competition and interdependence

The habitat —>is the environment in which an organism lives

Population—> Is the total number of organisms of the same species living in the same geographical area.

Community —> the populations of all of the different species that live in the same habitat. This is called the biotic part of the environment.

Non living parts of an environment are called the abiotic parts. These include the amount of water and the minerals in the soil.

Ecosystem—> is both the biotic and the abiotic parts of an environment and how they interact.

Living organisms require a supply of materials from their surroundings for e.g water.

They also get materials from other living organism e.g zebras, giraffes and gazelles get materials from the plants that they eat.

Problem is these resources are often in short supply, so the living organisms have to compete with each other.

The resources that organisms compete for-

Plants compete with each other for light and space. Also water and for mineral ions in the soil.

Animals compete with each other for food and water for mating partners and for territory.

Interdependence—> all of the different species in a community depend on each other. Every animal depends on living organisms for food.

Some living organisms provide shelter e.g tree shelters animals from the sun.

Plants can also depend on animals e.g many plants depend on bees to spread their pollen.

Or birds which can disperse seeds in their faeces.

If a species disappears from a community this can affect the whole community. E.g without bees lots of different plants would not be pollinated and would be unable to reproduce. And animals which feeds on these plants would then run out of food and their populations would fall.

In a stable community the populations of organisms are in balance with each other, the populations of the different species remain fairly constant. and with the abiotic resources e.g water.