Communities and Competition

• All organisms have relationships, such as mice with other mice, plants, predators, and the environment.
• If any one part of the ecosystem changes, it can affect all other parts, for example, if the mouse population falls, it can affect all other parts of the ecosystem.
• Habitat is the place where an organism lives, such as a field, forest, or somebody's basement.
• Population is all of the organisms of a particular species that live in that habitat.
• Community is all the populations of different species that live together in a habitat.
• Biotic factors are the living factors of the environment like the availability of food or the number of predators.
• Abiotic factors are the non-living factors of the environment like temperature and soil ph.
• Ecosystem is the interaction of a community of living organisms with the non-living parts of their environment.
• Ecology is about understanding how these ecosystems function and how they might change in the future.
• Competition is a key process in an ecosystem, as organisms need a range of different resources to survive, which are limited and need to be competed for.
• Interdependence is the idea that all species depend on other species in some way, as seen in a food web which shows the feeding relationships within a community.
• If anything happens to one species in a food web, it will affect all others, for example, if the mouse population suddenly increased, there would be less grass available for the rabbits and grasshoppers, affecting their populations.