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What is the difference between Flow and Cycle?
A matter cycle is a self sustaining process in which the "the same matter stays in the cycle." In Flow things can go in/out of the system. In the biosphere energy flows and matter cycles.
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What are consumer stages?
Consumer stages start at the first consumer in a food chain and go up starting from a 1st degree (primary) which is a herbivore or omnivore, next is second degree (secondary) which is a carnivore or omnivore, so on and so forth.
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What are trophic levels?
Trophic levels show how energy flows through an ecosystem, they start at producers. The first level will always be a producer, the second is usually a herbivore and the third is a carnivore or omnivore. Trophic levels can be organized into pyramids. They will usually not match up with consumer grade and start with 1st degree, then second degree and so on.
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What are food webs? what does a stable ecosystem need?
Food webs are more complex than food chains, they portray the many intercations between organisms in an ecosystem, arrows indicate energy flow. The more diverse a food web is the more stable it is. Though technically it is more advantageous to have biodiveristy at lower trophic levels, a stable ecosystem needs biodiversity across all trophic levels (more on the menu).
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What do photosynthesis and chemosynthesis do for the enviroment? what compounds does chemosythesis?
photosynthesis and chemosynthesis inject energy into their ecosystems. Chemosynthesis uses sulfur to make sulfur based compounds like sulfuric acid.
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How much energy is lost during transfer? What form is it in when it is lost? What law explains why it's lost?
Everytime energy is transfered some energy is lost as heat energy, some is released in waste and the other portion is used up (90%), only ~10% is transfered to the next consumer. This happens according to the 1st law of thermodynamics which states energy cannot be created nor destroyed only converted and since no process is 100% efficient energy must be lost.
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What are pyramids of numbers? What other shapes can they take?
In Pyramid of numbers the number of organisms in an area are represented by each trophic level. Usually there will be less predator than prey. occasionally they can also be inverted like in housing relationships (10 rabbits house 1000 fleas, 1 oak tree holds many more insects). They are organised in trophic levels from top to bottom.
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What are pyramids of Biomass? What alternate shapes can they take, why?
Pyramids of Biomass display the toal biomass (dried mass/weight) of living materials in a certain area. Ex: 807 grams of grass in one square meter (g/m^2). Pyramids of biomass can be inverted since they are "snapshots in time." An example of this is phyoplankton, since phytoplankton turnover and reproduce often there is usually less weight of them than zooplankton, but since they reproduce so quick there is more of them as an average over time and they can sustain zooplankton.
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What are pyramids of energy? What alternate forms can they take?
Instead of using trophic levels with numbers or biomass they use energy (J). They show the energy passed from one organism to the next (~10%). They cannot be inverted since that would violate the first law of thermodynamics and display creation of energy.
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What do humans reduce in the environment ? What are monocultures and research farms?
Humans reduce biodiversity and affect pyramids, though we do have agencies to prevent this. Monocultures are an example of this where historically we have cultivated many species of plant, but in modern day we only cultivate about 20 with the main 5 of wheat, rice, corn, barley and cotton. This makes our crops very susceptible to disease. Research farms hope to prevent this issue and grow many varieties of crops to find the most resilient ones.
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