Topic 7 - Ecology

• 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 could mean that predators have less food and soil quality decreases.
• 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, including mice, owls, plants, and other organisms.
• 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, such as space, food, water, and mates.
• 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 the others, for example, if the mouse population suddenly increased, there would be less grass available for the rabbits and grasshoppers, affecting their populations.
• Biotic factors are living factors that affect another organism or shape the ecosystem in some way.
• Abiotic factors are all of the non-living parts of the environment that can affect organisms.
• Biotic factors can include predation, competition for resources or habitat, the amount of disease, and the availability of food.
• Abiotic factors include chemical or physical parts of the environment such as light intensity, temperature, carbon dioxide concentrations, moisture levels, the intensity and direction of the wind, and the pH and mineral content of the soil.
• An increase in temperature can increase the rate of photosynthesis because the enzymes involved can work faster, resulting in an increase in the overall rate of plant growth.
• An increase in temperature can also mean that animals have to spend less energy staying warm, allowing them to use more energy for growth or spend less time searching for food.
• Biotic factors affecting a clownfish can include predation by bigger fish or eels, the sea anemone itself which acts as the clownfish's habitat, competition for that habitat, and competition for the plankton and the algae that the clownfish eat.
• Abiotic factors affecting a clownfish can include the temperature of the water which might change throughout the day or throughout the year, the oxygen concentration of the water, and the levels of acidity and salt in the water.
• Abiotic factors like light intensity and carbon dioxide concentration might not affect the clownfish directly, but they might affect other species around them like the sea anemone which will in turn affect the clownfish.
• Any organism must be adapted to its environment to survive, with examples including polar bears having thick fur to withstand cold and owls having big eyes to see in the dark.
• Adaptations can be categorized into structural, behavioral, and functional groups.
• Structural adaptations are the physical features of an organism, such as its shape or color.
• Behavioral adaptations are the ways an organism behaves or acts, such as the flapping of elephant ears to cool down or swallows migrating to warmer countries during the winter.
• Functional adaptations are the processes going on inside an organism's body, such as their metabolism or reproductive system.
• Desert animals conserve water by producing very little sweat and only small amounts of concentrated urine.
• Camels accumulate lots of fat in their humps which they can then break down later to release water.
• The brown bear, also known as ursus actos, is found across the northern latitudes of America and Eurasia and has a diverse and variable diet including plants, fungi, fish, invertebrates, and mammals like deer.
• The brown bear is adapted to live in its environment by having thick fur, a diverse and variable diet, and the ability to hibernate.
• Extremophiles are a group of microorganisms like bacteria or archaea that are adapted to live in extreme environments such as hot springs, salt lakes, and deep sea vents.
• Energy passes through an ecosystem using food chains and predator prey cycles.
• Food chains show what gets eaten by what in an ecosystem and are a simplified version of a food web because they don't show all of the interactions.
• A food chain starts with a producer which is some kind of photosynthetic organism like a green plant or alga.
• Photosynthetic means that the organism can produce glucose by photosynthesis, using the sun's energy to make biological molecules.
• The next step in the chain are the primary consumers which eat the producers.
• There must be some type of predator in a food chain, in this case it would probably be something like an owl.
• As the energy gets passed up the different levels in a food chain, most of it gets lost.
• The idea that organisms all interact and influence each other is a key concept in ecology.
• A predator prey cycle is a graph that shows how the population of field mice, a type of prey, and owls, a type of predator, vary together over time.