COMMUNITY AND

ECOSYSTEM
DYNAMICS
 OBJECTIVE
At the end of the chapter, students should be
able to: S
1. Describe the major terrestrial biomes and
the types of plants and animals occurring there.
2. Relate the effect of increasing altitude as
one goes up a mountain to biome changes
seen as one moves north of the equator
toward the Polar Regions.
3. Distinguish the different regions within the
marine ecosystems.
4. React on the identified environmental news
or issues.
Community Defined
A community is the set of all populations
that inhabit a certain area. Communities can
have different sizes and boundaries.

An ecosystem is a higher level

of organization than the
community plus its physical
environment. Ecosystems
include both the biological and
physical components affecting
the community/ecosystem.
Community Structure
Ecologists find that within a community many
populations are not randomly distributed. This
recognition that there was a pattern and process
of spatial distribution of species was a major
accomplishment of ecology.

Two of the most important community

patterns:

a) Open community structure; and

b) Relative rarity of species/Closed
Community
Do species within a community have similar
geographic range and density peaks? If they
do, the community is said to be a closed
community, a discrete unit with sharp
boundaries known as ecotones. An open
community, however, has its populations
without ecotones and distributed more or less
randomly.
 Classification of Communities
There are two basic categories of communities:

• terrestrial (land); and

• aquatic (water)

These two basic types of community contain smaller

units known as biomes.

A biome is a large-scale category containing many

communities of a similar nature, whose distribution is
largely controlled by climate
TERRESTRIAL
BIOME
TUNDRA
• occupy the most extreme environments,
with little of no moisture and extremes of
temperature acting as harsh selective
agents on organisms that occupy these
areas.

• have the fewest

numbers of
species due to
the stringent
environmental
conditions
TROPICAL RAIN
FOREST
• Occur in regions near the equator. The
climate is always warm (between 20° and
25° C) with plenty of rainfall (at least 190
cm/year).

• The rain forest is probably the richest

biome, both in diversity and in total
biomass.

• While diversity is
high, dominance by a
particular species is
low.
Lichen Termite

Epiphyte
• Encroachment and destruction of habitat
put all these animals and plants at risk.

• Some tropical forests are seasonal and have

trees that shed leaves in dry season. The
warm, moist climate supports high productivity
as well as rapid decomposition of detritus.

• Soils in tropical rain forests tend to have very

little organic matter since most of the organic
carbon is tied up in the standing biomass of the
plants. These tropical soils, termed laterites,
make poor agricultural soils after the forest has
been cleared.
SHRUBLAN
D
The shrubland biome is dominated by
shrubs with small but thick evergreen
leaves that are often coated with a thick,
waxy cuticle, and with thick underground
stems that survive the dry summers and
frequent fires.
GRASSLAND
Grasslands occur in temperate and
tropical areas with reduced rainfall (10-30
inches per year) or prolonged dry seasons.

Soils in this
region are deep
and rich and are
excellent for
agriculture.
 Natural grasslands once covered over 40
percent of the earth's land surface in temperate
areas where rainfall is between 10 and 30
inches a year, grassland is the climax
community because it is too wet for desert and
too dry for forests.

Grasses are the dominant plants,

while grazing and burrowing species are
the dominant animals.
DESERT
• Characterized by dry conditions and a wide
temperature range. The dry air leads to wide daily
temperature fluctuations from freezing at night to
over 120 degrees during the day.
• Plants in this biome have developed a series of
adaptations (such as succulent stems, and small,
spiny, or absent leaves) to conserve water and deal
with these temperature extremes.
AQUATIC BIOME
Marine and Freshwater Communities
MARINE BIOME
The marine biome contains more
dissolved minerals than the freshwater
biome. Over 70% of the Earth's surface is
covered in water, by far the vast majority of
that being saltwater.

There are two basic categories to this

biome: benthic and pelagic
Pelagic Community
 Benthic communities (bottom
dwellers) are subdivided by depth: the
shore/shelf and I deep sea. Pelagic
communities (swimmers or floaters
suspended in the water column)
include planktonic (floating) and
nektonic (swimming) organisms. The
upper 200 meters of the water column is
the euphotic zone to which light can
penetrate.
Nektonic Organisms Planktonic Organisms
Coastal Communities
• Estuaries are bays where rivers empty into
the sea.
• Have high production for organisms that can
tolerate changing salinity
• Are called "nurseries of the sea".
Seashores
Coral Reefs
Areas of biological abundance in shallow, warm
tropical waters. Stony corals have calcium
carbonate exoskeleton and may include algae.
Most form colonies, may associate with
zooxanthellae dinoflagellates. Reef is densely
populated with animal life.
 Ocean

• Oceans cover about three-quarters of the

Earth's surface.

