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Listed under:  Science  >  Life  >  Ecosystems  >  Food webs
Interactive

Population Size

Students use this resource consisting of ten slides with diagrams, written explanation and voice-over to understand competition amongst organisms for resources that are limited and other factors that may affect population size. There is a two-question quiz and a summary slide.

Interactive

Macrobiotica – science @ the lakes

In this resource students work as scientists while exploring their local environment in the real world of scientific endeavour. Games and animations are used to model the real experience of investigating a freshwater lake. This version of the Macrobiotica resource has been modified for Internet use by removing Teaching ...

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Catalyst: Waves supply nutrients to marine ecosystems

Dive through the marine kelp forests off Australia's western coast and discover how ocean waves help cycle nutrients to sustain the plants and kelp forests of marine ecosystems.

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Catalyst: Toxic sediments

Learn how high levels of toxic sediments in Sydney Harbour have destroyed as much as 40 per cent of its invertebrates. Find out the main source of toxins. Learn how toxins become trapped in the sediment and distributed across the Harbour. Observe the devastating effects of toxic sediments on the food chain in 2010, when ...

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Four Corners: Ecological effects of bushfires

Did you know that Australia is the most flammable continent on Earth? Watch this clip to discover how bushfires impact natural ecosystems, and how the increasing global threat of bushfires may affect Australia. Australian scientists explain the ecological consequences of fire and a US expert describes his concerns for the future.

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Catalyst: Aboriginal fire knowledge reduces greenhouse gases

Come on an eye-opening trip to Western Arnhem Land in northern Australia to find out how Aboriginal fire-control techniques are used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by thousands of tonnes.On the trip you will also find out how exploding ping-pong balls are used to create low greenhouse gas firebreaks at the right time ...

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Catalyst: Quoll rescue

Discover what threatens a native Australian predator and how scientists are hoping to save it from extinction. This clip about quolls in the Northern Territory describes the causes of its decline and a rescue strategy to save it from extinction. The strategy has a surprising twist - it features the very thing that is threatening ...

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BTN: Animal recognition system

We have all heard of human face recognition systems, but have you heard of animal recognition technology? Watch this clip to discover how an 'animal recognition gate' is being used to separate the sheep from the goats. Find out how this innovative application of a popular technology might help farmers manage pest animals ...

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What have we got here: yabbies

This four and a half minute snapshot video looks at Yingka or outback yabbies. The video explores the feeding requirements and biology of the yabby including its anatomy, colouring, preferred habitat and role in the ecosystem. It also explains how to catch yabbies. The video is one of ten in the series 'What have we got ...

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Catalyst: Chemical pollutants toxic to whales

Explore how chemical pollutants affect the Antarctic food web. A scientist shows that baleen whales are consuming Antarctic krill contaminated by accumulated residues of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) from pesticides and industrial chemicals. Find out why these pollutants are concentrated at the Earth's polar regions.

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BTN: South Australia's ancient sea fossils

Come on a palaeontologist's dig at Emu Bay, South Australia, and discover some weird-looking creatures frozen in stone. Find out what these fossils tell scientists about life on the ancient sea floor. There is a demonstration of how a fossil is formed, and you'll be surprised by the types of materials that have been preserved.

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Animal survivor

This resource provides a scaffold for students to analyse the features of a Queensland animal and relate them to its survival success. Students then conduct the animal design challenge: Engineering new features for their animal to increase its chance of survival and future success. Students also make predictions about how ...

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Engineering clean rivers

Figuring out how to clean up contaminated rivers is a big challenge. It's also tricky to work out where the most contaminated parts of a river system are and whether its fish are safe to eat. Watch this video and learn how engineering has helped to solve these problems. Why do you think engineers looked to the bottom of ...

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Marine scientist in the laboratory

This is a colour photograph of marine scientist Dr Miles Lamare. Dr Lamare is in his office at the Portobello Marine Laboratory at the University of Otago, New Zealand. On the desk behind Dr Lamare is the scientific equipment he uses to download data from electronic tags, which he attaches to sea stars.

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Stateline: Saving the northern hairy-nosed wombat

Just what is going on with the northern hairy-nosed wombat? Find out why scientists are working hard to understand more about this elusive Australian mammal. Watch this clip to find out about the ecology of this wombat species and to view some field and laboratory research aimed at saving it. You will also see some footage ...

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Sciencey: Will Australia have the last bees on Earth?

Bee populations around the world have started vanishing, in a process known as colony collapse disorder. Scientists have many ideas about what causes colony collapse, including one possible culprit: the varroa mite. Australia is one of the last places on Earth unaffected by varroa. Could this mean that Australia could have ...

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Foreign Correspondent: Siberian tigers

Imagine a world where the only place Siberian tigers lived was in captivity. Watch this clip to learn more about the natural habitat of Siberian tigers and the things that threaten their survival in the wild. Chinese scientists are breeding this endangered species in captivity and zoologist, Liu Dan, explains his hope that ...

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Watering the largest river red gum forest

This nine minute video explores the importance of environmental flows to maintain the ecological health of the Barmah-Millewa Forest in the Murray Darling Basin. This forest is a RAMSAR site and an icon site of the Living Murray with great social, economic, cultural, environmental and spiritual significance. While the forest ...

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Downloading data from animal tags

This is a colour photograph of a scientist in a laboratory using a laptop computer to download data from electronic animal tags. To the right of the computer is a specialised communication box into which the electronic tag is placed. The scientist in the image is Dr Miles Lamare, a marine biologist involved in sea star ...

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Tuna sandwich trophic pyramid

This image is a diagram known as a trophic pyramid. This example shows the levels of an ecosystem that support the growth of tuna, which might be consumed by a human in a tuna sandwich. The diagram shows six levels in the 'pyramid' from phytoplankton through to humans, and visually depicts the size of the biomass at each ...