Module 2

EVS
• Ecosystems-Concept of an ecosystem-
structure and function of an ecosystem –
producers, consumers, decomposers-energy
flow in the ecosystem-
• The living community of plants and animals in
any area together with the non-living
components of the environment such as soil,
air and water, constitute the ecosystem.
‘What does the ecosystem look like?’

One should be able to describe specific features of the different

ecosystems in ones own surroundings. Field observations must
be made in both urban and natural surroundings.
What you should see are its different characteristics.
A forest has layers from the ground to the canopy. A pond has
different types of vegetation from the periphery to its
center. The vegetation on a mountain changes from its base
to its summit.
Plants are the ‘producers’ in the ecosystem as
they manufacture their food by using energy
from the sun.
The herbivorous animals are primary consumers
as they live on the producers.
In grasslands, there are herbivores such as the
blackbuck that feed on grass.
In the sea, there are small fish that live on algae
and other plants.
At a higher tropic level, there are carnivorous
animals, or secondary consumers, which live
on herbivorous animals
Decomposers or detrivores are a group of
organisms consisting of small animals like
worms, insects, bacteria and fungi, which
break down dead organic material into
smaller particles and finally into simpler
substances that are used by plants as
nutrition.
Ecosystem-structure and function of an
ecosystem
 Structural aspects

Components that make up the structural aspects of an

ecosystem include:
• Inorganic aspects – C, N, CO2, H2O.
• Organic compounds – Protein, Carbohydrates, Lipids –
link abiotic to biotic aspects.
• Climatic regimes – Temperature, Moisture, Light &
Topography.
• Producers – Plants.
• Macro consumers – Phagotrophs – Large animals.
• Micro consumers – Saprotrophs, absorbers – fungi.
The structure of an ecosystem can be
represented as
Functional aspects
• Energy cycles.
• Food chains.
• Diversity-interlinkages between organisms.
• Nutrient cycles-biogeochemical cycles.
• Evolution.
• Trophic Level Interaction was developed by
zoologist Charles Elton. It deals with who eats
who and is eaten by whom in an ecosystem.
Trophic level can be defined as the number of
links by which it is separated from the
producer, or as the position of the organism in
the food chain
• The trophic level interaction involves three
concepts namely
1. Food Chain
2. Food Web
3. Ecological Pyramids
 Energy flow in the ecosystem
Every ecosystem has several interrelated
mechanisms that affect human life.

These are the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the

oxygen cycle, the nitrogen cycle and the
energy cycle
Carbon is a building block of
both plant and animal tissues.
In the atmosphere, carbon
occurs as carbon dioxide
(CO2).
• Ecological succession- Food chains, food
webs and Ecological pyramids
• Ecological succession is the process of
change in the species structure of
an ecological community over time. The time
scale can be decades (for example, after a
wildfire), or even millions of years after a mass
extinction.
Food chain
• The patterns of eating and being eaten forms
a linear chain called food chain which can
always be traced back to the producers. Thus,
primary producers trap radiant energy of sun
and transfer that to chemical or potential
energy of organic compounds such as
carbohydrates, proteins and fats.
• The number of
steps in a food
chain are always
restricted to four or
five, since the
energy available
decreases with
each step.
• In nature, basically two types of food chains
are recognized—grazing food chain and
detritus food chain.
 Food web
• The same organism may operate in the
ecosystem at more than one trophic level i.e
it may derive its food from more than one
source. Thus in a given ecosystem various
food chains are linked to form a complex
network called food Web.
 Ecological Pyramids

• In the successive steps of grazing food chain

number and mass of the organisms in each
step is limited by the amount of energy
available. Since some energy is lost as heat, in
each transformation the steps become
progressively smaller near the top. This
relationship is sometimes called ecological
pyramid