Population growth limited by carrying capacity (S-shaped curve)?
Answer: Logistic Growth
Factors like competition and disease that intensify with population density?
Answer: Density-dependent Factors
A species with a disproportionately large effect on its community relative to its abundance?
Answer: Keystone Species
AP Biology ยท Unit 8 of 8
AP Biology Unit 8: Ecology
2 ready-made review sets for this unit, 32 questions in all, to play as a class game on the projector. Free to host, and students join with a code.
A question from the sets
Population growth limited by carrying capacity (S-shaped curve)?
- Logistic GrowthRight answer
- Keystone Species
- Learned Behavior
- Innate Behavior
What Unit 8 covers
Unit 8 is ecology, from single organisms up to whole ecosystems: how organisms respond to their environment, including behavior and communication; how energy flows through trophic levels, and how carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and water cycle through ecosystems; how populations grow, exponentially or logistically, and what limits them; how species interact in communities; why biodiversity matters; and how disruptions such as invasive species and human activity change ecosystems.
Where students slip
- Energy flows through an ecosystem and is lost as heat at each level; matter is recycled.
- Arrows in a food web point the way energy moves, from the organism eaten to the one that eats it.
- About 10% of the energy at one trophic level reaches the next, on average. It is a rule of thumb, not a fixed law.
- Density-dependent factors such as competition and disease bite harder as a population grows. Density-independent ones, such as a flood or a frost, don't depend on its size.
- A keystone species has an effect far larger than its numbers suggest. It is often not the most common species.
The sets
Play this set opens the set in splycr, where you can read every question and host it for your class straight away. Hosting needs no account, and students join with the code on the board. A free account lets you copy a set and edit it.
The questions come from the Biology by Bradford flashcard bank, written by an IB and AP Biology teacher. Each one plays as multiple choice, and the wrong options are other answers from the same set.
GPP minus the energy used by producers for respiration?
Answer: Net Primary Productivity (NPP)
Excess nutrients (N, P) causing algal blooms and oxygen depletion in water?
Answer: Eutrophication
The increasing concentration of toxins at higher trophic levels?
Answer: Biomagnification
Game modes that suit this unit
Every set plays in all eight modes. These two fit this unit best.
Cryo
Unit 8 is often the last unit before the exam. In Cryo the questions are how students reload in a frozen arena, so a last review feels like a break while everyone keeps answering. Up to 20 players.
Outbreak
For a class with laptops: a 3D zombie arena where an infected student answers a question from the set correctly to get back in. Up to 40 players, with a keyboard and mouse.