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5 Ecosystems
5 Ecosystems
Organs
Tissue
s
Ecosyste
m
Organ
System
Atoms
Cells
Communities
Organis
m
Molecules
Protoplasm
Populatio
ns
Temperature, which
should not exceed
certain extremes, even
if tolerance to heat is
significant for some
species
Decomposers
Important facts
A node represents an individual species, or a group of
related
species or different stages of a single species.
A link connects two nodes. Arrows represent links, and
always go from prey to predator.
The lowest tropic level are called basal species.
The highest tropic level are called top predators.
Movement of nutrients is cyclic but of energy is
unidirectional and non-cyclic.
FLOW WEBS
INTERACTION
WEB
Food web in
forest
Grassland Food
Web
Volcano eruptions
Pollution
Artificial fires
Examples of ecosystem
change
The extirpation of wolves in Yellowstone National Park led to over-browsing of
aspen and willows by elk, and restoration of wolves has allowed the vegetation to
recover.
The reduction of lions and leopards in parts of Africa has led to population
outbreaks and changes in behavior of olive baboons, increasing their contact
with people and causing higher rates of intestinal parasites in both people and
baboons.
The decimation of sharks in an estuarine ecosystem caused an outbreak of cownosed rays and the collapse of shellfish populations.
Ecological Succession
The gradual process of change in an
ecosystem is called ecological succession.
There are two types of ecological
succession.
Primary succession is
succession that happens
where an ecosystem was
not present before. Another
example is an ecosystem
that develops in a very
rocky area or on a sand
dune.
Secondary succession is
another type of
ecological succession.
Secondary succession
occurs where an
ecosystem has
previously existed. For
example, secondary
succession occurs when
a lake ecosystem
gradually fills in and
grows into a forest.
Secondary succession
also happens in
ecosystems that have
been disrupted by
humans or by natural
disasters. Land
development can cause
secondary succession.
So can natural disasters
such as earthquakes,
volcanoes, and fires.
Ecosystem stability
Factors affecting
stability:
Disturbance frequency and intensity (how often and
what kind of tillage)
Species diversity (intercropping or rotations),
interactions (competition for water and nutrients from
weed species), and life history strategies (do the
species grow fast and produce many seeds or slow
with few seeds)
Tropic complexity (how many functions are
represented), redundancy (how
many populations perform each function), food web
structure (how do all of these groups interact)
Rate of nutrient or energy flux (how fast are nutrients
and energy moving in and out of the system or
input:output efficiency)
Conclusion
The ecosystem change can either recover from a disturbance or not. Its easier
to recover from a natural disturbances than man made disturbances
In other words, stability can apply to the number of species in an area or the
number of functions performed.