Primary 6 · Science · Interactions: Environment
Interactions: Environment questions for Primary 6 Science
10 questions to work through online, 2 of them written out the way the paper asks. Answer and you get the working straight away, then a score at the end. No sign-up, and you can retake it as often as you like.
- Direction of the arrows
- Reading a food web
- Predicting an effect
- Following a longer effect
- Where the energy comes from
- Reading population data
- Roles in a community
- Naming a role
- Naming the diagram
- Applying the ideas
Same picture as the question above.
Same picture as the question above.
| Year | Rabbits | Foxes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 800 | 40 |
| 2 | 1200 | 55 |
| 3 | 600 | 70 |
| 4 | 400 | 45 |
Same picture as the question above.
Answers and explanations for all 10 questions
Every answer with the reasoning behind it. Worth reading after you have tried the set — or on its own, if you are a parent marking it.
In the food chain above, what does an arrow between two organisms mean?
Answer: The organism at the tail is eaten by the one at the head.
An arrow shows where the energy goes. It points from the organism eaten to the organism that eats it — grass to grasshopper, not the other way.
According to the food web above, which organism is the producer?
Answer: grass
A producer makes its own food and has no arrows pointing into it. Grass is the only organism in the web with none.
In the food web above, all the frogs are removed. Which two effects would be expected?
Answer: A and B only
Grasshoppers lose their predator, so their numbers rise. Snakes lose one of their two foods and take more of the other, which is the mouse.
Using the same web shown above, if a disease killed most of the mice, what would most likely happen to the frogs?
Answer: Their numbers would fall, because snakes would eat more of them.
Snakes eat both mice and frogs. With fewer mice, more of the snakes' feeding falls on the frogs — an effect that travels through the web rather than along one chain.
Where does the energy in every food chain originally come from?
Answer: the sun
Producers trap sunlight to make food, and everything else in the chain eats them or eats something that did. The whole chain runs on sunlight.
Based on the table above, which statement best explains the pattern?
Answer: More rabbits let the foxes increase, and the foxes then reduced the rabbits.
Rabbits peak in year 2 and foxes in year 3, a year later. Plentiful prey lets predators increase, and the increased predators then cut the prey back.
Which of these describe roles that must be present for a community to keep going?
Answer: A, B and C only
Producers capture the energy, consumers pass it along, and decomposers return the materials for reuse. Predators are a kind of consumer rather than a fourth necessary role.
Look at the grass in the food web above, which makes its own food using sunlight. What is such an organism called?
Answer: producer
An organism that makes its own food is a producer.
The diagram above shows several food chains joined together, with organisms that appear in more than one. What is such a diagram called? A food ______ .
Answer: web
Several interlinked food chains make a food web.
Why is a food web a better description of a real habitat than a single food chain?
Answer: Most animals eat more than one thing, so removing one species affects several others.
A chain suggests each animal has one food and one predator. In reality the links branch, which is why the effect of losing one species spreads sideways as well as up.