Mike and Ike swabbed the surface of their lab bench to see what bacteria were present. They transferred the swab contents to the medium in a Petri dish and incubated the dish for several days. When they removed the Petri dish from the incubator, the medium was covered with several colonies of bacteria. Mike and Ike were looking at which ordered list in the hierarchy of life?

ok from smallest to largest it's:

atom -> molecule -> macromolecule -> organelle -> cell -> tissue -> organ -> system -> organism -> population -> community -> ecosystem -> biosphere

I think a population involves only a single species.

But it looks like the Petri dish has several species of bacteria.

So I would say it's 1 level higher and that the answer is community.

step 1 ammonium can be absorbed by plants, but some is converted into nitrates which are better for plants to absorb. this is called nitrification. 2. step 2 the deer eats the plants and uses the nitrogen-containing proteins for cell growth. 3. step 3 bacteria in the soil conduct nitrogen fixation to convert nitrogen gas from the atmosphere into ammonium. 4. step 4 some of the nitrates are absorbed back into plants, but denitrification breaks down the nitrates into nitrogen gas released back into the atmosphere. 5. step 5 nitrogen is found in the urine, which gets broken down into ammonium through the process of ammonification. 6. step 6 plants absorb the ammonium and begin assimilation, the process to add the nitrogen to protein.