What Do Living Things Need To Survive?
Living things and Nonliving things interact in an ecosystem. An ecosystem is all living things en an area interacting with each other. Over the world there are many diferent ecosystem, but they have the same parts or thesame characteristics. All living things need certain nonliving things in order to survive.
Living things need minerals, such as calcium, iron, phosphorus, and nitrogen. Some living things, like plants and algae, need sunlight to make food.
What Do Living Things Contribute?
The right abiotic factors help make it possible for the organisms, or living things, in an ecosystem to survive. The abiotic factors include water, minerals, sunlight, air, climate, and soil. The living parts are animals, plants, fungi, protists and bacteria. Mushrooms and molds are fungi. Protists include one celled organisms. Microscopic bacteria live everywhere. These organisms make up the biotic factors or living things of an ecosystem. Biotic factors include plants, animals, fungi, protists and bacteria.
Plants and algae produce oxygen and food that animals need, so they are called "producers".
Animals consume, or eat, plants or animals that eat plants. Animals also give off carbon dioxide that olants need to make food, so the animals are called "consumers".
Fungi and bacteria are decomposers. They decompose, or break down, dead plants and animals into useful things like minerals that enrich soil.
What Were The Prairies Like?
A prairie is a region of tall grasses. It may be flat or hilly grassland. Many kinds of animals and plants live in a prairie. Native Americans once hunted buffalo on prairie lands. Later, ranchers and farmers grazed cattle and planted crops such as corn and wheat. At least 50 different kinds of tall and short grasses provided food for plant-eating animals. Many kinds of wildflowers painted the landscape with beautiful colors. The purple cone-flowers, yellow sunflowers, golden daleas and bluebells are some of this wildflowers. Before the land became farms and ranches, huge herds of buffalo grazed on the prairie grasses.
What Animals Live In The Blacklands?
About 500 species, or different kinds, of animals still live on this prairie. Rattle-snakes, lizards, racoons, coyotes, cottontails, red bats, bobcats, gray wolves, black bears, stripped skunks are some of the animals that we can found in this blacklands.
How Are The Living Things Organized?
The Blackland Prairie, like all ecosystems, is home to many different organisms. Each kind of organisms, whether an animal, plant, fungus, protists or bacterium, is a member of a single species. All the organisms of a species living in the same area make up a population. The Blackland Prairie has populations of armadillos and badgers. it has little bluestem grass, Indian grass and elm trees. It also has pond algae, soil, bacteria, and fungi.
Scientists want to know how populations interact, so they investigate the activities of animals, plants, fungi, protists, and bacteria in the ecosystem.
They are interested to know which animals prey on others, which animals eat plants, which insects eat crops, and how bacteria and fungi make the soil fertile. Scientists have to study the interactions of all the popupaltions in an area. All the populations living in an area make up a community.
Where Do They Live? What Do They Do?
The place where an organism lives is called its habitat. The chorus frog´s habitat is in the scattered ponds of the Blacklands. Each species in an ecosystem also has a role or place in the activities of its community. The role of an organism in the community is its niche. A species niche includes many factros. It includes what a species eats and what eats that species. It includes the kind of environment the species needs to live in. Scientists study the habitats and niches of organisms in a community. They do this to see if the community is healthy or in trouble.
Ants live in the same habitat as Texas horned lizards. Since the lizards eat ants, what happens to the ants may tell a lot about the future of te lizards. The relationship doesn´t stop there. What happens to the ants will also affect the lives of these birds. Nonliving factors also affect organisms lives. If conditions of an organisms niche change, it may have trouble surviving.
How Do Organisms Survive Changes?
The world is a place of changes. One day the weather may be dry and cold. The next day it may be wet and warm. Heavy rains may drench the land one spring and summer. The next year´s spring and summer may have cloudless skies day after day. This makes habitats change. A good habitat for a certain organism at one at another time. Some animals may be adapted to changes in their habitats in different ways. A varied diet can be useful. For example: Texas horned lizards eat mainly ants. They also eat another insects. If the ant population decreases, at least some lizards will survive. If the ant population increases, the lizards will have more food, and their population will increase.
What Is The Treasure of the Blackland Prairie?
The treasure of the Blackland Prairie is the ground. Prairie soils can often be identified by their dark brown to black topsoil. Topsoil is the top layer of soil The dark color shows the presence of humus. Humus is partly decayed plant matter. The decay is produced by the Blackland's tiniest organisms, bacteria and fungi. The rich topsoil is full of minerals that prairie grasses and crops need. Two of the most important minerals are magnesium and calcium. Plant need magnesium in order to make chlorophyll molecules. Calcium is an important element of cell walls in plants. The nutrients in certain prairie soils tend to stay near the surface. Farmers take advantage of this by growing crops that have shallow roots, such as corn, wheat, cotton and sorghum.
What Grasses Grow On The Prairie Today?
Corn, wheat and sorghum have something in common with plants that grow naturallyon the prairie. They are all classified as grasses. Today most of the natural grasses that used to sway in the wind like ocean waves are gone from the Blackland Prairie.
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