Ecology II: Ecosystems Flashcards
What makes an ecosystem?
Biotic and abiotic factors.
What makes up biotic factors?
Living organisms: Autotrophs and heterotrophs.
What makes up abiotic factors?
Non-living factors of ecosystem: Air temp./air humidity/soil PH/soil moisture/soil minerals/sunlight/latitude and longditude.
Order of zones?
Individual > Population > Community > Ecosystem > Biome > Biosphere.
Define ecosystem?
Large scale community of species plus their physical environment.
What defines terrestrial ecosystems?
Their dominant vegetation.
What defines aquatic ecosystems?
Depth, substrate and position in water column.
Every ecosystem needs what?
Energy flow and chemical recycling.
What are autotrophs? With examples?
Producers - Photoautotrophs(e.g flowers)/Chemoautotrophs(underwater volcanic vents)
What are heterotrophs? With examples?
Consumers - herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, decomposers.
What’s bioturbation?
Break down of biomass
How much biomass does primary production produce per year?
170 billion tonnes.
Figures for energy pathways interacting with a leaf?
Sunlight - 10096 reflected - 15% evaporation - 75% Heat - 496 Transmitted - 5% Net photosynthesis - 196
What happens during secondary production?
Energy transfer up food chain.
In secondary production what happens to 10% and 90% of the energy at one trophic level?
10% - Becomes available for next level. Other 90% - Not passed on as not all organisms are consumed/Energy used in other functions e.g production of faeces. Energy is not just used for building biomass.
How is energy lost during organism activity?
As heat.
Order of energy passage?
Producer > Primary consumer > Secondary consumer > Tertiary consumer.
What happens to energy as it’s transferred to each organism.
The amount of energy transferred to each organism decreases as each new organism eats the previous one.
What is the second law of thermodynamics?
Natural systems tend to move from organised energy states to disorganised energy states.
What are the biochemical cycles?
water carbon nitrogen (sodium, calcium, phosphorous, sulphur, chlorine, ect).
Water cycle information.
Water evaporates from land, plants and fresh water. Water is contained in standing and flowing bodies, and groundwater. Some water from precipitation gets to ground and saturates earth. Water infiltrates through rock and soil layers. Aquifiers release water to wells or springs. Aquifiers recharge when rainfall and melted snow percolate into the soil.
Phospherous cycle information.
Main resevoir of phosphate ions is in sedimentary rock. - reaches ground through rock uplifting, erosion of rocks allows ions to be absorbed and become a part of plant’s biomass.
Get into animals by predation and digestion and then excreted as waste material and taken back into ground.
When plants and animals die, decomposers break them down allowing ions to enter water or soil ions transported by water ways form sedimentary rock on beds - completes cycle.
Nitrogen cycle information.
Nitrifacation - Nitrifying bacteria convert ammonium ions to nitrate ions. 1. Ammonium ions > Nitrite ions (NO2-) 2. Nitrite ions > Nitrate ions (NO3-). (Conversion needs oxygen to happen).
Nitrogen fixation - Nitrogen gas converted to nitrogen containing compounds. This happens by lightning and free-living and mutualistic nitrogen fixing bacteria.
Denitrifaction - In kow oxygen levels anaerobic denitrifying bacteria convert soil nitrates to nitrogen gas. This reduces avaliabulity of nitrogen containing compounds for plants so soil iskept aerated to decrease build up of denitrifying bacteria allowing more crops to grow.
Carbon cycle information.
- Animals and plants respire, returning carbon to air as CO2.
- CO2 recycles to plants by way of atmosphere.
- CO2 from air combines with CO2 in water to form bicarbonate ion (HCO3-), made from CO2 of respiration of aquatic organisms.
- Amount of bicarbonate in water is equivalent amount of CO2 in air.
- Decomposition of organisms returns CO2 to atmosphere.
- More CO2 being deposited into atmosphere than removed. Fossil feuls, deforestation ect. causes this.
Whats a biome?
Large scale ecosystem characterised by its dominant vegitation. They’re ecosystems where several habitats intersect.
Factors of biomes.
- Biomes have distinct geographical distributions.
- Vegetation of a given biome has similiar appearence to each other no matter where on earth the biome is, but may not be evolutionary similiar.
- Climate influences biodiversity and habitats within a biome.
Examples of terrestrial biomes:
Desert, tundra, grassland, rainforest.
Examples of Aquatic biomes?
Freshwater: lakes and rivers
Salt water: Estuaries, oceans, salt lakes ect.
I think you should do ome more research on the cycles just because my cycles info cards i dont think have enough info on them. So yeah.
Yeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh…
What are abiotic factors that determine ecosystem characterstics and how do these influence organisms characteristics?
Latitude/ climate/ altitude and topography/ geology and soil type/ geographical isolation/ ocean currents and coriolus force.
Relate to - Succesional status, nutrient cycling and evolutionary history.
What are the main terrestrial biomes?
Tropical forest, savanna, desert, polar ice, chapparel, temperate grassland, temperature deciduous forest, coniferous forest, tundra.
What are the main aquatic biomes?
Lakes, rivers, estuaries, intertidal zones, coral reefs, oceanic Pelagic, Abyssal zones.
What are environmental features that limit aquatic ecosystems?
Light, oxygen, nutrients, water levels, temperature.
