Biotic and Abiotic Components

  • Biotic elements include all microorganisms, plants, animals on, above or under the earth

  • All life exists in the biosphere

  • Biodiversity: variety of organisms in an ecosystem-indicates the health of the ecosystem

Biosphere cannot survive without elements from other spheres

  • Plants and animals need water from hydrosphere

  • Minerals from the lithosphere

  • Need gases from the atmosphere

  • All living things depend on non living things for energy, water and space

  • living things use nutrients and decomposers recycle nutrients into inorganic material that goes back into soil

The environment

  • Contains all the factors that surround and influence the biotic and abiotic things within

  • Each living thing interacts and inhabits with its surroundings constantly

Ecosystem

  • Smaller than the biosphere

  • Interaction between living and nonliving events

  • A community functioning together as one unit

  • Abiotic components of an ecosystem support the life functions of the biotic components of an ecosystem

Biotic and Abiotic parts of the Environment

  • Biotic parts: living parts of an environment

  • Abiotic parts: non living parts of an environment

  • Biotic and abiotic parts of the environment are connected through the ways in which they interact with one another

  • Abiotic environment includes: climate, weather, nutrients, water, air, pH, Salinity, Soil, Sunlight

Biotic and Abiotic interactions

  • Organisms within communities constantly interacts with its surroundings to obtain what it needs such as food, water, sunlight or habitat

  • Three key points

    • Every organism has a special role in its ecosystem

    • Natural processes move matter inc cycles between biotic and abiotic parts

    • Nothing exists independently

  • Abiotic components (oxygen, water, nutrients, light, soil) interacts with biotic components like (plants, animals, microorganisms)

  • Abiotic components that biotic components depend on:

    • Oxygen for cellular respiration

    • Water for survival

    • Nutrients for plant and animal growth (nitrogen, phosphorus)

    • Light for photosynthesis

    • Soil to anchor plants, hold water, supports small organisms, or provides nutrients

Food chain:

  • A model that describes how food energy is passed from one living being to another

  • Energy flows from primary producers (plants) to primary consumers (herbivores) to secondary and tertiary consumers (carnivores)

  • Each step in a food chain is called a trophic level

  • Energy from food is passed on

Energy Pyrmaids

  • Model how energy is lost at each trophic level of a food chain-food energy is lost to obtain food/digest food, repair tissues, move, heat, etc.

  • Only 10% of food energy can be passed from consumer to consumer

  • Population size decreases because there is less energy available at higher levels

Producers:

  • Living things that make their own food to get energy they need to live

  • Usually through photosynthesis by plants and single celled organisms

Decomposition:

  • Ex. Bacteria and Fungi

  • Break down dead organic material to get energy

  • Return nutrients back into the soil

  • Without them nutrients would be locked away forever in dead bodies

Food Web:

  • Essentially multiple food chains all connected together

  • A model of feeding relationships that shows a network of interacting and overlapping food chains

  • A change in the number of one organism could affect several food chains in the food web

  • All organisms are connected and depend on each other for survival

Limits to food chains:

  • Energy keeps getting lost

  • Most energy is lost as unusable heat

  • Some energy already used for life functions (cellular respiration)

  • Some stored in waste products

  • Result: less and less energy available at each level

Consumers:

  • Living things that eat producers or other consumers to get energy they need

    • Herbivores-primary consumers that eat plants

    • Carnivores-secondary consumers that eat primary consumers

    • Omnivores-eat both plants and animals-interconnect food chains to form food web

    • Detrivores-eat bodies of small dead organisms/plant matter, and animal wastes

Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration:

  • Balance each other

  • Makes the materials that the other process needs to store or release energy

  • Photosynthesis

    • Series of chemical changes where green plants capture sunlight and convert it into chemical energy stored in food compounds like sugars

    • Who uses it: Green plants and some single celled organisms

    • Needs: CO2, Water, light energy from the sun

    • Produces: Glucose, Oxygen

    • Transforms the sun’s energy into a useable form for living things and produces the oxygen that most life on Earth needs to survive

  • Cellular Respiration

    • A series of chemical changes where living things release the energy stored in glucose to fuel all life functions

    • Who uses it: Nearly all living things on earth

    • How energy changes: Chemical energy is converted into kinetic energy and heat

    • Inputs: Glucose, Oxygen

    • Outputs: CO2, Water, Useable energy

    • Releases the energy cells need to survive, and produces the Co2 that plants need to carry out photosynthesis