Ecological hierarchy theory describes the arrangement of biological organisms in

relation to one another. At the simplest level of the hierarchy are individual organisms. At the
individual level, interactions with other organisms are not considered. Moving up the
hierarchy, ecologists have found more complex ways to describe the relationships between
organisms. These culminate in the biosphere, which describes the totality of all living things
on planet Earth

An individual is one organism and is also one type of organism (e.g., human, cat, moose,
palm tree, gray whale, tapeworm, or cow in our example). The type of organism is referred to
as the species.

Population Its a group of individuals that all belong to the same species. Populations are
geographically based; they live in a particular area. But the size or scale of that area can be
variable

Communities are made up of all the populations of different species in a given area. in a
given area Because once again the scale is flexible, determined by the person studying or
writing about the community.
Ecosystem not only looking at all the different populations and species in the given area, but
youre also looking at the physical environment, the non-living or abiotic conditions
(language alert: the prefix a means without and the root word bio means life, so abiotic
is literally without life or in other words, non-living), and not just what they are, but how
they impact the organisms, and in some cases how the organisms impact the physical
environment.

Biosphere represents the totality of all things on Earth, including their interactions. The
biosphere includes all ecosystems on Earth and how they interact together. By default, the
biosphere includes climate, geology, the oceans and human pollution. This level of analysis
can seem abstract, but it frequently has practical applications. Global climate change, for
example, examines how the destruction of one ecosystem -- like the Amazon rainforest -- can
lead to a loss of global climate regulation, and affect life on a part of Earth distant from the
Amazon.