Ecology Webquest

Ecologist: (YOUR NAME)______

Part I: Ecosystems and Nutrient Cycling

Your first assignment is to put together a simple food chain and answer the

questions below.

I. FOOD CHAINS

(1)Go to

and click on “play the game” to begin.

Answer the questions below:

1. A person is called a ______because theyeat producers and consumers.

2. Food gives people and animals ______.

3. ______are animals that only eat meat.

4. ______are animals that only eat plants.

(2) Choose the Forest Food Chain.

1. What animals were in your food chain? Place them in the correct order.

2.What 5 things happen if you take the frog out of the food chain?

1. ______

2. ______

3. ______

4. ______

5. ______

II. FOOD WEBS

(1)Go to and choose one of the three food webs. Put the food web together!

Consumers – are living things that need producers to be their food (animals and people)
Producers – living things which take the non living matter from the environment (plants)
Decomposers – living things which feed off of dead plants and animals (bacteria, fungi)

(2)Using the information in the table above and what you know about trophic levels answer the following questions about your food chain:

Name a producer in your food web ______

Name a primary consumer in your food web______

Name a secondary consumer in your food web ______

Who are usually the decomposers in a food web? ______

If the producer has 100 units of energy, and this food chain follows the general rule of energy transfer (what percent is transferred on average?) how much energy will be available for the primary consumer? ______

How much energy will be available for the secondary consumer? ______

III. NUTRIENT CYCLING

A.Carbon Cycle

(1) Go to Click and complete scene 1.

(2) Name 2 places on the earth we find carbon:

1. ______2. ______

(3) Go to read about the carbon cycle and fill in the blanks below:

Plants pull carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere to make food, through a process called ______.

Through food chains animals get ______from the plants and other animals they eat.

When plants and animals die and ______, carbon goes back into the

ground.

Some carbon is buried deep in the ground and forms ______.

When humans burn fossil fuels, ______is released back into the atmosphere.

When humans and animals exhale, they release carbon back into the air by a process called ______.

B.Nitrogen Cycle

Go to the website and answer the questions below:

1.What are 2 ways nitrogen becomes useable to plants, humans and animals:

______

______

2.How do herbivores obtain the nitrogen they need?

______

3.How is nitrogen returned to the atmosphere?

______

4.What are two ways humans impact the nitrogencycle:

1.______

2.______

Go to the following two websites

and

and view the images of the Nitrogen Cycle as well as skim through the descriptions.

Compare/contrast the two images of the Nitrogen Cycle.

What do they have in common? Is there anything unique about each image?

What absorbs the atmospheric nitrogen? ______

What role do nitrogen-fixing bacteria play in the Nitrogen Cycle?

Play the VermiGame to demonstrate the cycling of matter in a compost bin.

Watch the youtube video (you will have to copy and paste the link into the address bar)

(note if the video does not play, just move on to the next portion of the activity)

Visit the link above, read the introduction, watch the animation, take the quiz, and answer the following questions:

5. What are some of the “pioneer” species in glacial moraines?

6. How do alder trees affect nitrogen content in soil?

7. How do the alder trees influence spruce tree growth?

8. Write the answers to the two quiz questions.

IV. Visit:

Examples of Abiotic Factors / Examples of Biotic Factors
  1. Draw a picture to describe carrying capacity.
  1. What is biodiversity?
  2. What is the importance of biodiversity?
  1. How do humans influence biodiversity?
  1. Describe ecological succession.
  2. Draw a picture of ecological succession. Label the pioneer species, primary succession, secondary succession, and climax community.

Part V. Visit this website

  1. Click on virtual ecosphere.
  2. Follow the directions for building an ecosphere in a bottle.
  3. List all the biotic and abiotic factors in your ecosystem.
  1. Run the simulation
  2. How did you do? What went wrong? How could you fix it or how would you do it differently.
  1. Try it one more time.