Ecology and Environment
MYP Year 2 Sciences — Ecology and Environment unit
Ecology questions look like biology recall but they're really testing whether you can trace a connection — between a living thing and a non-living factor, between one organism and another, or between a human action and its knock-on effect through a food web. Every worked example below is built from real exam scenarios, because that's where the actual mark-losing habits show up: restating an observation instead of explaining the mechanism, or describing 'a decrease' without saying how fast or what it levels off at.
Overview: The Shape of Ecology
What ecology actually studies
Ecology is the study of how living things interact with each other and with the physical world around them. Every question in this unit is really testing one skill: can you trace a connection between something living and something non-living, or between one organism and another, and explain the mechanism — not just name it?
- Ecology works at different scales — one frog is an organism, all the frogs in one pond form a population, every species sharing that pond forms a community, and the community plus the water, mud and sunlight together form the ecosystem.
- Biomes are large regions defined by climate (temperature and rainfall pattern), not by country — the Amazon and Congo rainforests are the same biome despite being on different continents.
- Nothing in an ecosystem exists in isolation: remove a predator, add fertiliser, or cut down trees, and the effect ripples through the whole food web — that ripple effect is what most 'explain' questions are asking you to describe.
The shape of the chapter
Command terms this topic tests hardest
| Command term | What it demands | AO | Mark-earning move |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identify | State the required information from given data with no reasoning. | AO1 Knowing | 1 mark for the correct word/label only — e.g. stating 'biotic' or 'abiotic' needs no justification. |
| Describe | Give a detailed account including trend/pattern, but not the cause. | AO1/AO2 | Must include direction AND shape of change ('decreases then levels off') — a bare 'it decreases' typically only earns half marks. |
| Explain | Give the reason or mechanism linking a cause to its effect. | AO2 Applying | Each reasoning step is usually a separate mark — restating the observation instead of the mechanism scores 0. |
| Distinguish/Compare | State similarities and/or differences between two named things. | AO2 | Needs both items linked in the same sentence — two separate unlinked facts score lower. |
| Suggest | Apply ecological knowledge to an unfamiliar situation; more than one answer may be valid. | AO3 Analysing | Marked on plausibility with reasoning, not on matching one memorised answer. |
| Evaluate | Weigh strengths and limitations before giving a judgement. | AO3/AO4 | A judgement with no supporting reasoning scores nothing — give at least one 'for' and one 'against' point. |
| Predict | State a likely outcome consistent with a given pattern, graph or model. | AO3 | Must match the direction of the data given — a generic prediction that ignores the trend scores 0. |
Key point
Overview