VA SOL 4.5The student will investigate and understand how plants and animals

in an ecosystem interact with one another and the nonliving environment. Key concepts include:

• behavioral and structural adaptations;• organization of communities;• flow of energy through food webs;• habitats and niches;• life cycles; and• influence of human activity on ecosystems.

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What is the main difference between plants and animals?

• Animals are living organisms. This means they breathe, eat, grow, and reproduce.

• Plants are living things too, so what is the biggest difference between plants and animals?

• Plants produce (make) their own food and animals feed off other things.

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Animal Adaptations• In order for animals to be able to survive,

they need to be able to adapt (change).

• An adaptation is a trait that makes an animal suited to its environment.

• Anything that helps an organism survive in its environment is an adaptation.  It also refers to the ability of living things to adjust to different conditions within their environments. 

• There are two main categories of adaptations: structural or behavioral.

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Examples:• Teeth - since different

animals eat different things, they don't all have the same kind of teeth

• Body coverings - Hair, scales, spines, and feathers grow from the skin.  All of these parts help animals survive in their environments.  

• Movement - animals find food by moving from place to place

A structural adaptation involves some part of an animal's body, such as the size or shape of the teeth, the animal's body covering, or the way the animal moves.  

Structural Adaptations

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Echolocation in bats is an adaptation for catching insects.

Structural Adaptation Ex: Camouflage allow an animal to blend into its environment and makes it hard for enemies to single out individuals.  

Camouflage – Structural Adaptation

  A completely different approach for deception is camouflage, whereby animals seek to look inanimate or inedible to avoid detection by predators and prey. There are many examples of rainforest species which are cryptically colored to match their surroundings. For example, the Uroplatus geckos of Madagascar are incredible masters of disguise and are practically unnoticeable to the passer-by. An even more amazing group is the katydids, a group of grasshopper-like insects found worldwide. Katydids are nocturnal insects which use their cryptic coloration to remain unnoticed during the day when they are inactive. They remain perfectly still, often in a position that makes them blend in even better. Katydids have evolved to the point where their body coloring and shape matches leaves—including half-eaten leaves, dying leaves, and leaves with bird droppings—sticks, twigs, and tree bark. Other well-known camouflage artists include beetles, mantids, caterpillars, moths, snakes, lizards, and frogs.

Structural Adaptation Ex: Mimicry allows one animal to look, sound, or act like another animal to fool predators into thinking it is poisonous or dangerous.  

                  

Blue poison dart frogMantella madagascariensis

Animals that use mimicry use colors and markings to look like another animal.

Hawk Moth MimicryThis moth caterpillar defends itself by mimicking a snake.

                       

Social behavior - some animals live by themselves, while other live in groups. 

Ex: Penguins live in large communities to help keep warm.

  Behavior adaptations include activities that help an animal survive.  Behavior adaptations can be learned or instinctive. (a behavior an animal is born with). Examples: Social Behavior, Behavior for Protection, Migration

Behavioral Adaptations

Behavior for protection -  An animal's behavior sometimes helps to protect the animal.  • For instance the opossum plays dead.  • A rabbit freezes when it thinks it has been

seen. 

Animals migrate for different reasons:• better climate & food • safe place to live & raise young • go back to the place they were born.

Behavioral AdaptationsMigration-is the behavioral adaptation that involves an animal or group of animals moving from one region to another and then back again.

All living things depend on one another to survive. A food chain consists of organisms that depend on each other as food sources. A food web is made up of many food chains within a natural community of all the organisms in an area. Many animals eat more than one thing and each link is important to the entire food web system. Food chains are made up of four main parts:

1. The sun is the energy provider for everything on earth.

3. Consumers include every organism that eats something else. Consumers are either herbivores (plant-eaters), carnivores (meat- and plant-eaters), omnivores (meat- and plant eaters), parasites (living off other organisms), or scavengers (animals that eat dead animal carcasses).

Food Chains

2. Producers include all green plants and use the energy of the sun to make their own food. Plants make up the bulk of all food chains and provide oxygen to all living things.

4. Decomposers (bacteria and fungi) convert dead matter into gases such as carbon and nitrogen that are released back into the air, water or earth.

The sun’s energy cycles through ecosystems from

producers through consumers and back into the nutrient pool through

decomposers.

Within a community, organisms are dependent on the survival of other organisms. Energy is

passed from one organism to another.

The organization of communities is based on using energy from the sun within a given ecosystem.

*The greatest amount of energy in a community is in the

producers.

       It all starts with the sun, which provides the energy that sustains all life on earth.

       Green plants, such as grass and duckweed, convert the sun's energy and nutrients from the soil or water into plant material.

       Herbivores (plant eaters), such as mice and minnows, eat plant materials an convert his stored energy into animal tissue.

       Carnivores (meat eaters), such as hawks and bass, eat the smaller animals and transfer the energy once again.

       When carnivores die, specialized organisms called decomposers convert this tissue back into soil nutrients that are again used by the green plants at the beginning of the chain.

Food chains and food webs are simplified ways of looking at the way energy flows among living organisms.

