Ecology: GCSE Biology
Communities, adaptations, food chains and cycles, biodiversity, human impacts and global warming
The short version
Use community, abiotic and biotic factors, adaptations, carbon and water cycles, biodiversity, and human impacts including global warming.
Key idea
Grade 2–3: Abiotic is weather and soil. Biotic is other living things.
Grade 5–6: I can define population, community, habitat, ecosystem.
Grade 9: Interdependence: if bees decline, plants they pollinate decline, then herbivores. I use a food-web link, not a vague “nature suffers”.
Go a bit deeper
Grade 2–3: Animals and plants have features that help them live where they live.
Grade 5–6: I can sort adaptations into structural, behavioural, functional.
Grade 9: I do not write “it needed to adapt so it did”. That is Lamarck again. The feature is there; it helps; those with it breed.
Worked example
Worked example
Grade 2–3: Abiotic is weather and soil. Biotic is other living things. Grade 5–6: I can define population, community, habitat, ecosystem. Grade 9: Interdependence: if bees decline, plants they pollinate decline, then herbivores. I use a food-web link, not a vague “nature suffers”.
Lessons in this topic
- Communities, abiotic and biotic
- Adaptations
- Food chains and cycles
- Biodiversity
- Human impacts
- Global warming and maintaining biodiversity
In the app each lesson is video (when we have a real YouTube id) then intro, learn and summary steps.
What the examiner wants
Explain sampling with quadrats, describe the carbon cycle with named processes, and evaluate methods of maintaining biodiversity.
Try these questions
Cover the answers and have a go first. Worked solutions are underneath.
A community is...
Which is an abiotic factor?
To estimate daisies in a field you should...
A cactus storing water in its stem is mainly a...
Common mistakes
- Arrows in a food chain point to the eater (energy flow), not “who eats whom” backwards.
- Putting quadrats only on the pretty flowers overestimates. Random means random.
- Ozone depletion is not the greenhouse effect. CFCs and the ozone layer are a different spec story if they appear at all — do not glue them onto a climate question.
- Community = all species together.
Answers and working
Frequently asked questions
Is GCSE Ecology on Combined Science and Triple?
Ecology is on Combined Science and on Triple Biology. Progress is shared in the ReviseEasy app.
Which exam board is this Ecology page for?
The ideas are board-agnostic for AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC and CCEA. Paper lengths and question numbers differ — check your specification.
Is Ecology Foundation or Higher?
The core ideas appear on both tiers. Higher papers add extra application and some HT-only detail, marked in lessons with a Higher badge.
Learn, try, get feedback, fix the mistake
Open the stepped lesson, then the quiz with hints. Required-practical and calculation questions use the same method you will need in the paper.
Learn Ecology on ReviseEasy →Related revision
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