Caitlin Barrett

Textbook Questions pages 175,176, 179,180, 181

An entangled Bank - page 175

1. Ecological parts of his description are “many plants of many kinds,” “various insects
fitting about,” “birds singing on the bushes,” through these descriptions he was showing the
ecosystem present on the hedgerow and how they were living in unison with one another
depending on one another for natural selection.
2. I would say the entangled bank is a habitat, a community and an ecosystem. I would
consider it a habitat because it is the location of a living organism. I would consider it a
ecosystem as well because an ecosystem is a community with its abiotic environment
such as the dirt that the worms are living in, and the air the animals in the hedgerow are all
sharing. I would also consider it a community because it is a group of populations living
and interacting with each other in one area and all helping each other to survive.
3. A) The insects would help feed birds, and would possibly even provide food for each
other such as a fly feeds a spider. This would help the food chain to carry on and allow for
the insects to help other insects fed.
B) The worms would also feed the birds but they would also help with the decomposition of
the animals that die within the community because they are decomposers and feed off of
dead parts of animal.

Unexpected Diets -page 176

1. The organisms that are autotrophic are the Euglena and the Venus fly trap
2. The organisms that are heterotrophic are the Ghost orchid and the Dodder
3. The Ghost orchid is the detritvore, the Venus fly trap is the consumer and the Dodder is
the saprotroph

A marine food web - page 179

1. The nanophytoplankton is a producer

2. The nanozooplankton and the microzooplankton are two primary consumers
3. A) The shortest food chain is bacteria -> nanozooplankton
B) The longest food chain is bacteria -> microzooplankton -> macrozooplankton ->small
fish and squid -> weddel seal -> leopard seal -> toothed whales
C) Small fish and squid have the most (5) predators
D) The baleen whales have the most prey as they eat almost everything in the food web.
4. Emperor penguins should be assigned the trophic level of tertiary consumers because
they have to wait for the producers to be eaten (bacteria), the primary consumers
(microzooplankton), the secondary consumers (krill) and then they are able to eat, so that
would make them 4 from the bottom, making the tertiary consumers.

Fishing down marine food webs - page 180

1. Once a fish is captured they could tell its trophic level based on two things, they could
either dissect the fish and see what is in its stomach and base it on the known trophic level
of the fish eaten, or they could test to see how much of the energy the fish received which
would reveal how many energy-transfers steps have been made before the fish gained its
energy.
 Caitlin Barrett

2. A) The marine fish have kept a relatively high mean trophic level of landed fish staying
around 3.3/3.4 and fluctuating only slightly. The fresh water fish’s mean decreased
significantly going from 3.0/3.1 to around 2.7.
B) This shows that there are now more predators for the fresh water fish causing them to
have lower trophic levels, and the marine fish have become a higher up predator with
higher trophic levels.
3. The mean trophic level may increase with the age of a fish because it learns to better
protect itself and therefore has less predators to be above it and may also find a better
food source that is easy for it to get and again pushes them up into the higher trophic
levels.
4. Based on the graph I would say that the marine fish that were caught were older aged
as they remained on higher trophic levels throughout the years. However the freshwater
fish seem to be younger as they remain closer to the lower trophic levels and drop even
lower as the years pass.
5. Two advantages of people catching and eating fish at a lower trophic level are that they
get more energy as there have been less energy-transfer steps and it is easier to replace
young fish than it is to replace old fish as it takes years for them to mature.

A simple food web - page 181

1. The Ranatra montezuma and the Belostoma bakeri have equal roles as they are both
top predators that equally share their prey as well as sometimes preying on each other.
However, the Belostoma bakeri has a higher biomass of 2.8 gm-2 yr-1 while the Ranatra
montezuma has a biomass of 1.0 gm-2 yr-1.
2. The Telebasis salva can share more than one trophic level because the Hyalella
montezuma can either be eaten by the Telebasis salva , the Belostoma bakeri or the
Ranatra montezuma.
3. A) Phytoplankton- Metaphyton -> Hyalella montezuma -> Telebasis salva -> Belostoma
Tertiary
bakeri consumers
B) The Hyalella montezuma would be the most
823000 kJ ha preferred
-1 yr -1 prey of the Belostoma bakeri
because it has a higher biomass due to less energy-transfer steps.
Secondary consumers
4. 1587900 kJ ha -1 yr -1

Primary consumers
30960000 kJ ha -1 yr -1

Producers
661421022 kJ ha -1 yr -1

5. Primary consumers/ producers * 100 = 4.68% lost

There was about 4.68% of the energy lost between the second and first trophic levels
6. There are difficulties classifying organisms into trophic levels because you can never be
completely sure where they sit as every organism consumes and relies on a number of
 Caitlin Barrett

organisms not just one or two and therefore it is difficult to place them in the correct place
based on the number of different organisms involved in their daily diets
7. To complete the third and fourth trophic levels we would need to know the names of the
organisms and their diets so that we could place them in the correct position. For this
specific web we would also need to know their biomass .