ECOSYSTEM

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 ECOSYSTEM

Various kinds of life support in systems like the forests, grasslands,oceans, lakes, rivers, mountains,deserts, and estuaries so wide variation in their structural composition and functions. However, they all are alike in the fact that they consists of living entities interacting with their surroundings exchanging matter and how do these different units like a hot desert, a dense evergreen forest, the Antarctic sea or a shallow pond differ in the type of their flora and fauna, how do they derive there energy and nutrients to live together, how do they influence each other and regulates their established are the questions that are answerd by ecology.
                The term ecology was coined by Earnest Haeckel in 1869. It is derived from the Greek word OIKOS- home+logos-study. So ecology deals with the study of organisms in their natural home interacting with their surroundings. The surroundings or environment consists of other living organisms called biotic components and physical factor called abiotic components.
         For example, how a small insect in a forest interact with other animals, plants, soil, air or water is studied in its ecology. Thurs ecology is the science that studies such interaction and relationships of an organisms or a group of organisms.
    Modern ecologist believe that an adequate definition of ecology must specify some unit of study and one such basic unit describe by Tansley(1935) was ecosystem. An ecosystem is a self regulating group of biotic community of species interacted with one another and with their nonliving environment exchange energy and matter. Now ecology is often defined as" the study of ecosystem". 
 
Some key concepts of ecosystem are:
  • An ecosystem is an integrated unit consisting of interacting plants, animals, and microorganism whose survival depends upon the maintenance and regulation of their biotic and abiotic structures and functions.
  • The ecosystem is a unit or a system which is composed of a number of sub units that are all directly or indirectly linked with each other.
  • They may be freely exchanging energy and matter from outside—an open ecosystem or maybe isolated from outside—a close ecosystem.
  • Life on the earth is sustained by the flow of energy from the sun and cycling of nutrients through the ecosystems.
  • Energy flow and nutrients cycling through ecosystem are getting altered by human activities.

 CHARACTERISTICS OF AN ECOSYSTEM

Ecosystems show large variation in their size, structure, composition etc. However, all the ecosystems are characterized by certain basic structural and functional features which are common to all.

STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF ECOSYSTEM 

An ecosystem structure include both biological (biotic) and nonliving ( abiotic) component.

BIOTIC COMPONENTS 

Life in an ecosystem is nutritionally structured.
The plants, animals and microorganisms present in an ecosystem form the biotic component. These organisms have different nutritional behaviour and status in the ecosystem and are accordingly known as Producers or Consumers, based on how do they get their food.
  1. PRODUCERS:- They are mainly the green plants which can synthesize their food themselves by making use of carbon dioxide present in the year and water in the presence of sunlight by involving chlorophyll, the green pigment present in the leaves, through the process of Photosynthesis. They are also known as photo autotrophs ( auto= self, troph= food, photo= light) . There are some microorganisms also which can produce organic matter to some extent through oxidation of certain chemicals in the absence of sunlight they are known as chemosynthetic organisms or chemo- autotrophs. For instance in the oceans depth where there is no sunlight, chemoautotrophic sulphur bacteria make use of the heat generated by the decay of radioactive elements present in the earth's core and released in oceans depths. They use this heat to convert dissolved hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide into organic compounds.
  2. CONSUMERS:- all organisms which get their organic food by feeding upon other organisms are called consumers which are of the following type:
  • Herbivores
  • Carnivorous
  • Omnivorous
  • Dertrivores

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