4.

Mention the importance of each class of biotic or living components of ecosystem

Biotic Components of Ecosystem

The living components of an ecosystem are called the biotic components. Some of these factors
include plants, animals, as well as fungi and bacteria. These biotic components can be further
classified, based on the energy requirement source. Producers, consumers, and decomposers are
the three broad categories of biotic components.

Producers are the plants in the ecosystem, which can generate their own energy requirement
through photosynthesis, in the presence of sunlight and chlorophyll. All other living beings are
dependent on plants for their energy requirement of food as well as oxygen.

Consumers include herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. The herbivores are the living organisms
that feed on plants. Carnivores eat other living organisms. Omnivores are animals that can eat both
plant and animal tissue.

Decomposers are the fungi and bacteria, which are the saprophytes. They feed on the decaying
organic matter and convert this matter into nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The saprophytes play a
vital role in recycling the nutrients so that the producers i.e. plants can use them once again.

Role of the producer:

A producer captures energy and stores that energy in food as chemical energy. Producers such as
plants have special organelles called as chloroplasts that absorb energy from the sun.
Example: Autotrophs are producers, that make their own food by photosynthesis process.

Role of consumers:
Consumers obtain energy and nutrients from producers as they cannot make their own food.
Example: Heterotroph is the consumer, such as
a) herbivore are the primary consumer that eats only plants, such as cows, deer or some insects
b) carnivores are the secondary consumer that eats only other consumers such as cats, spiders,
wolves, hawks etc.
c) omnivore are the tertiary consumer that eats both plants and animals such as, monkeys, bears,
turtles etc.

Role of decomposers:
They are organisms that break down dead plant and animal into simple compounds.
Example: scavengers are decomposers. These animals feed on dead bodies, such as vultures, hyenas
etc.
An ecosystem cannot function without one of these. The role of producers, consumers, and
decomposers in an ecosystem :
The producers in an ecosystem make food on their own by capturing energy from sunlight and make
that available to all the other living parts of ecosystems and food chain starts. Food chains explain
the flow of energy in an environment that moves from one organism to the next.

Without primary producers, which are plants consumers and decomposers would not able to live as
producers begin every food chain.
The flow of energy in an ecosystem begins with sunlight which is the ultimate source of all energy on
Earth and that energy is absorbed by the producers, which goes to the consumers and then to the
decomposers. Then it goes back to the producers to begin the cycle again.
So, without producers ecosystem cannot function.

A consumer is a heterotroph that cannot make its own food and eat producers or other organisms
for energy. We are in the category of consumers that eat the food that producers like plants made.
Consumers in an ecosystem balance the food chain by keeping plant populations in a limited
number. Without proper balance, an ecosystem would collapse and it will decline all the affected
populations.
So, without consumers ecosystem cannot function.

Decomposers decompose dead plants and animals matter when they die, such as bacteria is a
decomposer.
Imagine an ecosystem if there were no decomposers. All the wastes and the remains of dead
organisms would pile up that will damage the ecosystem. The nutrients within the waste and dead
organisms will not go back into the ecosystem and organism will not function properly.
So, without decomposers ecosystem cannot function.

5. Write down the importance of tectonic cycle and rock cycle.

Plates cover the entire Earth, and their boundaries play an important role in geologic happenings.
The movement of these plates atop a thick, fluid "mantle" is known as plate tectonics and is the
source of earthquakes and volcanoes. Plates crash together to make mountains, such as the
Himalayas. They leave trenches where one slips beneath the other. They make giant rift valleys and
ridges when going their separate ways.

The process is actually very important to life on Earth. Several billion years ago, the surface of our
Earth began forming into puzzle pieces called plates. This process trapped our atmospheric carbon
dioxide into rocks and stabilized our climate, making Earth habitable. A Mylonite mystery

How this developed has been an enigma for centuries. But one feature present at all plate
boundaries was the clue needed to crack the case: a rock called mylonite.

Mylonite has puzzled scientists since at least the late 1800s. "Their presence is a bit of a mystery,"
study researcher David Bercovici, of Yale University, told Business Insider. "There are well-known
observations of mylonite at all different kinds of plate boundaries and there's been a long debate
about what causes them." Mylonite is a highly deformed rock, which means it has small grain sizes.
Small grain-size equals a weaker rock. Since these rocks occur around all plate boundaries, their
deformation and subsequent weakness piqued Bercovici's interest.

"It was a big motivation for developing this theory in the first place," said Bercovici who worked with
Yankick Ricard of the Université de Lyon on the study.

The rock components of the crust are slowly but constantly being changed from one form to another
and the processes involved are summarized in the rock cycle (Figure 3.2). The rock cycle is driven by
two forces: (1) Earth’s internal heat engine, which moves material around in the core and the mantle
and leads to slow but significant changes within the crust, and (2) the hydrological cycle, which is the
movement of water, ice, and air at the surface, and is powered by the sun.

The rock cycle is still active on Earth because our core is hot enough to keep the mantle moving, our
atmosphere is relatively thick, and we have liquid water. On some other planets or their satellites,
such as the Moon, the rock cycle is virtually dead because the core is no longer hot enough to drive
mantle convection and there is no atmosphere or liquid water. In describing the rock cycle, we can
start anywhere we like, although it’s convenient to start with magma. As we’ll see in more detail
below, magma is rock that is hot to the point of being entirely molten. This happens at between
about 800° and 1300°C, depending on the composition and the pressure, onto the surface and cool
quickly (within seconds to years) .

Magma can either cool slowly within the crust (over centuries to millions of years) — forming
intrusive igneous rock, or erupt onto the surface and cool quickly (within seconds to years) —
forming extrusive igneous rock. Intrusive igneous rock typically crystallizes at depths of hundreds of
metres to tens of kilometres below the surface. To change its position in the rock cycle, intrusive
igneous rock has to be uplifted and exposed by the erosion of the overlying rocks.

Through the various plate-tectonics-related processes of mountain building, all types of rocks are
uplifted and exposed at the surface. Once exposed, they are weathered, both physically (by
mechanical breaking of the rock) and chemically (by weathering of the minerals), and the weathering
products — mostly small rock and mineral fragments — are eroded, transported, and then
deposited as sediments. Transportation and deposition occur through the action of glaciers, streams,
waves, wind, and other agents, and sediments are deposited in rivers, lakes, deserts, and the ocean.