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Standards Index: LS2.A: Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems

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  • 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.
  • Similarly, predatory interactions may reduce the number of organisms or eliminate whole populations of organisms. Mutually beneficial interactions, in contrast, may become so interdependent that each organism requires the other for survival. Although the species involved in these competitive, predatory, and mutually beneficial interactions vary across ecosystems, the patterns of interactions of organisms with their environments, both living and nonliving, are shared.
Image from The Birth of the Environmental Movement: DDT and Rachel Carson
Video

The Birth of the Environmental Movement: DDT and Rachel Carson

Students will learn how the U.S. government came to develop environmental protection policies and what that means today as we struggle to balance the risk between pesticides and disease.