Living organisms in an ecosystem depend on each other for food and essential nutrients such as carbon and nitrogen. This interdependence often takes the form of a feeding relationship - ie, they eat each other!Make sure you understand the meaning of the following terms:

Producersie, green plants. All food chains start with them, because they can make food by photosynthesis

Primary consumers

feed primarily on plant material. They are herbivores - eg rabbits, caterpillars, cows, sheep, and deer.

Secondary consumers

feed primarily on animal material. They are carnivores - eg cats, dogs and lions.

Omnivores eat both plants and animals - eg bears and humans.

Predatorskill for food. They are either secondary or tertiary consumers - eg polar bears, golden eagles.

Preyare the organisms that predators feed on. Examples of predator and prey species are: fox and rabbit; and caterpillar; wolf and lamb.

Scavengersfeed on dead animals . They perform a useful cleaning-up function. Examples are crow, vulture, buzzard and hyena.

Decomposers

feed on dead and decaying organisms and on the undigested parts of plant and animal matter. (They do not 'eat' the food like scavengers, as they have no mouth-parts. Instead they break down solid matter into liquids which they can absorb.) Examples: bacteria and some fungus

                                           *All food ultimately comes from green plants or producers. The other organisms in the food chain are consumers, because they all get their energy and biomass by consuming (eating) other organisms.

*All food chains are pretty short. There are never more than four steps, because a lot of energy is lost at each step, and after three steps most of the available energy has been expended. This also explains why the organisms at the top of food chains (eg owls) are very small in number compared with those lower down (eg grass plants). After 2 steps there is simply not enough available energy to support more than a few top predators.

A food chain shows who eats what in a particular habitat. For example: grass seed is eaten by a vole, which is eaten by a barn owl. The arrows between each item in the chain always point in the direction of energy flow - in other words, from the food to the feeder.

*In its natural habitat it is unusual for an animal to eat only one particular organism, so a more realistic way of showing feeding relationships is to draw a series of interconnecting food chains. This is called a food web.

*This food web describes feeding relationships in a freshwater pond ecosystem.

* It allows you to follow the routes that biomass (and energy) take through the system.

Pondweed (a producer) is eaten by the mayfly nymphs, which are in turn fed upon by both the dragonfly nymphs and the brown trout. The brown trout make a meal of the dragonfly nymphs too.The other producer in this web is the microscopic algae. This is eaten by the freshwater shrimp. The shrimps are fed upon by dragon fly nymphs and brown trout (which also eat the dragonfly nymphs).

The Riddle of the Niches Can you fill in the missing words?

(When it’s the last word in a line, it will rhyme with the line above.)

I’m a producer. I’m a cool dude. I can take sunshine and turn it into ___________.

I am a consumer, yes I am. I eat __________ whenever I can.

  I am a scavenger, that’s important to you, ‘Cause I eat ___________ stuff, pew, pew, pew.  

I’m a decomposer, I am royal,

‘Cause I break things down in the ____________.

  These are niches, roles for all, If one of these is missing, the ecosystem will ________.

I am a human being and I understand, That I should live and care for this ____________.

Habitat - The place where an organism lives. A habitat is often thought of as the organism's address.

Examples: A lion’s habitat is a savanna. A monkey’s habitat is a rain forest. A cactus’s habitat is in the

desert.

Niche - An organism’s way of life. A niche is considered to be an organism’s occupation.

Examples: A lion’s niche includes where and how it finds shelter and food, when and how often it reproduces, how it relates to other animals, etc.

A niche (from the French word meaning “nest”) is the function an organism performs in the food web of that community.

No two types of organisms occupy the exact same niche in a community!

FOOD CHAIN & HUMAN INTERACTION

How have humans affected the food chain?

When we spray pesticides, we put the food chain in danger.  By breaking one link on the chain means all of the organisms above that link are in threat of extinction (like the domino effect).  By hunting animals nearly to extinction, everything above the animal in the food chain is put in danger.  A 'chain reaction' in the food chain can be perilous!  Since the food chain provides energy that all living things must have in order to survive, it is imperative that we protect it.

                                                                        

Habitat is any place on the earth that contains everything an animal needs to survive and reproduce. This includes obvious things like food, water, air, and shelter, but it may also include many other factors such as temperature, rainfall, and soil type.                                             

Each animal is equipped to live its life under certain conditions (the same can be said for plants). For instance, woodpeckers need dead and dying trees that provide insects to eat and soft wood for drilling nest cavities. Meadowlarks live and nest on the ground in open, grassy areas. You will not find a woodpecker perched on a fence post in the open prairie, nor will you see a meadowlark peeking out from a nest cavity in the deep woods. The

habitat just isn’t right for them.  

Habitat loss is probably the greatest single problem facing wildlife today. As a habitat is destroyed or altered by human activities, wildlife species are forced to find new areas of habitat, adapt to life in different types of habitat, or die. Some species are able to adapt; some become extinct. Wildlife conservation is directly linked with habitat conservation. If habitat is available, wildlife will be there. By conserving, restoring, and creating habitat, we ensure that a variety and abundance of wildlife have places to call home.  

                  http://www.nhptv.org/natureworks/nwep.htm  SUGGESTED VIDEO CLIPS:• #1 – Adaptation• #2-Coloration• #5-Habitat• #9-Wildlife Web 1• #14 –Niche