Ecology

Balanced Ecosystem

A self-sustaining environment with constant energy, more producers than consumers, a complex food web, and uninterrupted nutrient cycles.

Symbiotic Relationships

Close interactions between different species leading to co-evolution, including prey-predator relationships controlling population sizes.

Mutualism

A symbiotic relationship benefiting both organisms involved (+,+).

Parasitism

A symbiotic relationship where the parasite benefits and the host is harmed (+,-).

Commensalism

A symbiotic relationship where one organism benefits while the other is neither benefited nor harmed (+).

Nutrient Cycles

Processes involving the transformation and circulation of key elements like carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, hydrogen, and oxygen in ecosystems.

Habitat vs

Habitat is the physical space where an organism lives, while niche refers to the role and interactions of a species in an ecosystem.

Resources

Essential elements for species survival, which can be renewable (cycle) or nonrenewable (soil).

Competition

Drives resource division among species, shaping their niches and interactions.

Competitive Exclusion

When less competitive species fail to survive due to resource competition, often seen with invasive species.

Keystone Species

Species crucial for maintaining community structure in an ecosystem.

Variables Affecting Population Growth

Factors like resources, food, space, water, diseases, natural disasters, climate change, relationships, and human activities influencing population dynamics.

Human Population Growth Effects on Ecosystem

Impact includes pollution, deforestation, loss of habitats, man-made disasters, and diseases.

Abiotic factors

• water

• air composition

• sunlight

• natural disasters (fires)

• minerals

• climate

Biotic Factors

• competition

  • resources

  • habitats

• reproduction

• feeding relationships

  • autotrophs

  • heterotrophs (prey - predator)

• symbiotic relationships

Ecology

The study of the environment/ecosystems and how living things (biotic) interact with each other and non-living things (abiotic)

Biosphere

All the living on the planet

Ecosystem

Can be as large as a biome or as small as a pond or garden

Characteristics of a balanced ecosystem:

• Has a constant source of energy

• More producers than consumers

• A complex food web (Biodiversity)

• Nutrient cycles flow uninterrupted. Main cycles include:

  • carbon

  • nitrogen

  • water

  • phosphorus

• (Cycle flow depends on decomposers and energy flow)

Environment

All the external factors affecting an organism, its surrounding; can be living or non living (physical)

Populations

Number of organisms of the same species in a given environment.

Community

All the different populations that live in an area.

Niche

The job of a population in an ecosystem it includes all activities of the organism.

Organisms in temperate deciduous forest

Ant, spiders, robins, raccoons, slugs, deer, turtle, frogs, possums, caterpillars, worms, squirrel, dogs, bats, eagle, cats, salamanders, beetles, grass, flowering plants, trees, bacteria, worms, fungi, dogs, cats, birch Tree, pine tree, Fish, Frogs, deer, hawks, ants, raccoons, bunnies, squirrel, bees, fox, humans, caterpillars, grasshoppers, worms, bacteria, mosquitoes, algae.

Food chain

Series of steps in which an organism transfers energy in an ecosystem.

Food web

A network of feeding interactions (Complex). The arrow shows the direction in which energy flows.

Pray predator relationship

A relationship in which one organism gets killed (prey) by the other (predator)