Ecology: the study of plants and animals interacting with their environment
How do living things interact with their environment?
Eating, breathing, adding waste
Abiotic: non-living things in an environment (soil, water, sunlight, temp)
Biotic: living things (plants and animals)
4 divisions of ecology
-Organismal: study of evolutionary adaptions hat enable individual organisms to meet challenges posed by their abiotic environment
-Population: study of how members of a population interact with their environment, focusing on factors that influence population density and growth
-Community: study of how interactions between species affect community structure and organization
-Ecosystem: study of energy flow and the cycling of chemicals among various biotic and abiotic factors in an ecosystem
Biosphere: the ecosystem comprising the entire earth and the living organisms that inhabit it.
Habitat: where an organism lives
6 abiotic factors
◦Sunlight:
◦Water:
◦Temperature:
◦Wind:
◦Rocks and soil:
◦Periodic disturbances:
Invasive species: species who doesn’t belong in that ecosystem, foreigner, they unbalance the ecosystem
Food chain: A food chain is the sequence of who eats whom in a biological community (an ecosystem) to obtain nutrition
Food web: A network of many food chains
Trophic levels
-Primary producers (organisms that make their own food) are the base of every food chain - these organisms are called autotrophs.
-Primary consumers are animals that eat primary producers; they are also called herbivores (plant-eaters).
-Secondary consumers eat primary consumers. They are carnivores (meat-eaters) and omnivores (animals that eat both animals and plants).
-Tertiary consumers eat secondary consumers.
-Detritivores: (like vultures, worms and crabs)
-Decomposers: (mostly bacteria and fungi),
-Producers: make their own food
-Consumers: eat producers
Apex predator: top predator no one eats it
Biomass: mass of organisms in ecosystem
Bioaccumulation: is the gradual build up over time of a chemical in a living organism (example-pesticides)
Carrying capacity: