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Combined Science Notes: Ecosystems

An ecosystem is a self-contained system of interdependent organisms and their physical environment. There are natural ecosystems with no human interference like rainforests, and artificial ecosystems where humans are involved such as gardens and ponds. Ecosystems have physical components like air and water, and biological components including living and dead organic matter. Organisms within an ecosystem are interconnected through food chains and webs, with energy transferring from producers like plants through various consumer levels until reaching apex predators or decomposers. The number of organisms decreases at each trophic level due to lost energy.

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155 views

Combined Science Notes: Ecosystems

An ecosystem is a self-contained system of interdependent organisms and their physical environment. There are natural ecosystems with no human interference like rainforests, and artificial ecosystems where humans are involved such as gardens and ponds. Ecosystems have physical components like air and water, and biological components including living and dead organic matter. Organisms within an ecosystem are interconnected through food chains and webs, with energy transferring from producers like plants through various consumer levels until reaching apex predators or decomposers. The number of organisms decreases at each trophic level due to lost energy.

Uploaded by

Jessy
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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COMBINED SCIENCE NOTES: ECOSYSTEMS

An ecosystem is a self-contained system of interdependent organisms and their physical


environment.

Any ecosystem is driven by energy from the sun.

There is a natural ecosystem and an artificial ecosystem.

A natural ecosystem is an ecosystem whereby there is no human interference.

Examples of natural ecosystem include rainforests.

An artificial ecosystem is an ecosystem whereby there is human interference.

Examples of artificial ecosystems include a garden, paddock, pond and forest.

There are components of an ecosystem and there are physical and biological components of an
ecosystem.

The physical components of an ecosystem include: air, water, the physical part of soil, light and heat
energy

The biological components of an ecosystem include: living organisms and dead organic matter.

Biomass is the mass of all living plant and animal matter at a particular place and time.

Biodiversity is the variation among living organisms.

The problems caused by limited biodiversity include:

soil infertility
pests
diseases

The advantages of biodiversity include:

Wide variety of food source


Self-sustenance of an ecosystem
Interdependence
Less spread of diseases

The interdependencies between organisms in ecosystems can be shown in the form of food chains,
food webs and pyramids

A food chain shows the transfer of energy from one organism to the next, beginning with a
producer.

Below is an example of a food chain:

Energy is being transferred from the grass to the locust, then the lizard and finally the hawk.

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MUKWEPA STUDY CENTRE
COMBINED SCIENCE NOTES: ECOSYSTEMS
The arrow points to the organism eating the other. The locust is eating the grass and the lizard is
eating the locust. The same can be applied to the hawk and the lizard.

The following definitions can be applied to food chains, food webs and food pyramids.

A producer is an organism that makes its own organic nutrients, usually using energy from sunlight,
through photosynthesis.

A consumer is an organism that gets its energy from feeding on other organisms.

A herbivore is an animal that gets its energy by eating plants.

A carnivore is an animal that gets its energy by eating other animals.

A decomposer is an organism that gets its energy from dead or waste organic material.

A predator is a carnivore that kills and eats other animals. A fox is a predator that preys on rabbits.

Scavengers are carnivores that eat the dead remains of animals killed by predators.

An omnivore is an animal which eats both plants and animals e.g. a human being.

The organisms at the beginning of a food chain are usually very numerous while the animals at the
end of the chain are often large and few in number. The food pyramids below show this relationship

The width of the bands in the diagram above is meant to represent the relative number of organisms
at each trophic level. So the diagrams are sometimes called pyramids of numbers. These food
pyramids can also be called pyramids of biomass whereby the widths of the bands represent the
biomass at each trophic level.

The widths of the bands on a food pyramid become small as you go up the food pyramid because
energy is lost as heat as you go up the food pyramid. The biomass at each trophic level decreases as
you go up the pyramid of miomass.

Primary consumers are animals that eat the plants are called, e.g. grasshoppers.

Secondary consumers are animals that prey on the plant-eaters are called, e.g. shrews,

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COMBINED SCIENCE NOTES: ECOSYSTEMS
Tertiary consumers are animals that eat secondary consumers, that is, animals which eat plant-
eaters e.g. weasels or kestrels

Quaternary consumers are animals that fed on tertiary consumers.

A food web is a network of interconnected food chains.

Below is an example of a food web

In a food web the arrow points the organism eating the other organism.

The producer should be located at the bottom of a food web with the consumers on top.

When drawing a food web, realistic feeding relationships must be drawn. It is not appropriate to
indicate on a food web that a lion feeds on a human being even though such a feeding relationship is
possible; showing it on a food web is wrong because the feeding relationship is unlikely. It is better
to show that a lion feeds on a zebra.

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