Ecosystem
Aget - 10 Centaurus
Ecosystem
Everything in nature is
connected. This connection between organisms and its habitat is called an
ecosystem. An ecosystem includes all of the living things
(plants, animals and organisms) in a given area, interacting with each other,
and also with their non-living environments (weather, earth, sun, soil,
climate, atmosphere).Ecosystem does not matter in size, it can be a rotten log,
a small pond or even a large rain forest.
There are
many types of ecosystems, each having their own characteristic and located in
different parts of the world.
The forest
Are ecosystem which consist plenty of flora, and seen so they have a big number
of organisms which live in a relatively small space. Example: Amazon
The Desert Ecosystem
Desert ecosystems are located in regions that receive an annual rainfall less
than 25. They occupy about 17 percent of all the land on our planet. Due to the
extremely high temperature, low water availability and intense sunlight, fauna
and flora are scarce and poorly developed. Example: Sahara
The Grassland Ecosystem
Grasslands are located in both the tropical and temperate regions of the world
though the ecosystems vary slightly. The area mainly comprises grasses with a
little number of trees and shrubs. Example: The African savana
The Mountain Ecosystem
located at high altitude,
having thin air, low air pressure and cold temperature.The animals that
live there have thick fur coats for prevention from cold and hibernation in the
winter months. Example: The
Everest Mountain
Marine ecosystem
is the largest ecosystem
which cover around 71% of the earth’s surface and contain 97% of our planet’s
water. Its water is salty. Example: The Indian Ocean.
The Freshwater Ecosystem
Contrary to the Marine ecosystems, the freshwater ecosystem covers only 0.8% of
Earth's surface and contains 0.009% of the total water. It is basically aquatic ecosystem, where its
water if freshwater. Example: ponds, river, stream and any habitat which have
fresh water.
A common
ecosystem consist of producer, consumer and decomposer. And to make a
sustainable or equilibrium in an ecosystem we need to balance the three
factors. Disturbing or changing one of them could result on the destruction of
the ecosystem. All three of them needs to be balance. If one is not balanced
either another will be too much or maybe too little.
An
ecosystem is divided into two parts, biotic and abiotic.
Biotic are
all the living things, animals, plants, micro-organisms. Each organism has its
own effects to its environment. Sometimes if the equilibrium in the environment
is not balance it could be a bad one. Example: plants that provide food for
herbivore or maybe a coral reef that is used by fishes to feed and live
Abiotic are
all the non-living things that exist in an environment. Temperature, sunlight,
soil and water. Soils and light can affect the plants that grow and the
herbivores that depend on plants would be affected, meaning carnivores to will
be affected (effects can be good or bad). All the organisms in the environment
would need water, plants use it for photosynthesis and animals uses it to
digest and hydrate themselves.
The
connection between Abiotic and biotic is called a food chain. A simple food
chain can be shown as :
Sunlight àGrass (Producer) à Herbivores (1st consumer
) à
Carnivores (2nd consumer) à Microorganisms (decomposer)
In this
food chain we can see the abiotic which are the sunlight and the soil where the
plants grow, and the biotic factors which are grass, herbivores and carnivores.
Too much of
either abiotic or biotic features in an ecosystem makes the ecosystem
unbalance, and bring changes. Organisms are kept balance by a thing called “the
limiting factor”. Which is any factors that limit the growth of a factor in an
ecosystem. Example of a limiting factor is more amount of predator, limiting
the amount of prey. Food supply is also an important factor in the limiting
factor since food is the source of life and if the food supply stays the same
then the animals would stay the same in amount.
Anytime a ‘stranger’ (living things or external factor such
as rise in temperature) is introduced to an ecosystem, it can be disastrous to
that ecosystem. This is because the new organism or factor can disturb the
natural balance of the interaction and potentially harm or destroy the ecosystem.
Lots of
human activities break the equilibrium in an environment or ecosystem. Like
burning forest for cropland. This means there is less environment for the
organisms in that ecosystem to grow, reducing the amount of members in the
ecosystem. And destroying the environment and its equilibrium.
In an
ecosystem there is not only one food chain. Food chains can link from one to
another, this forms a food web. It means a factor in one food chain can/is also
related to another factor in a different food chain. Like for example a grass
is eaten by rabbits and deer. The rabbit is eaten by a owl and the owl is eaten
by a fox that also eats the deer. That is two food chain linking to one
another, this makes a food web, which is a number of food chains linked together.
A huge ecosystem can hold lots of food web.
Predation
is when a predator hunts/kill its prey. Different predators prefer different
preys. Some predators just hunt for certain species. Others are more
opportunistic and will kill and eat anything. The predator which specialize on
eating certain preys are well suited to kill it. The prey in return are often
suited to escape the predator. This is called an evolution arms race, where the
prey and the predator is always evolving to counter the other. In an ecosystem
there is a hierarchy, the hierarchy can be decided by the power of the
animal/organism. How fast it is, how strong it is and many other factors. The
better you are in more factors the more power you have.
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