Key Words

• ecology • biotic factor • decomposer

• organism • abiotic factor • predator
• habitat • autotrophic • food chain
• species • heterotrophic • food web
• detritivore
• population • trophic level
• herbivore
• community • biomass
• carnivore
• ecosystem
• omnivore
• biome • producer
• biosphere • consumer
What is Ecology?
• The word ecology comes from the Greek word οἶκος (pronounced
ˈi.kos)
• The Greek word οἶκος means home.
• Definition: Ecology is the branch of biology that examines the
interactions among organisms and the interactions between
organisms and their environment.
• Ecologists study an organism’s environment and the factors that
determine their distribution (where) and abundance (how many) in
that environment.
Ecology: Levels of Organisation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srbuqpr6jUw
 What is the Biosphere?

• The biosphere is that part

of the earth inhabited by
living organisms, including
land, ocean and the
atmosphere in which life
can exist.
• It is the global ecosystem.
Relationships in the Biosphere

Biospher • The biosphere is made up of ecosystems which are found in

e various biomes on Earth.

• Ecosystems are made up of

Ecosystems communities of organisms and the
environment

• Communities are made

up of populations of
Communities different species of
organisms

6
Review:
• A single __________ is the smallest level of an ecosystem.
• A ___________ is a group of organisms that can mate and reproduce with
each other.
• All member of one species that live together in one area is called a
__________________.
• A ________________ is all the different populations that live together in
an area.
• The community of organisms and abiotic factors come together to make
up an __________________.
• The study of how organisms interact with each other and with their
environment is called ______________.
How is an ecosystem organized?
• An ORGANISM is • Ecological
the smallest level of organization:
an ecosystem.
• A SPECIES is a group
of organisms that
can mate and
reproduce with each Ecosystem
other. Community

Population

Organism
How is an ecosystem organized?
• All member of one • Ecological
species that live organization:
together in one area
is called a
POPULATION
• A COMMUNITY is all
the different Ecosystem
populations that live Community
together in an area. Population

Organism
How is an ecosystem organized?
• The community of • Ecological
organisms and organization:
abiotic factors come
together to make up
an ECOSYSTEM.

Ecosystem

Community

Population

Organism
How is an ecosystem organized?
• The study of how organisms interact with each other and with their
environment is called ECOLOGY.
What does an organism get from it’s
environment?
• Food
• Water
• Shelter
• Other things it needs to live, grow, and reproduce
• An environment that provides these needs to an organism is called it’s
HABITAT
What is an ecosystem?

• An ecosystem is made up of animals, plants and bacteria as well as

the physical and chemical environment they live in (habitat).
• The living parts of an ecosystem are called biotic factors while the
environmental factors that they interact with are called abiotic
factors.
• Because living things both respond to and are influenced by their
environment, it is important to study both factors together to get a
full picture.
What makes up an ecosystem?
• Simple ecosystem diagram
What makes up an ecosystem?
• An ecosystem is a community of living things and their non-living
environment, and may be as large as a desert or as small as a puddle.
• An ecosystem must contain producers, consumers, decomposers, and
dead and inorganic matter.
• All ecosystems require energy from an external source – this is usually
the sun.

16
• Producers make food from inorganic matter. (Plants are producers –
they make sugar through photosynthesis – they use sunlight, water
and carbon dioxide to produce food.).
• Producers are described as autotrophic, which means they are able to
make their own food.
• Consumers are unable to make their own food and so must eat other
plants and animals. Consumers are described as heterotrophic.
• An animal that is unable to make its own food and relies on consuming
nutrients from other organisms., which means they are unable to
make their own food and rely on consuming other organisms or
absorbing dissolved organic material in the water column.
• Consumers are divided into herbivores, carnivores and omnivores and
are typically further divided into 1st, 2nd or 3rd level consumers.
Predators and Prey
• A predator is an animal that hunts and eats
other animals, and the prey is the animal that
gets eaten by the predator. In the food chain
above:
• the frog is a predator and the grasshopper is its
prey
• the hawk is a predator and the frog is its prey
• Decomposers break down dead matter – these may be bacteria or animals
that feed off dead plants and animals. They are called detritivores
• Decomposers exist on every trophic level. They are mainly bacteria that
break down dead organisms.
• This process releases nutrients to support the producers as well as the
consumers that feed through absorbing organic material in the water
column.
• This process is very important and means that even top-level consumers
are contributing to the food web as the decomposers break down their
waste or dead tissue.
• Inorganic matter is what non-living things are made from. These are
things like air, water, rocks, soil and metals. Inorganic matter is important
in an ecosystem because it is what producers use, and it is the physical
and chemical, non-living environment that we live in.
Food chain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLq2datPo5M&t=75s
A chart showing the flow of energy (food) from one
organism to the next beginning with a producer
(e.g. tree → caterpillar → small bird → hawk)

What do the arrows represent?

