Focus on inquiry
the data cable below gives estimates for two populations in a candra ecosystem. polar bears are predators,
and arctic seals are their main prey.
01
year
arctic seals
polar bears
arctic seal and polar bear populations
1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t819 10
640 590 510 580 680 540 610 630 570 500
23 26 28 22 26 30 2 20 2 28
recall from lesson 21 that only a small part of the energy in 2017 organism is passed to the organism that feeds on it. as a result, a prey population is almost always much larger than the predator population. one way to graph a predator/prey relationship is co label the left vertical axis with a scale for one population and the right vertical axis with a scale for the other.
use the data cable above to construct a line graph of the seal and bear populations over 10 years. make your graph on a separate piece of graph paper. label your axes, and include a key to distinguisha the
populations shown
question: what is the approximate size range for each population?