Ecology???

Question

1. The plants a ladybug lives on, the aphids that the ladybug eats, and the birds would eat the ladybug are all_______.
a. biotic parts of the envirnment
b. abiotic parts of the envirnment
d. involved in predatory-prey relationships.

2. The old adage "birds of a feather flock together" desribes which level of environmental organization?
a. a population
b. an organism
d. an ecosystem

3. which statement about a niche is flase?
a. It includes the organism habtat
b. It's always a small, confined area
c. It's the organism's role in the ecosystem
d. It includes nonliving facors, such as temperature

Answer 1

1. (a) is the most likely as "biotic" is a description of all living things in an ecosystem;
(b) is wrong because the "a" prefix means "not"; so combined with "biotic" it means non - living components such as temperature, climate, rainfall, evaporation and transpiration rates etc;
(c) is also wrong because the links you describe include an organism (the plant) which isn't precisely part of a predator - prey web.

2. (a) is the most correct because all the birds in the flock are representatives of the population of the species;
(b) is a description of an individual;
(c) an ecosystem includes many more populations of organisms than just birds. It also includes abiotic factors and relationships;

3. (a) A niche does include the animal's habitat, but it also includes aboitic factors;
(b) The ocean can be called a "niche" so this answer is obviously wrong. There is a definition of "niche" which does indeed describe a "small, confined area" but it's not a definition from ecological science. "The cupboard under the stairs" is not an ecosystem and therefore has no "niches" in the ecological sense.
(c) It does include abiotic factors such as climate, temperature, rainfall because such things shape the niche and make it suitable for a certain species to occupy - the Amazon rainforest is a good example. There are hundreds of thousands of species which have an Amazonian rainforest niche and the place would not exist if it wasn't reliant upon a specific precipitation and climatic regime.

Love and light,

Jarrah

Answer 2

1A - Biotic factors are the living parts of the environment.
(Not B - abiotic factors are nonliving. Not D - the plants aren't predator/prey.)

2A - Populations are all members of the same species in that area.
(Not B - organisms are individuals, not groups. Not D - the ecosystem includes the nonliving and living components.)

3B - Niche isn't just an area.