The food web

I. In the picture on this page, can you identify:

- the largest source of energy

- the primary consumer

- the herbivore

- the producer?

II. Answer the following questions:

1. What do the arrows mean?

2. How is the mountain lion different from the squirrel or the rabbit? What does the mountain lion eat? What the squirrel and the rabbit eat?

3. What happens if all the mice in this ecosystem die? Will the animals dependent upon them for food die also?

4. What type of ecosystem is this? Is this a forest ecosystem or a desert one?

III. Read and translate the given text:

Ecology is the study of the interaction of living and nonliving things. Ecologists are concerned with the biosphere, which is where life exists. Within this biosphere, there are ecosystems, which are communities of organisms in a given area that interact with their nonliving environment.

Currently the world is facing many environmental problems, which are caused by population growth, abuse of natural resources, and pollution. It is important to understand ecology so we can begin to solve these global issues.

First of all it is necessary to look at the structure of an ecosystem and how an ecosystem functions or works.

Then it is important to learn how to describe the structure of an ecosystem, state the abiotic components of an ecosystem, understand basic chemical elements and formulae, understand the concepts of energy and matter, describe how various physical factors affect the distribution of living things, describe a typical food chain, explain how energy flows through an ecosystem, explain how materials cycle in an ecosystem.

IV. Answer the following questions about the reading.

1. What does ecology study?

2. What do the ecologists do?

3. What is ecosystem?

4. What components of the ecosystem do we call abiotic?

5. What examples of biotic components do you know?

6. What environmental problems is the world facing nowadays?

7. What do you know about these problems?

8. What are they caused by?

9. What ecological problems are there in your region?

10. How can they be solved?

V. Make up a short summary of this text using the questions given below:

1. How can you headline this text? Why? Explain your point of view.

2. What is the main idea of this text?

3. How many logically complete parts can this text be divided into?

4. How can you finish this text? What sentence can be final in it?

VI. Describe the ecosystem you can see on the picture “An Ecosystem”.

Defining the structure of an ecosystem you should remember that the structure of an ecosystem is determined by the abiotic (nonliving) and biotic (living) components that can be found in that ecosystem. The abiotic component of an ecosystem consists of: energy, matter (nutrients and chemicals) and physical factors.

1. Where does the energy come from?

2. What other abiotic components can you define here?

3. What living organisms are called the producers and why?

4. What animals can be determined as primary and secondary consumers?

5. What organisms do we call decomposers and why?

6. How can you define the type of this ecosystem?

7. What other types of ecosystems do you know?