Students explore how relationships are interdependent in ecosystems, the dynamics, functioning, and resilience of an ecosystem, how changes in biodiversity can influence human’s resources, how humans impact the biodiversity of an ecosystem, and ways we can develop solutions to preserve the ecosystem services humans rely on.
Download the complete Life Science – Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems framework to customize for your own planning.
Standards
- MS-LS2-2. Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms in a variety of ecosystems.
- MS-LS2-5. Evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and protecting ecosystem stability.
Essential questions and big ideas of the unit
- What happens when an ecosystem is disrupted and what are some things humans can do to protect ecosystems?
- 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. (MS-LS2-2)
- 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. (MS-LS2-5)
- Changes in biodiversity can influence humans’ resources, such as food, energy, and medicines, as well as ecosystem services that humans rely on—for example, water purification and recycling. (secondary to MS-LS2-5)
- Humans impact biodiversity both positively and negatively. (secondary to MS-LS2-5)
- There are systematic processes for evaluating solutions with respect to how well they meet the criteria and constraints of a problem. (secondary to MS-LS2-5)
Download the complete Life Science – Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems framework to customize for your own planning.