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Life Sciences Standards and Benchmarks
Life Sciences Standard 6:
Understands relationships among organisms and their physical environment
Level III (Grade 6-8)
- Knows that all individuals of a species that exist together at a given place and time make up a population, and all populations living together and the physical factors with which they interact compose an ecosystem
- Knows factors that affect the number and types of organisms an ecosystem can support (e.g., available resources; abiotic factors such as quantity of light and water, range of temperatures, and soil composition; disease; competition from other organisms within the ecosystem; predation)
- Knows ways in which organisms interact and depend on one another through food chains and food webs in an ecosystem (e.g., producer/consumer, predator/prey, parasite/host, relationships that are mutually beneficial or competitive)
Level IV (Grade 9-12)
- Knows how the interrelationships and interdependencies among organisms generate stable ecosystems that fluctuate around a state of rough equilibrium for hundreds or thousands of years (e.g., growth of a population is held in check by environmental factors such as depletion of food or nesting sites, increased loss due to larger numbers of predators or parasites)
- Knows how the amount of life an environment can support is limited by the availability of matter and energy and the ability of the ecosystem to recycle materials
- Knows ways in which humans can alter the equilibrium of ecosystems, causing potentially irreversible effects (e.g., human population growth, technology, and consumption; human destruction of habitats through direct harvesting, pollution, and atmospheric changes)
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Selected Standards and Benchmarks
used by permission:
Copyright
2003 McRel
Mid-continent Research for
Education and Learning
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Telephone: (303) 337-0990
www.mcrel.org/standards-benchmarks
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