Communities C21L3

Essential Questions What defines a community? How do the populations in a community interact?

Community A community is made up of all the species that live in the same ecosystem at the same time.

Habitat The place within an ecosystem where an organism lives is its habitat. A habitat provides all the resources an organism needs, including food and shelter.

Habitat A habitat has the right temperature, water, and other conditions the organism needs to survive.

Niche A niche is what a species does in its habitat to survive. Different species have different niches in the same environment.

Niche All living things use energy to carry out life processes such as growth and reproduction. How an organism obtains energy is an important part of its niche. Almost all the energy available to life on Earth originally came from the sun.

Producers & Consumers Producers are organisms that get energy from the environment, such as sunlight, and make their own food. Consumers are organisms that get energy by eating other organisms.

Types of Consumers Herbivores get their energy by eating plants. Carnivores get their energy by eating other consumers. Omnivores, such as most humans, get their energy by eating producers and consumers. Detritivores get their energy by eating dead organisms or parts of dead organisms.

Energy Flow A food chain is a way of showing how energy moves through a community.

Energy Flow A food web shows many food chains within a community and how they overlap.

Food Web

Relationships in Communities The populations that make up a community interact with each other in a variety of ways. Some species have feeding relationships, meaning they either eat or are eaten by another species. Predators help prevent prey populations from growing too large for the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. The members of some populations, like meerkats, work together in cooperative relationships for their survival.

Relationships in Communities: Symbiosis A close relationship between two or more organisms of different species that live in direct contact is called symbiosis.

Symbiotic Relationships in Communities: A symbiotic relationship in which both partners benefit is called mutualism.

Symbiotic Relationships in Communities: A symbiotic relationship that benefits one species but does not harm or benefit the other is commensalism.

Symbiotic Relationships in Communities: A symbiotic relationship that benefits one species and harms the other is parasitism. In parasitism, the species that benefits is the parasite, and the species that is harmed is the host.

Symbiotic Relationships in Communities:

Symbiotic Relationships in Communities:

Symbiotic Relationships in Communities: