1. Agenda 5/10 Review of Food Webs Niche notes Practice probs
Grades back (remind me at 10-till end)

2. Learning Target #2
2) I can explain what a niche is and why ecological relationships are important

3. CH 15 Notes 2

4. Niche: An organism’s role in an community
An organism’s niche includes: What it eats , where it lives, how it interacts with other organisms
Another way to think about it: niche = organism’s “job” in its ecosystem

5. Habitat: The place a species lives Example: Ant hill

6. Ecological relationships: Ways organisms interact with each other

7. Different types of ecological relationships
1. Predation: relationship where one animal hunts, kills, and eats the other
Prey: an organism that gets hunted, killed & eaten
Predator: an organism that hunts, kills and eats the other

9. 2. Scavenging: animals feeding off of other dead animals
Example: Vultures are scavengers that eat road kill

10. 3. Competition: relationship where two organisms compete over resources
Two organisms do not want to have the same niche.
If they do, then they compete for resources (space, food, mates)

12. 4. Symbiotic relationships: Two organisms of different species closely interact
a. Mutualism: Both organisms benefit  
Example: bees pollinate flower and get to drink nectar

13. b. Commensalism: One organism benefits, the other is not affected  
Example: Bird eats insects that an ox disturbs, the ox isn’t helped or hurt

14. c. Parasitism: One organism benefits, the other gets harmed 
Parasite: an organism that lives on/in another organism and gets its food from them
Host: The organism a parasite lives on/in and feeds from

16. Why ecological relationships matter:
If an organism gets removed or added to the food chain, it affects all the organisms in the chain!
This would be like taking a person out of his/her job OR adding in a new person

17. This disrupts the flow of energy from the sun to the organisms