ECOLOGY

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 ECOLOGY X5
Definitions/explanations
Ecology: the study of the relationships of living organisms with each other and their non-living
or physical surroundings.
Ecosystem: a community of organisms (biotic component) and their physical environment
(abiotic component) interacting as an ecological unit.
Biosphere: total volume of film of land, water and air around the earth's surface in which
organisms live.
Biome: large stable vegetative zone of the earth, characterized by the dominant type of plant life
growing there

Zones: biome can be divided into zones which consist of small areas called habitats.

Species: group of closely related organisms similar features (anatomical, physiological,

behavioural) which are capable of interbreeding to produce fertile offspring, reproductively
isolated from other similar groups.

Population: a group of organisms of one species occupying a defined area and usually isolated
to some degree from other similar groups.
Community: any group of organisms belonging to a number of different species that co-exist in
the same habitat or area and interact through trophic and spatial relationships.
Habitat: is a spatial concept, describing the typical environment of a particular organism,
basically it is the place or area where the organism lives.

Ecological Niche: combines spatial habitat with functional relationship, where organism lives,
position/location it occupies within habitat and its role, feeding habit, interaction with other
organisms. Niche describes the location and function within a particular habitat.

Competitive Exclusion Principle: if two species occupy the same ecological niche, one of them
will decline in numbers over time to the point of extinction, niche greatest form of competition.
Autotrophic mode of nutrition : autotrophs/plants utilise simple inorganic molecules such as
carbon dioxide for their carbon source, water and mineral from the soil, light energy from the
sun (energy source) in the process of photosynthesis occurring in the chloroplast to synthesise
complex organic molecules such as carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, containing the carbon and
energy source for all other organisms
Heterotrophic mode of nutrition : organisms/ animals, fungi unable to synthesise complex
organic molecules from simple inorganic ones in photosynthesis and therefore must obtain their
carbon and energy source by consuming autotrophs, directly or indirectly, obtaining complex
molecules , CHO, proteins, lipids, which they can then utilise for their own metabolic needs.
Food Web: mesh of interlinking food chains and complex net of interactions that characterises
the natural feeding relationships between organisms in a habitat/ecosystem
Ecological Pyramid: is a graphical representation/bar diagram designed to show the number of
organisms, biomass or energy values at each trophic level in a given ecosystem/habitat/area,
Biodiversity: this is the total number of different species living in a defined area, ecosystem,
biome or the entire planet.
Conservation: taking action to avoid species decline and extinction and permanent detrimental
change to the environment.
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Ecology

Ecology is the study of relationships of living organisms with each other and their
non- living or physical surroundings. Ecology is considered to be a science which
provides a foundation for other sciences, for example, used to make predictions
and correlations, like pollution etc.
Biosphere
Organisms live in a narrow sphere over the earth’s surface, not more than about 20 km thick,
8 km above sea level, 10 km below sea level. The total volume of this land, water
and air around the earth's surface is called the biosphere.
The biosphere consists of two major divisions.

Biomes can be divided into zones, and the zones consist of small areas
called habitats. There are two components that make up the ecosystem. The biotic component
- made up of everything that is living, and the abiotic - made up of the non-living
environment; climate, temperature, light, water, etc.
The ecosystem is the interrelationship between the living part (biotic) and the non-
living (abiotic) components.
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There are two major factors within the ecosystem,

• one is the flow of energy
through the ecosystem, flow of energy is always linear.
It cannot be recycled. It is generally lost as heat energy, which cannot be utilised.
• Secondly, the cycling of
matter and nutrients with the ecosystem takes place continuously.

Biogeochemical cycles: the nitrogen and carbon cycles carry out the
cycling of the nutrients.
The energy that powers ecosystems is solar energy. It is the source of
energy for all ecosystems on the planet. All organisms cannot utilise it, but all
organisms depend on it directly or indirectly.
Solar energy is captured by autotrophs in the process of photosynthesis. Only plants can
utilise the light energy and minerals and convert it into food source. They therefore
form the food source for all organisms in the ecosystem.
They provide not only the energy for other organisms, but provide the
matter, the carbon the nutrients and everything needed to survive. Chemicals: N, P, K. C
etc. found in living organisms are derived or obtained from the
abiotic components. They are recycled within the ecosystem again and again by
decomposition of the dead organic matter, waste products by bacteria and fungi
(collectively call decomposers). While chemicals are constantly recycled, energy
flow within the ecosystem is linear, it flows progressively from one level to the next in a linear
manner. Heat energy cannot be recycled back into the ecosystem

Food Chains and Trophic Levels:

The energy containing molecules, carbohydrates proteins, fats etc, produced by the
autotrophic organisms will now be the main source of food for the
heterotrophic organisms.
The autotrophic organism’s plants are called the primary producers/autotrophs.
These in turn will be (plants), eaten by the heterotrophs, the herbivores or primary
consumers. The primary consumers are eaten by secondary consumers, the primary
carnivores. The carnivores will be eaten by tertiary level consumers, the secondary carnivores.
It can even go up to quaternary level. The result is a number of feeding levels, or hierarchy.
These animals are eaten by other animals and energy is transferred
through a series of organisms, each one feeding on the preceding organism
and therefore providing the energy and raw materials for the next organisms in the
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link.
Such a sequence or feeding hierarchy is called a food chain and each stage
of the food chain is called a Trophic level.
The first level is always occupied by the plants, autotrophs or primary producers and then
moving on, the primary consumers/herbivores etc. There are usually 4-5 trophic levels, because
at each feeding level energy is lost so beyond 4/5 there is insufficient energy to sustain life
FOOD CHAINS
Grazing food chain
Food chains do not generally go beyond four or five trophic levels. This type of
food chain where the base of the food chain is a plant/alga is called a Grazing food chain. In
grazing food chains, the base has autotrophic organisms. In terrestrial areas,
the plants are the primary producers, or organisms capable of photosynthesis. In aquatic
ecosystems the plant life mainly algae, collectively known as phytoplankton form the
base of food chains.
The primary consumers which feed on the plants are generally called herbivores: cattle,
sheep, goats. On land, herbivores include insect’s, mammals, etc. In aquatic ecosystems, both
freshwater and marine herbivores are small crustaceans, mollusks, mussels, clams etc., they are
filter feeders they extract the microscopic algae from the water. Zooplankton refers to the
small organisms and, microscopic
animals which feed on the phytoplankton. Life in aquatic ecosystems is almost totally dependent
on planktonic organisms, phytoplankton and zooplankton, which are found at the base of
food chains, every other organism depends on these communities.
Some primary consumers live as parasites, aphids and fungi, mistletoes; ticks; lice; bacteria.
Secondary consumers feed on the herbivores and therefore because they are flesh
eaters are called carnivores. Secondary /tertiary and higher consumers are either one of
the three:
1) Predators: predators have to hunt and kill (lions, leopards)
2) Scavengers: They feed on dead animals (hyenas)
3) Parasites: They do not kill their prey, they feed off of it while the host
continues to live.
When a plant or animal dies in an ecosystem, the body contains a source of energy and nutrients.
It does not go to waste; they form a source of food for other organisms, includes waste products
produced by animals, faeces, urine etc. The organisms which feed on these are called
decomposers and detritivores.
Decomposers and Detritivores
Decomposers are microscopic organisms, bacteria, fungi etc. They are saprotrophs, organisms
that live on dead, decaying organic matter. Dead organic matter is abbreviated as
DOM, and forms a food source for the saprotrophs.
Mode of Nutrition
These decomposers do not have digestive systems, they secrete the digestive enzymes
outside of the body onto the waste products and the enzymes break down the products into liquid
form so that they can absorb the nutrients/products of digestion. This is extracellular digestion.
Detritivores
Detritivores are larger, usually still small animals, both terrestrial and aquatic, that feed on small
fragments of decomposing or dead material called detritus. They do not secrete the enzymes
outside, they take in pieces of the DOM and digest it internally, examples of detritivores include
rag worms, wood lice, termites, earthworms, mites, maggots, etc. Earthworms are very
important for the soil. When they take in matter, what they release back helps to improve the
quality and texture of the soil and provide valuable minerals. Burrowing also helps aerate the soil
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DETRITAL FOOD CHAIN

Here the base of the food chain is detritus or dead organism.
Detrital food chain
Leaf Litter --> Earth Worm --> Bird
Dead Animal --> Fly Lava/Maggot --> Frog --> Snake --> Bird
Decomposers are very important for recycling valuable nutrients, like carbon and nitrogen
back into the ecosystem.
Recycling of Carbon
Dead plants etc., will contain starch and cellulose in the dead organic matter, these will be
hydrolyzed by enzymes produced by fungi and bacteria. Once they are hydrolyzed they will
produce sugars, glucose etc. which are then utilised by organisms for aerobic
respiration and during this process will release carbon in the form of carbon
dioxide, therefore recycling carbon back into the ecosystem.
Nitrogen
Dead animals and plants will contain proteins. These are converted into amino acids and are then
deaminated, the useful part is removed and ammonia is released. This ammonia is
important because it is now available for the process called nitrification. In this process it is
converted to nitrites and nitrates, which are now available to the plants and is recycled again
back into the ecosystem. Detritivores like earthworms help to aerate the soil, their waste
products help to improve the texture and fertility of the soil. The waste also contains valuable
minerals which would be important for the plants.
Food Webs
When looking at food chains, it can be seen that one organism is feeding on another. It only
shows the feeding relationship for one type of organism. In the natural environment feeding
relationships are much more complex, because most organisms feed on more than one type of
organism. Carnivores can feed at all the different levels. Some animals are omnivores, they feed
on anything. Both types of food chains interlink and become very complex.
Many food chains linked together form complex interactions, and this mesh of interlinking food
chains that is found in the natural environment is called a Food Web. In the food web, an
organism may form part of many food chains, either as the prey or the predator. Many carnivores
have varied diet and can operate as secondary, tertiary or higher consumers.
There are many different advantages of feeding at different trophic levels:
1) More energy is available to the organism
2) A variety of diet so less chance of starvation if particular species low in numbers/die out
3) Greater chance of survival since numbers will tend to increase.
Each species is very important in the ecosystem for stability of the ecosystem. The more species
that are involved in the food web, the more stable the ecosystem becomes. As one starts to
remove species, one is removing the food source for the food chain, making the whole system
unstable. This can lead to extinction of even more species. When species become extinct, they
affect the entire equilibrium of the ecosystem. Ecosystems are dynamic systems.
Food web as opposed to food chain
• More accurate representation of feeding relationships in nature
• Few animals confined to single type of food; most feed at different levels
• Most herbivores feed on many different types of plants
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Efficiency of energy transfer

Production Ecology
Energy from the sun enters the biotic component of the ecosystem through primary producers.
The rate at which plants convert the light energy and store the energy in organic substances in
the form of chemical energy is called the gross primary productivity or GPP. This determines the
total energy flow through the biotic component of the ecosystem and therefore determines how
much life or biomass the ecosystem can actually support. This can be measured.
GPP - Respiration = NPP (Net Primary Production)
Plants use 20-25% in respiration, and what is left, the NPP, is stored in the plant, this is the
energy that is potentially available to the next trophic level, the herbivores. As one
moves up the food chain, a lot of energy is lost. For each successive level, the amount of energy
available for the next trophic level gets smaller and smaller.
• Some of this energy is lost as heat energy in respiration.
• Not all the matter is converted into production. Some is lost as waste
products in metabolism.
• Some food material remains undigested, and is lost in egestion
These waste products used as food sources by decomposers and detritivores.
Food Consumed = Growth + Respiration + egesta + excreta
The energy that remains in the heterotrophs after all of the losses through egestion, excretion,
and respiration is used for production (a term used to encompass growth, reproduction repair
etc.) In heterotrophs, it is referred to as secondary production.
The efficiency of energy transfer between trophic levels is usually taken as a general value of
10% because:
It is a mean or estimated value; may not be exact or accurate;
because of different energy transfer values in different ecosystems; between different trophic
levels;
activity/metabolism/ heat loss of organisms may vary between levels, difficult to measure.
Seasonal variation and efficiency of digestion may vary from plant to herbivore and from
herbivore to carnivore.
More energy is lost from plant to herbivore. From plant to herbivore is generally about 10%
efficient, but from herbivore to carnivore the efficiency is about 20%. The reason is, the
digestion of cellulose is a very inefficient process. Plants contain a high proportion of cellulose
and wood, and hence when eating a plant, a large portion of it remains undigested. There is only
about 10% energy transfer. When an animal eats an animal, the digestion of protein is much
more efficient and more energy is transferred.
Conversion of solar energy
Calculate what percentage of energy from sun is used in photosynthesis to contribute to the
GPP from energy diagram in handout.
Very small percentage of the energy from the sun contributes to the Gross primary production
GPP. Of the radiant/solar energy, that enters the ecosystem from the sun, only a small amount,
few percent are converted by the plants into chemical energy, GPP. in photosynthesis.
Reasons:
• A large amount the sun's solar energy does not fall on the leaves but on other non-
photosynthetic structures, stems etc.
• When it does fall on the leaf, of the energy that impacts on the leaf, some of it passes through
the leaf without being trapped by chlorophyll/misses chloroplast.
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• Some of the energy that impacts the leaf is reflected away from the leaf.
• During photosynthesis, the photosynthetic pigment absorbs in the red and the blue range of the
light spectrum, only certain wavelengths are absorbed.
Why is the efficiency of transfer only 10%?
Once the light energy is absorbed by the plant, organic substrates are produced. There are a
number of reasons why this matter or energy is not available to the next set of organisms in the
food chain/next trophic levels.
The plant has its own metabolic activities, so heat is lost in respiration. There are other loses
which makes the energy unavailable. Reasons for inefficiency:
• Energy lost or utilised in excretion, growth, repair, respiration
• Plants contain much woody tissue which cannot be utilized by the herbivores. It is a source of
energy for the detritivores.
• Animals may only eat certain parts of the plants; some parts are difficult to digest. These parts
will pass through and be egested.
• When an animal kills another animal, they may not eat everything. The remainder of the animal
is not available to the other trophic levels; it may be available to scavengers or
decomposers/detritivores.
• Trees live for a long time before they die and can be utilised by the detritivores/decomposers.

