SC15.7.8

Science (2015) Grade(s): 7

Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions

Patterns

Students know:

Competitive relationships occur when organisms within an ecosystem compete for shared resources.
Predatory interactions occur between organisms within an ecosystem.
Mutually beneficial interactions occur between organisms within an ecosystem; some organisms are so dependent upon one another that they can not survive alone.
Resource availability affects interactions between organisms (e.g., limited resources may cause competitive relationships among organisms; those same organisms may not be in competition where resources are in abundance).
Competitive, predatory, and mutually beneficial interactions occur across multiple, different ecosystems.

Students are able to:

Articulate a statement that relates a given phenomenon to a scientific idea, including that similar patterns of interactions occur between organisms and their environment, regardless of the ecosystem or the species involved.
Use multiple valid and reliable sources of evidence to construct an explanation for the given phenomenon.
Identify and describe quantitative or qualitative patterns of interactions among organisms that can be used to identify causal relationships within ecosystems, related to the given phenomenon.
Describe that regardless of the ecosystem or species involved, the patterns of interactions are similar.
Use reasoning to connect the evidence and support an explanation using patterns in the evidence to predict common interactions among organisms in ecosystems as they relate to the phenomenon.

Students understand that:

Although the species involved in relationships (e.g., competition, predation, mutualism, commensalism, parasitism) vary across ecosystems, the patterns of interactions of organisms with their environments, both living and nonliving, are shared.