ecology

• ecology - the study of the interaction between living things and between living things and their environment
• biosphere - part of the earth that contains living organisms
• ecosystem - group of clearly distinguished organism that interact with each other and with their environment
• habite - the place where a plant or animal lives
• population - all the members of the same species living in an area
• community - all the different populations in an area
• abiotic factors - non living things - exposure, steepness, currents
• biotic factors - living things - food, competition, predation and humans
• Climatic factors - concern the weather over a long period of time - temperature, rainfall, wind
• edaphic factors - relating to soil - soil pH, soil type, water, air and mineral content of soil
• Aquatic Factors - relate to organism living in or near water-based environments - light, currents, wave action
• food chain - a sequence of organisms where each organism is eaten by the next one in the chain
• Detritus food chain - begins with dead or composing materials
• carnivores - eats only animals
• herbivore - eats only plants
• omnivore - eats both plants and animals
• trophic level - feeding stage in a food chain
• grazing food chain - starts with a living plant
• producer - autotrophic - all grazing food chains start with one
• consumers - heterotrophic - producer is eaten by the primary consumer
• primary consumer - herbivore
• primary consumer eaten by secondary consumer - carnivores
• 90% energy loss at each transfer stage
• final consumer - top (tertiary) consumer - always carnivores
• food web - series of interlinked food chains
• a pyramid of numbers shows the number of organisms at each trophic level
• there is less energy at each trophic level
• the size of the organism increases at each trophic level
• limitations of the use of pyramid of numbers - they do not take into account the size of the organism
• niche - the functional role of an organism in an ecosystem or habitat
• factors that control population numbers - competition, predation , parasitism and symbiosis
• competition occurs when 2 or more organisms actively struggle for a resource that is in short supply
• competition can occur between members of different species (inter-specific competition) or between members of different species (intra-specific competition)
• two types of competition - contest and scramble
• content competition occurs when there is an active physical struggle between different organisms - produces one winner and one loser
• scramble competition means that all competing organisms get some of the resource
• predation is the catching, killing and eating of another organism for food
• adaptations of predators - a fox's coat can help them camouflage it
• adaptation of prey - rabbits have large hind legs allow them to run very fast
• a parasite is a living thing that takes its food from another living thing (called the host) and usually causes harm