Video Transcript
Fill in the blanks. Saprophytism is important for
environmental what. Without it, the bodies of dead
organisms would remain without what and what would not be recycled for use by other
what. Put the words in the correct order
to complete the paragraph. Nutrients, balance, organisms,
decomposing.
To answer the question, let’s start
by thinking about the first blank: “Saprophytism is important for environmental
what.” An environment is the surroundings
of an organism and includes the living and nonliving factors in the environment. So, for example, a camel’s
environment is a desert. An environment can either be
balanced or unbalanced. The normal state is for an
environment to be in balance. It is kept in balance by the
interactions between its living and nonliving factors. For example, predators keep the
environment in balance by keeping the numbers of prey down. And plants keep the environment in
balance by producing food that other organisms eat.
Saprophytes, like bacteria and
fungi, also help maintain environmental balance. So, the first blank is
“balance.”
To fill in the other blanks, let’s
look at how saprophytes help keep environmental balance. When an organism, like our camel,
dies, it is broken down by decomposers. Saprophytes are a type of
decomposer. Without them, dead bodies, like
this dead camel, would remain without decomposing. So, the second blank is
“decomposing.”
As the organism is being broken
down or decomposed by saprophytes, such as bacteria and fungi, the nutrients it is
made from are returned to the soil or in this case sand. So, the third blank is
“nutrients.” These nutrients can then be used by
other organisms. For example, plants can absorb
these nutrients and then pass them on to organisms that eat them. So, the fourth blank is
“organisms.”
So, the correct order of words to
complete the paragraph is balance, decomposing, nutrients, organisms, which gives us
the following paragraph “Saprophytism is important for environmental balance. Without it, the bodies of dead
organisms would remain without decomposing and nutrients would not be recycled for
use by other organisms.”