Ecology

Stability in an ecosystem is a balance between competing effects. As a basis for
understanding this concept:
a. Students know biodiversity is the sum total of different kinds of organisms and is
affected by alterations of habitats.
b. Students know how to analyze changes in an ecosystem resulting from changes in
climate, human activity, introduction of nonnative species, or changes in population
size.
c. Students know how fluctuations in population size in an ecosystem are determined
by the relative rates of birth, immigration, emigration, and death.
d. Students know how water, carbon, and nitrogen cycle between abiotic resources
and organic matter in the ecosystem and how oxygen cycles through photosynthesis
and respiration.
e. Students know a vital part of an ecosystem is the stability of its producers and
decomposers.
f. Students know at each link in a food web some energy is stored in newly made
structures but much energy is dissipated into the environment as heat. This
dissipation may be represented in an energy pyramid.
g.* Students know how to distinguish between the accommodation of an individual
organism to its environment and the gradual adaptation of a lineage of organisms
through genetic change.