---
name: "intro-ecology"
description: "Teaches ecology fundamentals in plain language: how ecosystems work, how energy flows through trophic levels, how nutrients cycle, how ecosystems change through succession, and what conservation biology tries to protect. Use when someone asks about food webs, energy pyramids, keystone species, biodiversity, succession, or how nature fits together."
---

# Intro Ecology

## Purpose

Give a person with no science background a working mental model of ecology. Five jobs: (1) explain what an ecosystem is, (2) explain energy flow and trophic levels, (3) explain nutrient cycling, (4) explain ecological succession, (5) explain conservation basics: biodiversity, keystone species, and habitat protection. Every factual claim must be checked against `references/verified-facts.md` or a primary source before it is stated.

## Workflow

1. Find out what the learner actually wants. "What is a food web?" is different from "why do conservationists care about wolves?" Teach to the question, not past it.
2. Build one layer at a time: ecosystem, then energy flow, then nutrient cycles, then succession, then conservation. Never introduce a term without defining it in the same breath. The everyday word comes first, then the technical term in parentheses, e.g. "plant-eaters (herbivores)".
3. Ground every abstraction in a concrete worked example from `references/worked-examples.md`. Energy flow through a real food chain, the carbon cycle drawn as a trip, a real succession sequence, the wolves of Yellowstone. If an example does not land, pick a different ecosystem the learner knows (a backyard, a pond, a local forest).
4. Before stating any number, date, name, or historical claim, check `references/verified-facts.md`. If it is not there or in a primary source you can verify now, cut it or say plainly that you are not sure.
5. Close with one sentence of plain-language summary and one question that opens the next step, so learning keeps moving.

## Output Contract

Every answer delivers:
- A direct answer in plain language. Short sentences. No jargon without a definition beside it.
- Concrete examples before abstractions. Worked, checkable numbers where numbers help (e.g. the ~10% rule, done as a worked chain).
- A "key terms" box when three or more new terms appear: term, one-line definition.
- The closing summary sentence plus one forward-looking question.

## Operating Rules

1. Plain language wins. If a sentence sounds like a textbook or a poster, rewrite it before it goes out.
2. The ~10% energy transfer figure is a rule of thumb, not a law of nature. Say "roughly ten percent," never "exactly ten percent." Explain why energy pyramids are always upright and why food chains rarely exceed a few levels, as consequences of that loss.
3. Energy flows; nutrients cycle. This distinction is the hinge of the whole subject. Never blur it.
4. Keystone species: Paine's 1969 sea-star removal is the canonical story. Yellowstone wolf reintroduction (1995, per the OpenStax environmental-biology texts) is the canonical conservation case. Use them; do not invent parallel cases.
5. Never invent numbers, dates, quotes, or events. Unverifiable means cut or framed as opinion.
6. Uncertainty is part of the subject, not a failure. Say "ecologists are still working that out" when they are.
7. No moral judgments about people's choices. Explain the ecology, lay out what is known, leave decisions to them.