AP Biology – Ecology – Guided Questions:

1. How does the first law of thermodynamics effect the movement of matter of matter and energy
through an ecosystem?
Energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed, only transferred or transformed.
Both will only be moved around in different forms, always flowing from one thing to the next.
It's an endless cycle of matter and energies moving. They never can be destroyed, or even made.
Everything comes from something.

2. Explain what limiting factors are and how they influence the productivity of an ecosystem?
Limiting factors are facets of the environment that serve to restrict the amount of
biodiversity that can exist within the ecosystem. These limiting factors may be either biotic or
abiotic. They can also be density-dependent or density-independent. Algae in the river provide a
large source of primary energy and are consumed by fish, and those fish are prey for many
secondary consumers that live in the forest of Färnebofjärden National Park. In this way, the
algae in the river provide another source of primary energy for the ecosystem. Abiotic limiting
factors serve to restrict the possible biodiversity in an environment by placing constraints on the
resources available and the climate. For example, deciduous trees will not be able to live in the
desert because the abiotic limiting factors of the desert, like temperature and rainfall, do not
permit for deciduous trees to grow. These factors dictate which species may survive in each
ecosystem and therefore they act to limit the diversity within that ecosystem. There are several
abiotic factors that limit ecosystem growth, including temperature, precipitation, sunlight, soil
configuration, and soil nutrients. Some limiting factors depend on the size of the population.
Other limiting factors affect all populations in similar ways, regardless of the population size.

3. Explain the “10% rule”, how it affects the trophic structure of the ecosystem, and why is it a bit
of an oversimplification?
10% of energy gets transferred to the next trophic level. It is not always exactly 10%. It
could range between 10-20% of energy being transferred.

4. Explain what all nutrient cycles have in common?

 They all involve the earth's atmosphere, the affect the earth's atmosphere and
atmospheric conditions, pollutants, changing concentrations of water, carbon(dioxide) and
nitrogen in the air affect the cycles.

5. What is an ecosystem and why would we study energy flow in relation to the ecosystem?
An ecosystem consists of all the organisms living in a community as well as all the abiotic
factors which they interact. We would study the energy flow in an ecosystem to follow the
transformation of energy in the environment and map the changes in movement and chemical
elements through the biotic factors.

6. Complete the diagram of the general model of nutrient cycle: