Ecology Overview |
What I will learn in this unit: |
Unit 1: Energy Flow in an Ecosystem
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Standard II: Students will understand that energy from sunlight is changed to chemical energy in plants, transfers between living organisms, and that changing the environment may alter the amount of energy provided to living organisms.
Objective 1: Compare ways that plants and animals obtain and use energy.
Objective 2: Generalize the dependent relationship between organisms.
Objective 3: Analyze human influence on the capacity of an environment to sustain living things.
STANDARD II VOCAB
food web, food chain, photosynthesis, respiration, predator, energy flow, solar energy, chemical energy, mechanical energy, producer, consumer, prey, mutualism, parasitism, competition, environment, capacity, organism, decomposer
Objective 1: Compare ways that plants and animals obtain and use energy.
- I CAN recognize the importance of photosynthesis in using light energy as a part of the chemical process that builds plant materials.
- I CAN explain how respiration in animals is a process that converts food energy into mechanical and heat energy.
- I CAN trace the path of energy from the Sun to mechanical energy in an organism. (e.g. sunlight – light energy to plants by photosynthesis to sugar – stored chemical energy to respiration in muscle cells – usable chemical energy to muscle contraction – mechanical energy)
Objective 2: Generalize the dependent relationship between organisms.
- I CAN categorize the relationships between organisms (i.e. producer/consumer/decomposer, predator/prey, mutualism/parasitism) and provide examples of each.
- I CAN use models to trace the flow of energy in food chains and food webs.
- I CAN formulate and test a hypothesis on the effects of air, temperature, water, or light on plants. (e.g. seed germination, growth rates, seasonal adaptations)
- I CAN research multiple ways that different scientists have investigated the same ecosystem.
Objective 3: Analyze human influence on the capacity of an environment to sustain living things.
- I CAN describe specific examples of how humans have changed the capacity of an environment to support specific life forms. (e.g. people create wetlands and nesting boxes that increase the number and range of wood ducks, acid rain damages amphibian eggs and reduces populations of frogs, clear cutting forests affects squirrel populations, suburban sprawl reduces mule deer winter range thus decreasing numbers of deer)
- I CAN distinguish between inference and evidence in a newspaper or magazine article relating to the influence of humans on the environment.
- I CAN infer the potential effects of humans on a specific food web.
- I CAN evaluate and present arguments for and against allowing a specific species of plant or animal to become extinct, and relate the argument to the flow of energy in an ecosystem.
STANDARD II VOCAB
food web, food chain, photosynthesis, respiration, predator, energy flow, solar energy, chemical energy, mechanical energy, producer, consumer, prey, mutualism, parasitism, competition, environment, capacity, organism, decomposer