ECOSYSTEMS Biome – large community of plants and animals

in a region that is more or less uniformly

Ecosystem – community of different kinds of
affected by the same prevailing climate
organisms that live together in a particular
environment - Include tropical rain forests in the
Philippines, savannas in Australia and
Environment – immediate surroundings of an
prairies in North America
organism and all the things in it
Biosphere – all forms of life on Earth
- Includes not only living things but also
nonliving things such as light, water, air ECOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIPS
and soil
Most common relationship  feeding
- Everything around us makes up the
environment Symbiotic Relationships
Ecology - study of ecosystems Symbiosis – Greek term  living together
Ecologists – the ones who study the relationship - Close relationship between two
of living things and their environment organisms in which one organism lives
near or even inside another organism
ECOSYSTEM - Includes 2 components : biotic
and in which at least one organism
and abiotic
benefits
Biotic – all living organisms in the
Commensalism – symbiotic relationship in
environment
which only one organism in the partnership
Abiotic – non-living factors of the
benefits while the other is neither harmed nor
environment like water, soil, climate,
benefitted.
HABITAT - Place where the living thing lives and
Examples:
grows naturally
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/10-
NICHE - Function of an organism or a population examples-of-commensalism-in-nature.html

- Describes the organism’s overall way of - Orchids growing on branches of trees

life - Livestock and cattle egrets
- Sharks and remora fish
LEVELS OF ECOLOGICAL HIERARCHY
- Beetles and pseudoscorpions
Organism  Population  Community - Milkweed and monarch butterfly
Ecosystem  Biome  Biosphere - Birds and army ants
- Burdock seeds on animals (seed
Organism – an individual living thing of any kind dispersal)
Population – organisms of one kind that live - Whales and barnacles
together in an area - Sea cucumbers and emperor shrimp
- Caribou and arctic fox
Community – different populations that live in a
particular area

Ecosystem – communities that interact with

abiotic components
Mutualism – kind of symbiotic relationship that - Occurs when food, water, shelter and
benefits both organisms other resources in the environment are
limited and when organisms have the
https://philnews.ph/2019/08/01/mutualistic-
same need for these resources
relationships-ten-examples-of-mutualism/
- Affects the size of a population
Examples:
Examples:
- Digestive bacteria and humans
- Woodpeckers and squirrels fighting for
- Sea anemones and clownfish
nesting rights
- Oxpecker avian and zebras or rhinos
- Lions and cheetah fighting over an
- Flowers and bees
antelope
- Spider crab and algae
- Catfish and tilapia feeding on algae
- Humans and plants
- Cow and goat fighting over grass
- Protozoa and termites
- Yucca moth and yucca plant Predation – when an organism eats another
- Dogs and humans organism
- Nitrogen-fixing bacteria and legumes
- Helps control the size of the prey
- Ants and aphids
population and avoid crowding out
Parasitism – symbiotic relationship in which one other organisms
organism benefits and the other is harmed. - Important part in shaping the structure
of a community
- Parasite : the one that benefits
- Maintains diversity in an ecosystem
- Host : the one that is harmed
Predator – organism that kills and eats
Examples:
the other organism
- Mosquitoes and humans
Prey- organism that is killed and eaten
- Lice and humans
- Ticks and dogs Examples:
- Whipworm and humans
- Leopard hunting a deer
- Roundworms and dogs
- Dolphins eating fish
- Tapeworms and cow
- Orca whales hunting seals, sharks and
- Fleas and dogs
penguins
- Hookworms and child
- Coyotes eating rabbits
- Caterpillar eating leaves
- Octopi eating fish
- Grasshopper eating leaves
- Ladybugs feeding on aphids
Non-Symbiotic relationships - Fire ants eating earthworms
- Penguins catching fish
Competition – type of relationship in which a
- Owls killing rats
population of organisms struggles against other
- Eagles eating rabbits
populations for basic resources in order to meet
their basic needs to live and survive

- Occurs because the ecosystem cannot

satisfy the needs of all organisms
ENERGY FLOW IN THE ECOSYSTEM  Decomposers-
produce
In the ecosystem, energy flows from one living
chemicals that
thing to another in several steps.
digest
Food Chain decomposing
materials
- Represents the feeding relationships in externally
an ecosystem (microscopic
- Shows how organisms within an bacteria and
ecosystem get their food and energy fungi) 
- A way of describing “which eats what” digested
in an ecosystem materials end
First link Producer up as chemicals
 Any living thing that (carbon
makes its own food and dioxide)
releases oxygen
 Green plants or Second link Herbivores (first
autotrophs order consumers)
 Green pigment called
Third link  Carnivores (second
chlorophyll
order consumers)
 Can convert the Sun’s
energy into food
through a process
Terrestrial food chain
called photosynthesis
Tree  caterpillar  bird
Consumer
catmushroom
 Living things that
depend directly or
indirectly on producers Marine food chain
for food
 Organisms that cannot phytoplankton zooplankton 
make their own food copepod herringtuna shark
 Known by what they
eat
 Herbivores – Food web
feed only on - Interconnected food chains in an
plants ecosystem
 Carnivores – - Shows a more complete picture of the
feed only on energy flow in a community
meat
 Omnivores –
feed on both
plants and
animals
ENERGY PYRAMID Respiration:

- Represents the energy flow in an Sugar + oxygen  carbon dioxide + water+

ecosystem energy
- Describes the relationships between
Respiration:
producers and consumers at different
feeding stages or trophic levels in an Inhale oxygen => exhale carbon dioxide as
ecosystem waste gas
Biomass – total mass of organic matter at each Green plants use carbon dioxide during
trophic level photosynthesis. Plants break down water
molecules into hydrogen and oxygen atoms.
- At each trophic level  contains stored
Oxygen escapes from plants  making oxygen
energy and potential food for the
available for humans and animals. The
organisms in the next higher trophic
exchange between animals and plants is the key
level
to the oxygen and carbon dioxide cycle.
**Both matter and energy are
transferred when organisms eat

Base of the energy pyramid  producers

Energy available at each levels is about 90% less

than the energy at the level below.

The number of organisms at each trophic level

is directly related to the amount of biomass and
energy at each level. Biomass and energy
determine the number of organisms a
community can support. As the amount of
biomass and energy available to a community
decreases, the number of the organisms in the
community also decreases.

Material cycling

Other things that organisms need to survive:

1) Oxygen – second most abundant gas in the

atmosphere

Photosynthesis: Plants use energy from the sun

to produce sugar and oxygen from carbon
dioxide and water

Carbon dioxide+water+energy  Sugar

+oxygen