ecology

• Herbivore


  Eats plants
• Carnivore


  Eats meat
• Omnivore


  Eats meat and plants
• Heterotroph


  Consumes organic matter
• Autotroph


  Makes their own food from inorganic substances
• Plants are generally autotrophs
• Plants make organic substances (such as glucose) from inorganic substances (such as carbon dioxide)
• Plants use light as their source of energy to make their own food
• Plants are also known as producers
• Carnivorous plants can also digest insects to obtain nitrogen
• Some protists, bacteria and Archaea are autotrophs
• Some organisms can be both autotrophs and heterotrophs
• Photoautotroph


  Autotroph that uses light as their energy source
• Chemoautotroph


  Autotroph that uses chemical energy as their energy source
• Chemoheterotroph


  Heterotroph that uses organic compounds as their energy source
• Photoheterotroph


  Heterotroph that uses light as their energy source
• Chemoheterotrophs, like humans, have to consume organic matter and use organic compounds as their energy source
• Photoheterotrophs are found in a few types of prokaryotes
• Organisms will do cellular respiration to further break down their food to generate ATP, which can involve oxygen, no oxygen, or different electron acceptors
• Food chain

  Starts with a producer, which is an organism that is an autotroph and can make its own food. The producer is eaten by a primary consumer, which is a heterotroph that must feed on other organisms. The primary consumer is eaten by a secondary consumer, which is eaten by a tertiary consumer, and the food chain can keep going.
• The arrows in a food chain are supposed to point in the direction of the one doing the eating, because that's the direction of the energy flow.
• Energy pyramid


  The producers at the base contain the most energy, but each trophic level above only stores about 10% of the energy from the level below.
• If something is removed from a food chain

  It can harm the others because they may not have enough to eat.
• In real life, a predator like a snake probably doesn't just eat one type of prey, but instead has a food web of multiple food chains that interact together.
• Food web


  Made up of multiple food chains that interact together, showing more interactions among a variety of producers and various level consumers.
• Biodiversity


  The variety of organisms living in a given area, which can contribute to the sustainability of an ecosystem.
• High biodiversity has a lot of other benefits, including economic benefits, that will be covered in another video.
• Decomposers


  Heterotrophs that eat dead organisms, including bacteria and fungus. Technically, every arrow in a food web would eventually point to them.
• Antlions are insects that make sand pit traps and wait with their mandibles just showing above the surface to catch ants or other small insects that walk over the trap
• Antlions pull the ant underground, biting it and injecting it with enzymes to digest it, in order to consume the ant's juices
• Doodlebug


  Another name for antlions
• When the population of ants increases

  The population of antlions (the predators) also increases over time because they have more food to eat
• If the antlions increase too much

  There won't be enough ants (the prey) to feed on, so the antlions will decrease
• Antlions can get eaten by birds, so the antlion has become the bird's prey
• Competition

  Antlions have to compete with other antlions and other predators of ants for this limited food source
• Producers


  Organisms that make their own food, but still have to compete for limited abiotic factors like light
• Symbiotic relationships


  Specific types of relationships where different species live together
• Parasitism


  A symbiotic relationship where one organism benefits and the other is harmed, like fleas and hookworms on a dog
• Mutualism


  A symbiotic relationship where both organisms involved benefit, like acacia ants and acacia trees
• Commensalism


  A symbiotic relationship where one organism benefits and the other is neither helped nor harmed, like barnacles on whales