Where does the energy originally come from?

Activity
• Complete Worksheet 35.
Food Webs
• A food web diagram illustrates ‘what eats what’ in a particular
habitat.
• Pictures represent the organisms that make up the food web, and
their feeding relationships are typically shown with arrows.
• The arrows represent the transfer of energy and always point from
the organism being eaten to the one that is doing the eating.
• Food webs throughout the world all have the same basic trophic
levels.
• However, the number and type of species that make up each level
varies greatly between different areas and different ecosystems.
Food web
A network of interconnected food
chains showing the energy flow
through part of an ecosystem.

Activities:
1. Draw as many food chains as
you can from this food web.
2. List the predators and their
prey.
• What would happen if the grass died?
Answer
• The grass is the producer.
• If it died, the consumers that feed on it - rabbits, insects and slugs -
would have no food.
• They would starve and die unless they could move to another habitat.
• All the other animals in the food web would die too, because their
food supplies would have gone.
• The populations of the consumers would fall as the population of the
producer fell.
• What would happen if the population of slugs decreased?
Answer
• Slugs, rabbits and insects all eat grass.
• If there were fewer slugs there would be more grass for the rabbits
and insects to eat.
• With more food, the populations of rabbits and insects would
increase.
• However, the thrushes would have to eat more insects to maintain
their population, so it is also possible that the population of insects
could decrease.
• This in turn may reduce the populations of voles and frogs.
• The grass is the producer.
• What would happen if the population of insects decreased?
Answer
• There would be more food for the rabbits and slugs, so their
populations would increase.
• However, there would be less food for the frogs and voles, so their
populations would decrease.
• This means less food for the foxes and hawks.
• However, there are likely to be more rabbits and thrushes for them to
eat, so their populations might stay the same.
• Slugs, rabbits and insects all eat grass.
Activity
• Complete the Worksheet Predator, Prey and Populations
Food Webs and Food Chains Review

