Balance & Change in Ecosystems Flashcards

All 4 cards in this deck

What is an ecosystem?

A community of living plants and animals interacting with each other and with the non-living parts of their environment.

What is the difference between biotic and abiotic components of an ecosystem?

Biotic components are the living parts (plants, animals, decomposers); abiotic components are the non-living parts (climate, soil, water, sunlight).

True or false? In a balanced ecosystem, changing one component has no effect on the other components.

False. All components are interdependent, so a change in one component affects the rest of the ecosystem.

What effect does the loss of a predator have on a food web?

e.g. disease kills most of the trout in a pond

The species it fed on increase in number — e.g. there might be more aquatic insects or crayfish — and anything that ate it, including humans, has less food.