INTERACTIONS WITH ECOSYSTEMS






Ecosystems Anticipation Guide
Textbook Scavenger Hunt
Biodiversity Video BNSG
Ecosystem Glossary
Ecosystem Glossary Word Search
Ecosystem Glossary Crossword
4 Corners - Opinions Exercise
Logging the Forests: Opinions?
Bottled Water - Bad?
Ecosystems Online Quiz
Ontario's Electricity
Microbes in Ecosystems Wordwall - Producers - Missing words
Wordwall - Ecosystem Basic Terms - Match up

Life has been on the planet for 3.8 billion years. The earth is about 4.6 billion years old.
Over 30 000 000 species of life have been discovered so far.
99.9% of all species ever on the planet are now currently extinct.
The process of extinction is natural. But presently the rate (speed) of extinction is far too quick.
The earth's largest ecosystem is the ocean. 71% of the planet is covered in water. Can you swim?
There are 462 species of birds in Canada.
Over a third of mammals that live on land in Canada are rodents, like mice, squirrels, beavers, & porcupines.
Approximately 35 000 species of insects live in Canada.
There's over 30 000 edible species of plants. The North American diet concentrates on only 30 or so.

A World to Discover
With every day, our portrait of the natural world is enlarged. The table below shows that this portrait is incomplete.
We know only a small fraction of the species living on Earth. Many living species disappear before we learn of them.

Groups Species Known in Canada Species Known in the World Estimated Number of Species in the World Amount of Species Not Known
Viruses 200 4,000 400,000 99%
Bacteria 2,000 4,000 1,000,000 99%
Algae 6,000 40,000 400,000 90%
Plants 5,000 270,000 320,000 15%
Insects 30,000 950,000 8,000,000 88%
Fish 200 23,500 250,000 93%
Amphibians 44 5,000 6,000 17%
Reptiles 45 7,400 8,000 8%
Birds 430 9,900 10,000 1%
Mammals 200 4,600 5,000 8%
Totals 54,619 1,548,150 11,324,000  
U.S. National Park Service BIOMES World Wildlife Fund Canada
Canadian Wildlife Federation Environment Canada