WARM-UP Questions

1. What do you think the basic needs of life are?

2. What is the environment?
3. How do you define life…what are 4 things all living organisms
have in common?
 Ecology
Interactions in the Environment
Ecology is the study of
organisms, the environment
and how the organisms
interact with each other and
their environment.

What is Ecology?
 Ecology is…
the study of the interactions
between living organisms and
their biotic and abiotic
environments.
Ecology is therefore the study
of the relationship of plants
and animals to their physical
and biological environment.
 And the
ENVIRONMENT
is…

The surroundings of an organism that affect its life and development.

 An environment is characterized by the ABIOTIC and
BIOTIC factors.

Abiotic factors are non-living.

 Abiotic factors include science like chemistry, physics and geology.
 Interactions of abiotic factors result in weather, seasonal changes, tides, air quality, and water quality

Biotic factors are living and can be categorized

within an ecosystem structure…
Species Population Community

ECOSYSTEM: all of the communities that live in an

area together with the abiotic factors in the environment
A dead tree is not
alive but not
considered
abiotic….why?
It was
once
living!
Biotic features are all living things in the
biosphere.
 The biosphere is all the parts
of Earth that support life.

 This measures approximately

20km thick (12.4 miles)!
Most life on Earth exists
between 500m below the
surface of the ocean and about
6km above sea level.
 What types of
communities make
up these ecosystems?

What types of abiotic

factors are
influencing these
ecosystems?
 How are Biotic Factors organized?

KP C ing hilip ame O F ver or G S

reat oup!

Kingdom - Phylum - Class - Order - Family - Genus - Species

All biotic factors are grouped into major kingdoms based upon similar physical characteristics…
we will deal with 6.
Listed in descending order of
complexity:

Animalia
Plantae
Fungi
Protista
Eubacteria
Archeobacteria
 Abiotic and Biotic factors are
intimately intertwined….
Geographic location (latitude and
longitude) determines abiotic
factors such as temperature and
climate….which in turn, dictates or
forces a certain type of ecosystem
to exist.
 Levels of
Organization
studied in
Ecology…
 An organism’s niche
 Habitat: the actual place an organism lives
 Niche: both living and non-living parts of an
ecosystem that determines an organism’s role
in the ecosystem.
 If two species share the same niche, they will
have various interactions.
 How can species interact?
 These relationships are complex. Each population of species interacts with other species,
or biotic factors, as well as with the all of the abiotic factors.
 The niche of an organism and it’s interactions is determined by where it stands in the
ecological structure of the ecosystem.
-Producers
-Consumers
-Decomposers

-Scavengers
Producers
 Producers are autotrophic
organisms that make their
own food.
 Phototrophic organisms use
photosynthesis and contain
chlorophyll
(Carbon Dioxide + Water + Sunlight =Sugar +
Oxygen)

 Chemotrophic organisms use

chemicals other than H20,
such as H2S
PRODUCERS!!!
 Consumers
 Consumers are heterotrophic organisms that cannot make their own food. They must
ingest (eat) other organisms.

-Herbivores feed on vegetation (producers).

-Carnivores feed on herbivores or on other carnivores.
 Secondary carnivores feed on herbivores,
 Tertiary consumers feed on other carnivores
-Omnivores feed on both producers and consumers
-Scavengers feed on dead or decaying organisms
CONSUMERS!!!
Scavengers feed on CARRION (dead or injured
animal corpses) and dead plant biomass.
Scavengers reduce the size of dead organic
matter…Decomposers will finish the job!
DECOMPOSERS are heterotrophs that recycle small,
often microscopic bits of dead organic matter into
inorganic nutrients availbe for plants to take up from the
soil. Decomposers RECYCLE nutrients!

BACTERIA and FUNGI are decomposers…most worms

are plant scavengers!
 Energy in the Ecosystem
 Energy from the sun enters and
ecosystem when producers used the
energy to make organic matter
through photosynthesis.
 Glucose is the primary energy
source (carbohydrate) produced by
photosynthesis.
 Consumers take in this energy when
they eat producers or other
consumers.
 Energy in the Ecosystem
 Plants absorb less than 1% of the sunlight
that reaches them!
 However, photosynthetic organisms make
170 billion metric tons of food each
year!
 The energy captured by producers is used
to make cells in both producers and
consumers.
Trophic levels
 Trophic levels are the different
feeding levels of organisms in an
ecosystem. Producers are the
first trophic level and consumers
make up several more.
 These relationships can be seen
in an ecological pyramid.
 Biomass: the total amount of
organic matter present in a
trophic level. The biomass in
each trophic level is the amount
of energy- in the form of food-
available to the next trophic
level.
 The Ten Percent Law
 Mostof the energy that enters
through organisms in a trophic level
does not become biomass. Only
energy used to make biomass
remains available to the next level.

