1. Inquiry Activity 1.Make a list of all the types of organisms, including plants, humans, insects, and so on, that you have seen near your home or school. (Be specific, not just “trees”.) 2.Make a diagram that shows how the organisms on your list interact with one another.

2. What Is Ecology? Section 3-1 Objectives: Trace the flow of energy as it decreases through the trophic levels from producers to the quaternary level. Describing the interdependence of biotic and abiotic factors inan ecosystem.

3. Interactions and Interdependence Ecology: the scientific study of interactions among organism and between organisms and their environment, or surroundings. What would this include??? Biosphere: –“bio” = ? –The combined portions of the planet in which ALL of life exists (land, water, and air)

4. Levels of Organization 1.Species – organisms so similar to each other that they can breed and produce FERTILE offspring 2.Populations – groups of individuals of the SAME SPECIES living in the SAME AREA 3.Communities – all the populations that live together in the same area

5. Levels of Organization, continued….. 4.Ecosystem – all the organisms that live in a particular place PLUS their nonliving, or physical environment (“abiotic factors”) –What would “biotic factors” be? 5.Biome – a group of ___________ that have the same climate and similar dominant communities 6.Biosphere

6. How Ecologists Study the Living World 1.Observations 2.Experimenting –Controlled experiments in the lab –Within the natural ecosystem 3.Modeling –Too long a time period or too large a scale to observe directly or conduct an experiment –Example: global warming

7. Closing Activity Using the diagrams you drew at the beginning of this section, write a paragraph describing how the organisms shown in the diagram depend on one another AND on nonliving things in their environment.