Food Web of the Southern Ocean

1. Name the producer in the Sothern Ocean.
2. Name the herbivores.
3. Name and omnivore.
Name the consumers in the food web:
- Primary
- Secondary
- Tertiary
4. Name 3 predators.
5. Name an apex predator.
Changes to Food Webs
• The effect of removing or reducing a species in a food web varies considerably
depending on the particular species and the particular food web.
• In general, food webs with low biodiversity are more vulnerable to changes
than food webs with high biodiversity.
• In some food webs, the removal of a plant species can negatively affect the
entire food web, but the loss of one plant species that makes up only part of
the diet of a herbivorous consumer may have little or no effect.
• Some species in a food web are described as ‘keystone’ species.
• A keystone species is one that has a greater impact on a food web than you
would expect in relation to their abundance. The removal of a keystone species
characteristically results in a major change, in the same way that removing a
keystone from an arch or bridge could cause the structure to collapse.
Toxic Materials in the Food Chain
• Toxic materials are poisonous.
• Some quickly break down into harmless substances in the
environment.
• Others are persistent (they stay in the environment and do not break
down).
• These substances accumulate in the food chain and damage the
organisms in it, particularly in the predators at the end of the chain.
• This is because accumulating compounds cannot be excreted.
Example: Mercury
• Mercury compounds were used until recently to make insecticides
(substances that kill the insects that damage crops), and special paints
that stop barnacles growing on the hulls of ships.
• Unfortunately, when mercury gets into a food chain, it damages the
nervous systems and reproductive systems of mammals, including
humans.
• The diagram on the next slide shows how mercury can accumulate in
the food chain.
Mercury accumulates as you
move up a food chain
• In the sea, tiny animals and plants called plankton absorb the mercury
compounds.
• When the plankton are eaten by small fish, the mercury they contain
stays in the fish.
• As the fish need to eat a lot of plankton, the concentration of mercury
in them becomes higher than its concentration in the plankton.
• Larger fish eat the small fish, and larger ones still (such as tuna fish)
eat them.
• This creates a high concentration of mercury in the tuna.
• People eating contaminated tuna may get mercury poisoning.
• Mercury is now banned from many chemical products and mercury
use in industry is carefully regulated.
Activity
• Complete Worksheet 36.
Why is knowing about ecosystems
important?
• The interactions going on are all linked, and they can get very complex.
Anything that impacts on one aspect of the ecosystem will, in turn, impact on
others.
• Unfortunately, humans often do things that result in disrupting an ecosystem,
and even though their actions may seem small, they can have large effects.
• For example, the over-fishing of sharks can have catastrophic effects for reef
ecosystems. By removing the top level predator, the food it normally eats
thrives and then over-populates.
• This disrupts the whole reef ecosystem, and if balance is not restored, the
ecosystem can collapse.
• This means it is important for humans to consider the consequences of their
actions and do their best to change their behaviours when problems are
identified.
Trophic Levels
• Organisms in food webs
are commonly divided
into trophic levels.
Trophic levels
The position of an organism in a food chain or food web
• These levels can be illustrated in a
trophic pyramid where organisms are
grouped by the role they play in the
food web.
• For example, the 1st level forms the
base of the pyramid and is made up of
producers.
• The 2nd level is made up of herbivorous
consumers and so on.
• On average, only 10% of the energy
from an organism is transferred to its
consumer.
As a result, each trophic level supports a
• The rest is lost as waste, movement smaller number of organisms
energy, heat energy and so on.
Pyramid of Numbers
• The population of each organism in a
food chain can be shown in a type of
bar chart called a pyramid of numbers.
• The bars are drawn to scale – the more
organisms it represents, the wider the
bar.
• The producer in the food chain always
goes at the bottom of the pyramid of
numbers.
• Think about this food chain:
clover → snail → thrush → hawk
• Energy is lost to the surroundings as we go from one level to the next,
so there are usually fewer organisms at each level in this food chain.
• A lot of clover is needed to support the snail population.
• A thrush eats lots of snails, and a hawk eats lots of thrushes, so the
population of hawks is very small.
Other pyramid shapes
• Sometimes the pyramid of numbers does not look like a pyramid at
all.
• This could happen if the producer is a large plant such as a tree, or if
one of the animals is very small.
• Remember that the producer always goes at the bottom of the
pyramid.
An oak tree is very large so many insects Fleas are very small so lots of them can
can feed on it feed on a rabbit
Activities
• Complete Worksheet 37.
• Do the Ecology Mix and Match Activity
• Complete the Review Questions
Pyramids of Biomass
Biomass
•Biomass is living or recently dead tissues.
•The mass of your body is biomass because you are alive.
•Wood is considered biomass because it was recently a plant.
•Fossil fuels are not considered biomass because they are the
remains of organisms that died millions of years ago and have
been chemically changed from the original living tissue.
•We can measure the amount of biomass at different trophic
levels in a food chain.
Pyramid of Biomass
• The total biomass of each trophic level is often represented as a
modified bar chart called a pyramid of biomass.
• In a food chain from a healthy ecosystem the biomass at each trophic
level must reduce.
• An example of a food chain is:
clover → snail → thrush → sparrowhawks
• So in an ecosystem the clover has more biomass than all the snails,
which have more biomass than all the thrushes and so on.
• We say that pyramids of biomass are always perfectly shaped.
• If this is not the case, then the ecosystem is likely to be unhealthy and
in danger.
Pyramids of biomass must be
drawn with the:
1. bars equally spaced around
the midpoint
2. bars touching
3. bar for the producer at the
bottom
4. length of each bar is
proportional to the amount of
biomass available at each
trophic level
Transfer of Biomass
• The arrows in a food chain show the transfer of biomass from one
organism to another. An example of a food chain is:
maize → locust → lizard → snake
• Some of the energy from the Sun absorbed by maize when it
photosynthesises is transferred to the locusts when they eat the
plant.
• So biomass is transferred.
• Then some of the biomass in the locust is transferred to the lizards
when they are eaten and so on.
• We do not put the Sun at the bottom of a food chain even though the
producing plants or algae transfer energy from the Sun during
photosynthesis.
• This is because the Sun is not a living organism.
• In fact, only about one percent of the energy from the Sun that reaches
the plant's leaves is used by the plant during photosynthesis.
• This sounds small but is still enough to power almost all food chains on
our planet.
• Not all of the biomass is passed from the maize plants to the locusts.
• In fact, only about ten per cent of the biomass is transferred from
each trophic level to the next.
• The remaining 90 per cent is used by the trophic level to complete life
processes.
• Biomass can be lost between stages because not all of the matter
eaten by an organism is digested.
• Some of it is excreted as waste such as solid faeces, carbon dioxide
and water in respiration and water and urea in urine.
• Because only around 10% of the biomass at each trophic level is
passed to the next, the total amount becomes very small after only a
few levels.
• So food chains are rarely longer than six trophic levels.
Review
• The sun is the ultimate source of energy for most living organisms.
• Plants harness the solar energy through photosynthesis and use this
energy to make glucose.
• This glucose is then used in respiration or to make other cellular
structures. 
• This biomass is then transferred through an ecosystem when one
organism eats another e.g. grass → rabbit → fox.
• The arrow shows the direction in which energy/biomass is transferred and
all food chains begin with a producer, so called because they produce their
own food.
• As biomass is transferred between trophic levels (trophic comes from
Greek ‘to feed’) most biomass is lost (about 90%) through excretion of
urine and faeces and waste gases from respiration.
• Only some of this biomass (about 10%) is incorporated into new tissue.