 When all of the energy losses are

added together, only about 10% of
the energy entering one trophic
level forms biomass in the next
trophic level. This is known as the
10 percent law.
 MORE Ten Percent Law
 The 10 percent law is the main reason that most food chains have five or less links. Because
90 percent of the food chain’s energy is lost at each level, the amount of available energy
decreases quickly.

10 PERCENT
LAW!!
 Heat and Movement

Consumed Digested Growth

Not Digested

Waste

Not Consumed
Decomposers

The majority of energy is lost via heat and movement!

Ecological pyramid
Remember
scavengers and
decomposers can
enter at any level!

Tertiary Consumers= CARNIVORE

EATING OTHER CARNIVORES

Secondary Consumers= CARNIVORES

EATING HERBIVORES

Primary Consumers= HERBIVORES

PRODUCERS = Autotrophic Plants

 Ecological Pyramids
 Relative amounts of energy are represented in an
ecological pyramid: a diagram that shows the
relative amounts of energy in different trophic levels
in an ecosystem. An ecological pyramid can show
energy, biomass, or the number of organisms in a food
web.
Ecological Pyramid: Energy

Shows the relative transfer of energy (joules) from one

trophic level to the next.
Ecological Pyramid: Biomass

Shows the relative amounts of organic matter (gram) from

one trophic level to the next.
 Ecological Pyramid:
Number of Organisms

Shows the relative number of organisms at each trophic level.

Food Chains
A Food CHAIN is a series
of organisms that
transfer food
between the trophic
levels of an
ecosystem using only
one species at each
level…a simple chain.
 The arrows represent
the flow of energy
from one organism to
the next.
 The arrow points
toward the organism
doing the ‘eating’.
Food Webs
Ecosystems are not as simple
as shown and not often
explained by a single food
chain… Food WEBS more
accurately show the network
of food chains representing
the feeding relationships
among organisms in an
ecosystem.
 Most organisms feed on
more than one type of
organism at different trophic
levels.
 How do Food Webs show
 complexity?
The diversity and stability of an ecosystem is represented by more complex
webs that have many species and many interactions (lots of arrows) because
they are more stable…more resistant to disturbance by natural disaster or human
interference. Why?
 Biological Magnification

 BIOLOGICAL MAGNIFICATION
 The concentration of a pollutant in organisms
increases at higher trophic levels in the food web
because these chemicals build-up in the fatty
tissues of these organism and do not dissolve or
flush-out of the organism.
 DDT & Mercury examples:
 DDT is a pesticide used to kill insects like malaria-carrying
mosquitoes. However, this chemical will magnify in
concentration in larger organisms like birds and mammals
and harm their reproductive abilities.
 Bald eagle populations declined rapidly to the point of
extinction as an endangered species as mother birds were not
able to incubate or hatch their eggs because the eggs shells
were too thin and would crush and break when sat upon to
keep warm in the nest.
 Biological Magnification

As the living
organisms eats more,
the concentration of
these substances
increases as they pass
from one trophic level
to the next.
The day it Rained
cats…

A bizarre case of ecological damage from DDT

occurred in Borneo after the World Health
Organization sprayed huge amounts of the
pesticide. The area's geckos, or lizards, feasted on
the houseflies that had been killed by DDT. The
geckos, in turn, were devoured by local cats.
Unhappily, the cats perished in such large numbers
from DDT poisoning that the rats they once kept in
check began overrunning whole villages. Alarmed
by the threat of plague, WHO officials were forced
to replenish Borneo's supply of cats by parachute.
 Relationships in the

ecosystem
Predator/Prey: One organism (predator) will actively hunt and consume
another (prey).

 Competition: two or more organisms of same or different species compete to

use the same limited resources or basic needs
Symbiotic Relationships
 Parasitism: an organism
(parasite) lives in or on another
(host) and feeds on it without
immediately killing it

 Mutualism: a cooperative
partnership between two
species (both benefit)

 Commensalism: a relationship
where one species benefits and
the other remains unaffected
 Coevolution
 When two or more species evolve in response to each other, it is
called coevolution.
 Examples of coevolution may be found between predators and
their prey.
 Plants and insects represent a classic case of coevolution — one
that is often, but not always, mutualistic. Many plants and their
pollinators are so reliant on one another and their relationships are
so exclusive that biologists have good reason to think that the
“match” between the two is the result of a coevolutionary process.