Predators

Make a list of predatory animals. Ask, How do you know that they are predators?

Write your opinion about a controversial predator such as the wolf or about an endangered predator such as the California condor.

Explain your opinion about what might happen if all predators were to die off or to be removed from an area.

Head to KidWings to dissect virtual owl pellets. Create a picture and/or bar graph of the different animals eaten by your owl.

Write an equation that compares the populations of similar predatory species, for example, black bears vs. brown bears. Solve and label your equation.

Inform yourself about insects at this Entomology site from Iowa State University. Determine what percentage of the insects are NOT predators.

Living things need water, air, and resources from the land, and they live in places that have the things they need.

Plants, animals, and their surroundings make up a system.

All animals need food in order to live and grow. They obtain their food from plants or from other animals. Plants need water and light to live and grow.

All organisms have external parts. Different animals use their body parts in different ways to see, hear, grasp objects, protect themselves, move from place to place, and seek and take in food.

Animals have body parts that capture and convey different kinds of information needed for growth and survival. Animals respond to these inputs with behaviors that help them survive.

Adult plants and animals can have young. In many kinds of animals, parents and the offspring themselves engage in behaviors that help the offspring to survive.

There are many different kinds of living things in any area, and they exist in different places on land and in water.

The emphasis is on the diversity of living things in each of a variety of different habitats.

Examples of evidence could include needs and characteristics of the animals and habitats involved. The organisms and their habitat make up a system in which the parts depend on each other.

Many characteristics involve both inheritance and environment. Characteristics result from individuals' interactions with the environment, which can range from diet to learning.

The environment also affects the traits that an organism develops.

Being part of a group helps animals obtain food, defend themselves, and cope with changes. Groups may serve different functions and vary dramatically in size.

Changes organisms go through during their life form a pattern.

Different sense receptors are specialized for particular kinds of information, which may be then processed by the animal's brain. Animals are able to use their perceptions and memories to guide their actions.

Animals have various body systems with specific functions for sustaining life.

When the environment changes in ways that affect a place's physical characteristics, temperature, or availability of food and water, some animals survive and reproduce, others move to new locations, yet others move into the transformed environment, and some die.

Populations live in a variety of habitats, and change in those habitats affects the organisms living there.

Populations of animals are classified by their characteristics.

An example of cause and effect relationships could be animals that have better camouflage coloration than other animals may be more likely to survive and therefore more likely to leave offspring.

The food of almost any kind of animal can be traced back to plants. Organisms are related in food webs in which some animals eat plants for food and other animals eat the animals that eat plants… Organisms can survive only in environments in which their particular needs are met. A healthy ecosystem is one in which multiple species of different types are each able to meet their needs in a relatively stable web of life.

Natural selection leads to the predominance of certain traits in a population, and the suppression of others.

Emphasis is on using concepts of natural selection in animals.

Biodiversity describes the variety of species found in Earth's ecosystems. The completeness or integrity of an ecosystem's biodiversity is often used as a measure of its health.

Changes in biodiversity can influence ecosystem services that humans rely on.

Ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time. Disruptions to any physical or biological component of an ecosystem can lead to shifts in all its populations.

Food webs can be broken down into multiple energy pyramids. Concepts should include the 10% rule of energy and biomass transfer between trophic levels and the environment.

Emphasis is on describing the transfer of mass and energy beginning with producers, moving to primary and secondary consumers, and ending with decomposers.

Food webs are models that demonstrate how matter and energy is transferred between producers, consumers, and decomposers as the three groups interact within an ecosystem. Transfers of matter into and out of the physical environment occur at every level. The atoms that make up the organisms in an ecosystem are cycled repeatedly between the living and nonliving parts of the ecosystem.

Similarly, predatory interactions may reduce the number of organisms or eliminate whole populations of organisms. Although the species involved in these competitive, predatory, and mutually beneficial interactions vary across ecosystems, the patterns of interactions of organisms with their environments are shared.

Emphasis is on predicting consistent patterns of interactions in different ecosystems in terms of the relationships among and between organisms.

• Organisms, and populations of organisms, are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors.

• In any ecosystem, organisms and populations with similar requirements for food, water, oxygen, or other resources may compete with each other for limited resources, access to which consequently constrains their growth and reproduction.

• Growth of organisms and population increases are limited by access to resources.

• Emphasis is on cause and effect relationships between resources and growth of individual organisms and the numbers of organisms in ecosystems during periods of abundant and scarce resources.