An ecosystem is a system in which all the living organisms interact with all the nonliving components in an environment. The interaction between the biotic and abiotic components takes place through different nutrient cycles and energy flows. Ecosystems are affected by different internal factors like decomposition, evolution, shading, etc., and external factors like climate and the topography of an environment.
The main energy in an ecosystem is entered through the process of photosynthesis. The plants are then consumed by animals, which help in the decomposition of the organic matter and help out the nutrient cycles which convert nutrients into biomass that are used by the plants and other microbes.
Different Levels of an Ecosystem
The study that deals with abiotic and biotic components, their interactions, and different energy flows and nutrient cycles between them are known as ecology. The ecosystems can be studied at an exceedingly small scale and also on a very large scale. To make things easy, there exist levels of organisation of these ecosystems. These are known as the levels of ecological organisation that goes from the smallest level to the largest level- species, population, community, ecosystem, biomes, and biosphere.
In level one, a group of individuals are genetically related to each other and can breed to produce offspring of their kind. This group of individuals is known as species. If an individual cannot produce an offspring that is genetically related to each other, that means, the individual does not belong to the same species, in biology, the latter or second part of any living organism’s name is its species name like for us Homo Sapiens, Sapiens is our species name.
Organisms that belong to the same species may group and interact with each other in the same environment. Groups of the same species in an environment, in biological terms, are known as population, like the sapiens living together to form the human population in a place.
Community is understood as the total population of living organisms, including groups of different species and not just the same. It accounts for the interaction between groups of living organisms belonging to different species groups in the same environment.
This level is a system where all biotic (living component) factors in an environment interact with abiotic (non-living components) factors. In other words, all populations interact with abiotic components of the same environment. This level of ecological organisation is known as an ecosystem.
Biome is a biological word to denote a larger habitat. It is a much larger community of plants and animals of a distinct region. Flora and fauna of this distinct region complement each other and grow in a similar condition. A very fine example of one of the biomes in the world is the desert biome. In this biome, animals like camels and plants like cactus live and grow under the same hot and dry conditions.
Biosphere, also known as the ecosphere, is the largest level of ecological organization. It is used to describe the layer of earth sustaining life. It, in other words, is the total of various ecosystems together. It is the total part of the earth that sustains life and has the required conditions to breed life as well. It is this biosphere that is further divided into the atmosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere.
The Difference Between Species and Population
Species is a smaller scale of organization of individuals that are genetically similar or related to each other while the population is a larger scale of organization of groups of similar species.
The Difference Between Population and Community
Organisms that belong to the same species, form groups, and interact together in the same environment make the level of the population, whereas the total living population is in an environment in the community. The main population and community differences between the two are that the former has groups of the same species, while the latter has groups of different species, too, making it larger than the former.
All the living beings that belong to the same species are together called “Population”. For example, all the human beings belong to the species homo sapiens and they are considered to be the population of human beings which we measure through the census once every ten years. Community indicates different organisms living in a place and interacting with each other in an environment. To know more about the concepts related to ecosystem, species, environment and other concepts of biology, keep visiting .