NGSS Connections

This module prepares students to achieve the following elements from the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS):

Performance Expectations
MS-LS2 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics

MS-LS2-1. Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.
MS-LS2-2. Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems.
MS-LS2-4. Construct an argument supported by empirical evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations.

Disciplinary Core Ideas
LS2.A: Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems

MS-LS2-1. Organisms, and populations of organisms, are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things ~~and with nonliving factors~~.
MS-LS2-1. In any ecosystem, organisms and populations with similar requirements for food, water, oxygen, or other resources may compete with each other for limited resources, access to which consequently constrains their growth and reproduction.
MS-LS2-2. Similarly, predatory interactions may reduce the number of organisms or eliminate whole populations of organisms. Mutually beneficial interactions, in contrast, may become so interdependent that each organism requires the other for survival. Although the species involved in these competitive, predatory, and mutually beneficial interactions vary across ecosystems, the patterns of interactions of organisms with their environments, both living and nonliving, are shared.

Cross-cutting Concepts

Science and Engineering Practices