prey, mutualism, commensalism, parasitism** ||  ||
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 * **<span style="display: block; color: rgb(222,18,18); text-align: center;">Additional Resources ** || ||  ||