Producers

Description

Students look at how AR impacts the first trophic level in the food web – the producers. They consider how they would compare grazing by rabbits with grazing by native mammals and hypothesise what they think would happen. After hearing from Dr Munro about her work, students work with some of her data and consider if this supports their hypothesis. They learn that the density and number of species of plants are determined by the number of animals that predate on them.

VCE Biology (2016-2020)

Unit 1, Area of Study 2, Outcome 2, VCE Biology Study Design

VCE Key knowledge

Relationships between organisms within an ecosystem

• The distribution, density and size of a population of a particular species within an ecosystem and the impacts of factors including available resources, predation, competition, disease, chance environmental events, births, deaths and migration

Key science skills

• Process quantitative data using appropriate mathematical relationships and units
• Process quantitative data using appropriate mathematical Organise, present and interpret data using schematic diagrams and flow charts, tables, bar charts, line graphs, ratios, percentages and calculations of mean
• Process quantitative data using appropriate mathematical Access secondary data, including data sourced through the internet that would otherwise be difficult to source as raw or primary data
• Draw conclusions consistent with evidence and relevant to the question under investigation

Student learning outcomes

On completion of this module, students will:

• Describe how ecologists work towards the conservation of species and ecosystems
• Describe how ecologists conduct a wide range of experiments to learn about the ecosystem
• Compare a wide range of biotic and abiotic factors and explain how they influence the size and distribution of the population of a particular species

Duration

30-45 minutes

Learning activities

Step 1
Students work through a worksheet that contains a video clip showing Dr Munro’s work and uses data from a real experiment that planted a variety of seeds in plots inside and outside Arid Recovery. Students plot the results on a bar chart or graph and show that plants grew much better inside Arid Recovery, due to the absence of rabbits (state: predation impacts population)