Unit 3: How Living Things Interact

Mr. Ross BrownBrooklyn School for Law and

Technology

How do living things interact?

• 1960s• Farmers used DDT to kill insects that ate their

crops• DDT weakened falcon egg shells• DDT was banned• Ecology: the study of the environment

How do living things interact?

• Biotic factors: living– Animals, plants, fungi, and their wastes– Categorized (kingdom, etc.)

• Abiotic factors: non-living– Rocks and minerals, sunlight, temperature, wind,

What are the components of an ecosystem?

• 3 March 2016• Do now: Explain how ecosystems reuse

matter.

What are the components of an ecosystem?

• Biotic and abiotic factors are parts of ecosystems

• Coral reef, desert, forest, puppy, rotting log, eagle, infant, mountain

What are the components of an ecosystem?

• Levels of Interaction

What are the components of an ecosystem?

• Levels of Interaction– Individual organism– Population– Community– Ecosystem– Biosphere

What are the components of an ecosystem?

• Population: all members of one species living in the same area

• Community: a group of different populations that live and interact in the same area

• Ecosystem: all the living and non-living things found in an area

• Biosphere: All of Earth’s ecosystems

What are the components of an ecosystem?

• Role of ecosystems– Transfer energy among organisms– Move matter through the ecosystem• Matter: anything that has mass and takes up space

– Food, fuel, energy for activities, like reproduction

What are the components of an ecosystem?

• Moving energy through cellular respiration– Mixing oxygen and nutrients– Occurs at the molecular level

What are the components of an ecosystem?

• Recycling matter– Carbon in tree can decompose into carbon as food

for crops and the become carbon as part of your body

– Recycle: to use the same matter in different forms

Homework 4, part 2

• 3 March 2016• Why is the biosphere considered the highest

level of interaction in the environment?