Biotic and abiotic

components-
food webs
By 15 Rajeshwari,34 T.Bharadwaj and
63 Sri Vathsava
Ecosystem
• What is an Ecosystem?
• Living organisms seem to interact amongst
themselves and with the physical environment.
This, in short, can be called an ecosystem. There
can be different types of ecosystems. The
biosphere, for example, can be a global ecosystem.
It all depends on the different components and the
extent to which you want to define the space, to
consider it as an ecosystem. And hence to be able
to learn more about them, ecosystems are This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC

generally divided into smaller forms.

 Biotic
components
.
Biotic factors
• The term “biotic” is formed by the
combination of two
terms, “bio” meaning life
and “ic” meaning like. Thus, the term
means life-like and is related to all the
living entities present in an ecosystem.
BIOTIC FACTORS
• Biotic factors relate to all the living things in the ecosystem. Their
presence and their biological by-products affect the composition of an
ecosystem. Biotic factors refer to all living organisms from animals
and humans, to plants, fungi, and bacteria.
• The interactions between various biotic factors are necessary for the
reproduction of each species and to fulfil essential requirements like
food, etc. These include producers, consumers, decomposers and
detritivores.
Types of biotic
components
Producers
• Producers – also known as autotrophs, from
the Greek words “auto” for “self” and
“troph” for “food” – are organisms that
make their own food using inorganic
materials and energy sources.
• Producers are extremely important: without
them, no life could exist at all!

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under C

PRODUCERS
• The very first life forms on Earth had to learn to make fuel and
building materials to make more cells out of non-living materials.
That’s because when the first life forms appeared, there were no
other life forms to feed on! So the first life forms had to be
producers.
• Producers remain vital today as the life forms that can harness
inorganic energy to be used as fuel for life.
Types of producers
There are two major classes of producers:
1. Photoautotrophs are by far the most common type of producer on
Earth today. These producers harness energy from sunlight to power
their life functions. Green plants, green algae, and some bacteria are
photoautotrophs
2. Chemoautotrophs are fairly rare in most ecosystems. They obtain
energy from chemicals such as hydrogen, iron, and sulfur, which are not
common in most environments. Nonetheless, they can still play an
important role in ecosystems because of their unusual biochemistry
 Consumers
• Consumers, also called “heterotrophs,” are organisms that eat other
living organisms in order to obtain energy. Their name comes from
the Greek “hetero” for “other” and “troph” for “food.”
• Heterotrophy probably evolved when some organisms discovered
that they could eat autotrophs as a source of energy, instead of
creating their own energy and organic materials.
• Most levels of most ecosystems’ energy pyramids consist of
consumers – herbivores and top predators who eat other organisms.
 Decomposers
• Decomposers, or detritovores, are organisms that use organic
compounds from producers and consumers as their source of
energy. They are important to ecosystems because they break
down materials from other living things into simpler forms,
which can then be used again by other organisms.

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under C

DECOMPOSERS
•  Decomposers are the link between
the bottom of an ecosystem’s
energy pyramid and the other
levels. It can take energy and raw
materials from dead plants,
herbivores and break it down into a
form that can be used by the
ecosystem’s producers to make it
easier for them to harness sunlight.
In this way, the ecosystem’s energy
cycle is preserved.

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under C

Abiotic components
.
 Abiotic factors
Abiotic components are the physical and/or
the chemical factors that act on the living
organisms at any part of their life. These are
also called as the ecological factors. The
physical and chemical factors are
characteristic of the environment.  Light, air,
soil, and nutrients, etc. form the abiotic
components of an ecosystem.
wind
Often abiotic factors are affected by other factors. This is
especially evident with wind. The wind speed and direction
affects the temperature and humidity of an area. Very high
wind speeds, often in mountainous areas, may lead to
stunted plant growth and limit the types of life that can
thrive in the area. Wind also carries seeds and aids
pollination, spreading life. This lets plant forms travel out of
a contained area.
water
• All living organism needs some water intake. Water
covers 70 percent of the earth's surface and falls as rain
or snow over land. In an environment with little water,
only organisms requiring a small percentage of water
can survive. Other animals thrive in conditions with
large amounts of water, such as marine animals and
plants in oceans. Water is essential to survival, but
every organism needs a different amount of water.
Temperature and Light
Temperature of the air and water affect animals, plants and
humans in ecosystems. A rise in temperature has the potential to
change the way a living thing develops, because it changes the
metabolic rate of the organism. All living organisms have a
tolerance level for temperature range. For example, a human
being would die if he stood out in minus 50 degree temperatures
for any length of time. Light exposure often affects the
temperature. Areas with direct sunlight are warmer.

        
 Atmosphere
    

The atmosphere of the earth sustains life. Animals and other

creatures breathe oxygen or filter it from water, and plants
grow because of the presence of carbon dioxide. Living
things combine oxygen and carbon to make carbohydrates,
chemicals that provide energy and are important parts of
DNA, proteins and other organic materials. The atmosphere
is made up of four layers: troposphere, stratosphere,
ozonosphere and mesosphere.
Food
webs
A part of nature..
 Food chains and Food webs
Food chain in ecology, the sequence of transfers of matter and
energy in the form of food from organism to organism. Food
chains intertwine locally into a food web because most
organisms consume more than one type of animal or plant.
Plants, which convert solar energy to food by photosynthesis,
are the primary food source. In a predator chain, a plant-eating
animal is eaten by a flesh-eating animal. In a parasite chain, a
smaller organism consumes part of a larger host and may itself
be parasitized by even smaller organisms. In a saprophytic
Food webs
Food Web:
Several interconnected food chains form a food web. A food
web is similar to a food chain but the food web is
comparatively larger than a food chain. Occasionally, a
single organism is consumed by many predators or it
consumes several other organisms. Due to this, many trophic
levels get interconnected, and the food chain fails to
showcase the flow of energy in the right way. But, the food
web is able to show the proper representation of energy flow,
as it displays the interactions between different organisms
 Types of food webs
• Energy Flow Food WebsEnergy flow food webs depict the
relationships between organisms in an ecosystem by
quantifying and showing the energy flux between organisms
• .Fossil Food WebsFood webs can be dynamic and the food
relationships within an ecosystem change over time. In a fossil
food web, scientists attempt to reconstruct the relationships
between species based on available evidence from the fossil
record.
 Article
• The journal Food Webs publishes original research articles, focused
reviews and short communication papers examining the species
interactions that structure ecological communities. This interdisciplinary
journal encompasses both experimental and theoretical research that
seeks a mechanistic understanding of the influence of these interactions on
the composition of communities and functioning of ecosystems. As such,
articles focus on a multitude of areas within the area of food web biology.
These include:
• simple trophic relationships and cascading effects between levels of a
community
• multi-species interactions and the structuring of populations and
communities
• effect of competition and co-existence of species in defining trophic
relationships
• effect of perturbation on species and interaction pathways
• quantifying direct and indirect effects on populations
• stability and productivity of food webs
 By roll no
15,34 and 63
Thank you
the end..