Ecology of Communities

Ecology of Communities
Interactions between Species Competition When two or more species compete for a particular resource.

Beech and oak trees in a mixed wood in England compete for minerals and water in the soil.

Swifts and swallows both feed on insects flying in the air.

Herbivory A primary consumer feeding on a plant or its products.

Leaf cutter ants in the rainforests of Costa Rica.

A three-toed sloth in the rainforests of Costa Rica.

Predation A predator killing its prey.

A kestrel kills mice and voles.

The brown bear in Canada kills sockeye salmon when they come up river to spawn.

Mutualism A relationship between two different species where both species have some degree of physiological dependency on one another and benefit from the relationship.

Trees of the species Acacia cornigera have large hollow thorns. In these live ants of the genus Pseudomyrmex, which only live here. The tree has specialised glands that provide food for the ants and in return the ants eat or drive off herbivores such as caterpillars and other leaf-eating insects, as well as large mammals by biting and stinging them.

The guts of termites contain protozoa that produce the enzyme cellulase. Without the cellulase the plant material the termites feed on could not be digested. The protozoa only survive in the anaerobic environment of the termite gut.

Parasitism A relationship between two different species where only one species benefits and the other is usually harmed.

Trypanosoma cruzi is a protozoan that lives in he blood of humans and causes the disease called sleeping sickness.

Scabies is a disease caused by mites of the genus Sarcoptes that live and feed on the skin of mammals.

Nitrogen Cycle

Extension material HL only The Nitrogen Cycle

Biogeochemical Cycles
All chemical elements occurring in organisms are part of biogeochemical cycles and these cycles involve water, land and the atmosphere.

Elements as inorganic ions are absorbed from the environment by producers and converted to complex organic molecules.

The complex organic molecules pass along food chains.

The complex organic molecules are converted back to simple inorganic ions by decomposers.

Autotrophs and Chemoautotrophs Autotrophs are organisms (green plants, some protists and some bacteria) that obtain their energy from the sun and use this to fix carbon dioxide. This is photosynthesis. Chemoautotrophs obtain their energy (ATP) by oxidising inorganic substances and use some of that energy to fix carbon dioxide, eg. nitrifying bacteria such as Nitrobacter.
Chemoautotrophy is only found amongst prokaryotes.

Nitrogen Cycle

fixation by free-living bacteria in soil Azotobacter

nitrogen gas in atmosphere

industrial fixation eg Haber process

denitrification by bacteria Pseudomonas denitrificans

Nitrogen compounds in the soil ammonia and ammonium compounds

nitrification bacteria Nitrosomonas

nitrites

nitrification bacteria Nitrobacter

nitrates

fixation by symbiotic bacteria Rhizobium

putrefaction/ammonification by decomposers

absorption by roots

excretion

nitrogen compounds in dead organisms

death death

ammonium compounds in root nodules of leguminous plants nitrogen compounds in plants

nitrogen compounds in animals

feeding