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Interspecific Competition Relationship - Competitive & Niche Differentiation

By: HWC, Views: 7432

In an environment with limited resources, any organisms that utilize the same resources will be in competition with each other. For example, let's look at two competing species of paramecium, a single-celled organism that feeds on bacteria. If we raise each of these species in isolation, both...

Predator- prey competition and symbiosis

By: HWC, Views: 7543

Predator-prey relationships occur when one species, the predator, kills and eats an organism of another species, the prey. This graph shows the cyclical nature of predator-prey relationships, in this case among populations of Canada lynx and snowshoe rabbits. If predation is without some li...

Energy Flow - Trophic Levels and Food

By: HWC, Views: 7324

All of these relationships between different species are founded on one thing: energy. Organisms get food in order to get energy, which is used by the organism for growth, maintaining health, and reproduction. We can classify the members of a community according to how they obtain food. Produc...

What is an ecosystem?

By: HWC, Views: 7589

An ecosystem is a community of organisms and their environment. The community forms the living component of the ecosystem. These are called the 'biotic' factors, which means all of the living things in the ecosystem. The environment forms the nonliving component of the ecosystem, such as ...

What Are Carbohydrates? Importance of Carbs & High Carb Food

By: HWC, Views: 7838

We hear a lot about carbohydrates in the news. Everybody seems to be on a low-carb diet. The news media often has stories on this diet fad, and companies are busy producing products with reduced carbohydrates. What's this fascination with carbohydrates? In a word: "Diet." The fact is that carb...

Simple and Double Sugar

By: HWC, Views: 7510

Here are the molecular structures of three simple sugars: glucose, ribose, and fructose. Look at these simple sugars and identify what characteristics they all share. As you can see, all of the carbohydrates have carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in a ratio of 1:2:1 and there is always a double bo...

Polysaccharides

By: HWC, Views: 7329

More complex sugars are called polysaccharides (from "poly" meaning "many" and "saccharum" meaning "sugar"). Many things in nature are made of polysaccharides. Here we show one of the polysaccharides in corn, another in wood, and another in the exoskeletons of insects like grasshoppers. How are a...

Proteins Defined, Hierarchy & Composition of Cells

By: HWC, Views: 7215

Proteins are long chains of amino acids linked together by peptide bonds. Together with the other three biological macromolecules—carbohydrates, lipids, and nucleic acids—proteins are the building blocks of cells. Proteins are the most complex and abundant biological macromolecules in cel...

How proteins function? How do proteins work?

By: HWC, Views: 7411

How proteins function is really about how proteins "do work" in cells. How do proteins work? Let's start thinking about protein function by looking at something important to you: your hair. Keratin is a structural protein that is composed of 2 intertwined or helical strands. Keratin is also f...