• Oceanic organisms are placed in either

pelagic (open water) or benthic (ocean floor)
categories.

• Pelagic division is divided into neritic and

three levels of pelagic provinces.
 Neritic province has greater concentration of
organisms because sunlight penetrates; nutrients
are found here.
1. Epipelagic zone is brightly lit, has much
photosynthetic phytoplankton that support
zooplankton that are food bright for fish, squid,
dolphins, and whales.
2. Mesopelagic zone is semi-dark and contains
carnivores; adapted organisms tend to be translucent,
red colored, or luminescent.

5. The bathypelagic zone is completely dark and

largest in it has strange-looking fish.
Freshwater Biome
Running and Standing Waters
 • Larger bodies of freshwater are less prone
to stratification (where oxygen decreases
with depth).

• The upper layers have abundant oxygen,

the lowermost layers are oxygen-poor.

• Mixing between upper and lower layers in

a pond or lake occurs during seasonal
changes known as spring and fall overturn.
 The littoral zone is closest to
shore. The limnetic zone is the sunlit
body of the lake. Below the level of
sunlight penetration is the dark
profundal zone. At the soil-water
interface we find the benthic zone.
Community
Density and
Stability
 Communities are made up of species
adapted to the conditions of that community.

Diversity and stability help define a

community and are important in
environmental studies.

Species diversity decreases as we move

away from the tropics(latitudinal diversity
gradient). Species diversity is a measure of
the different types of organisms in a
community ( species richness).
 Environmental stability is greater in
tropical areas, where a relatively
stable/constant environment allows more
different kinds of species to thrive.
The depth diversity gradient is found in
aquatic communities.

Community stability refers to the ability

of communities to remain unchanged over
time.
 Change in
Communities Over
Time
 Biological communities, like the
organisms that comprise them, can and do
change over time.

Ecological time Geological time

- focuses on - focuses on
community events lasting
events that thousands of
occur over years or more.
decades or
centuries.
 Community succession is the
sequential replacement of species by
immigration of new species and local
extinction of older ones following a
disturbance that creates unoccupied
habitats for colonization. The initial rapid
colonizer species are the pioneer
community.
Eventually a climax community of more or
less stable but slower growing species
eventually develops.
 PRIMARY SUCCESSION

- Begins with bare rock and takes

a very long time to occur.
Weathering by wind and rain plus
the actions of pioneer species such
as lichens and mosses begin the
buildup of soil.
 SECONDARY SUCCESSION

- occurs when an environment has

been disturbed, such as by fire,
geological activity, or human
intervention
Disturbance of
a Community
 Agriculture is a purposeful
The basic effect human intervention in which
of human activity we create a monoculture of a
on communities single favored (crop) species
is community such as corn. Most of the
simplification, an agricultural species are derived
overall reduction from pioneering communities.
of species
diversity.
 Inadvertent human intervention
can simplify communities and
produce stressed communities that
have fewer species as well as a
superabundance of some species,
Disturbances favor early
successional (pioneer) species that
can grow and reproduce rapidly.
Ecosystems and
Communities
 Ecosystems include both living and nonliving
components.
• BIOTIC
components include habitats and niches
occupied by organisms

• ABIOTIC
components include soil, water, light, inorganic
nutrients, and weather
• HABITAT
organism's place of residence orwhere it can be
found
• NICHE
often viewed as the role of that organism in the
community, factors limiting its life, and how it
acquires food
 Producers, a major niche in all
ecosystems, are autotrophic—usually
photosynthetic organisms. In terrestrial
ecosystems, producers are usually green
plants. Freshwater and marine
ecosystems frequently have algae as the
dominant producers.
 Consumers are heterotrophic
organisms that eat food produced by
another organism.
HERBIVORES
• primary consumers

• type of consumer that feeds directly on green

plants (or another type of autotroph
CARNIVORES
feed on other animals (or another type
of consumer) and are secondary or
tertiary consumers
OMNIVORES
the feeding method used by humans,
feed on both plants and animals
DECOMPOSER
S • are organisms, mostly bacteria and fungi that
recycle nutrients from decaying organic material

• break down detritus, nonliving organic matter,

into inorganic matter
 Even if
communities do
differ in structure,
they have some
common uniting
processes such
as energy flow
and matter
cycling, Energy
flows move
through feeding
relationships.
 Food webs, food chains, and food
pyramids are three ways of
representing energy flow.

The term ecological niche refers

to how an organism functions in an
ecosystem.
THANK YOU FOR
LISTENING!
Prepared by:

Erabon, Sheila Micah R.

Mission, Marianne M.
Tacloban, Jay Ann