ECOSYSTEM

The branch of biology which deals with the  study of inter-relationship amonisms and interactions between animals and their enviriments is called ecosystem. An ecosystem is all the living and nonliving things in a certain area. All the plants and animals, even the microorganisms that live in the soil, are living parts of an ecosystem. Air, water, and rocks are nonliving parts of an ecosystem.Ecosystems are smaller parts of all the living environments on Earth. Earth’s entire living environment is called the biosphere. The biosphere is made up of large areas called biomes. Land biomes include grasslands, deserts, coniferous forests (forests of cone-bearing trees), deciduous forests (forests of trees that shed their leaves), and tropical rain forests. There are also biomes in bodies of water, such as the ocean.


The biomes, in turn, are made up of many ecosystems. The desert biome, for example, covers all the deserts of the world. Each individual desert is an ecosystem. The Mojave Desert in California is a desert ecosystem.

Some ecosystems are huge, and some are small. A tropical rain forest ecosystem might cover hundreds of square miles. A mangrove swamp ecosystem might stretch only a few miles along the shore of an island.A place can have more than one ecosystem. A rain forest and a mangrove swamp could be on the same island. A coral reef ecosystem might be in the water around the island.

What is echosystem works : The living portion of an ecosystem is best described in terms of feeding levels known as trophic levels. Green plants make up the first trophic level and are known as primary producers. Plants are able to convert energy from the sun into food in a process known as photosynthesis. In the second trophic level, the primary consumers—known as herbivores—are animals and insects that obtain their energy solely by eating the green plants. The third trophic level is composed of the secondary consumers, flesh-eating or carnivorous animals that feed on herbivores. At the fourth level are the tertiary consumers, carnivores that feed on other carnivores. Finally, the fifth trophic level consists of the decomposers, organisms such as fungi and bacteria that break down dead or dying matter into nutrients that can be used again.

Some or all of these trophic levels combine to form what is known as a food web, the ecosystem’s mechanism for circulating and recycling energy and materials. For example, in an aquatic ecosystem algae and other aquatic plants use sunlight to produce energy in the form of carbohydrates. Primary consumers such as insects and small fish may feed on some of this plant matter, and are in turn eaten by secondary consumers, such as salmon. A brown bear may play the role of the tertiary consumer by catching and eating salmon. Bacteria and fungi may then feed upon and decompose the salmon carcass left behind by the bear, enabling the valuable nonliving components of the ecosystem, such as chemical nutrients, to leach back into the soil and water, where they can be absorbed by the roots of plants. In this way nutrients and the energy that green plants derive from sunlight are efficiently transferred and recycled throughout the ecosystem.

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