1. What is a community?
All the different populations that live together in an area and interact in some way. Interact = depend on each other for food, shelter, or for other needs.
List examples from the cactus garden.

2. Community + Abiotic Factors = Ecosystem
What is an ecosystem?
The community of organisms that live in a particular area, along with their nonliving (abiotic) surroundings.
What type of ecosystem does the prairie dog have?
What abiotic factor determines what organisms live in an area?
Community + Abiotic Factors = Ecosystem

3. What determines what type of organisms that live in an area?
Temperature and the climate
The climate is the typical weather pattern in an area over a period of time.
Ecologists categorize these areas into groups called…

4. What is a biome?
Groups of land ecosystems with similar temperatures and climates.
Which one is an ecosytem?

5. At the bottom…
In your notes, draw a diagram (circle within-a-circle) illustrating the five levels of ecology that we talked about today beginning with “organism” at the center.
Include simple drawings (with labels) at each level.
Use a prairie dog to begin your example.
organism