Structure of living things

Life is organized by levels

    -Atom

    -Molecule- Two or more atoms bonded together

    -Cell- The smallest unit of life

    -Tissue- A group of similar cells

    -Organ- A group of similar cells working together

    -Organ System- A group of organs working together

    -Multicellular Organism- A complete living thing

    -Species- Organisms that can reproduce and produce a fertile, viable, offspring

    -Population- A group of the same species

    -Community- All the species in an area

    -Ecosystem- All the biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) things in an area

    -Biosphere- The earth

Ecology

Ecology is the relationship of organisms to their environment and other organisms

Habitat- A habitat is all the biotic and abiotic characteristics in an area where an animal lives

    -Animals live within a tolerance range

        -A range of abiotic factors that keep the animal alive

        -A range of optimum is the range by which the animal is most successful

    -If an animal is falling out of its range of optimum or even worse, falling out of its tolerance range it will try to seek out a better habitat

Niche

Each organism has its own Niche

    -A niche is what you eat, the land you take up, and how you live

    -If another organism has the same niche then they are competition for each other

    -Most organisms in the same ecosystem develop a slightly different niche to avoid competition

    -Interspecific competition- When different species compete

    -Intraspecific competition- When members of the same species are competing

Carrying capacity

      -Each ecosystem has a carrying capacity for each of its organisms

        -The carrying capacity is how large of a population that ecosystem can support

            -K stands for carrying capacity

            -A J-Curve represents exponential growth

            -An S-Curve is when exponential growth evens out with its carrying capacity

            -An S-Curve represents logistic growth

Predators and Pray affect each other's carrying capacity 

Human Population Growth

Trophic Levels

    -First level

        -Primary Producer

    -Second level

        -Primary consumers

    -Third level

        -Secondary consumers

    -Fourth level

        Tertiary consumers

    -It ends with what we call Top Predators

This structure is represented with a food web

Biomagnification is a result of trophic levels

    -Each trophic level up becomes magnified by 10

    -So each level has more toxic chemicals than the last by 10 times

The higher up on the trophic level the organism is the higher the concentration of toxic chemicals 

This works the opposite way when we talk about calories

    -Each level we go up on the trophic level we lose 10 times the calories