Ecological Pyramids
An ecological pyramid is a graphical representation or a bar diagram designed or drawn to show
the number of organisms, the biomass of organisms or energy values at each trophic level in a
given ecosystem, habitat, area. It shows the feeding relationship between organisms occupying
different trophic levels in food chains.
The length/area of the bar represents either the number, the biomass or the energy and therefore
there are three types of ecological pyramids: Pyramid of Numbers, Pyramid of Biomass and
Pyramid of Energy

The feeding relationships and efficiency of transfer of energy through the biotic component have
traditionally been summarized in pyramid diagrams. These diagrams give a simple and
fundamental basis for comparisons. They can be used to compare
• different ecosystems,
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• seasonal variation within an ecosystem

• changes in an ecosystem.
Pyramid of numbers are based on counts of organisms at each trophic level. Pyramid of biomass
involves the dry weight of the organisms at each trophic level. Pyramid of energy monitor the
actual energy content of the organisms at each trophic level, which is the most accurate
representation.
Methodology
Pyramid of numbers - based on actual physical counts. When organising a pyramid of
numbers, all the plants and animals must be counted. They must be then grouped into trophic
levels. represented graphically as a bar/ rectangle where the length or area is proportional to the
number, [ should be done on graph paper so that everything is drawn to scale]. This would be
more accurate. Primary producers form the first level or the base of the chain followed by the
primary consumers[herbivores] the secondary, tertiary, top carnivores.
COMPLICATIONS/PROBLEMS
Although it is easy to collect the data by sampling methods, there are a number of problems
associated with pyramids of numbers:
• The producers will vary in size. A single grass plant is given the same status as a large tree.
and that makes it difficult to obtain a true pyramid shape.
• Parasitic Food Chains. There may be one tree, and on the tree there are squirrels and on the
squirrels are fleas. Once parasites are involved, the shape of the pyramid will not be a true
pyramid shape may also get inverted pyramids. The range of numbers is sometimes so great that
it is difficult to draw to scale, log scales need to be used. When doing this, interpretation
becomes much more complex.
• The trophic levels are difficult to be allocated to the organisms.
Can overcome some of the disadvantages of the pyramid of numbers by using the pyramid of
biomass

Pyramid of biomass.
Here the total biomass is estimated, in terms of the dry weight, for each trophic level.
Representative samples of each organism must be taken. To get the dry weight, the sample must
be weighed and then put into an oven and heated until all the water is lost. A constant weight
remains this is the dry mass. The dry weight is multiplied by the numbers to get the total dry
weight.
This eliminates the first problem with pyramid of numbers, because a large tree would have a
much greater biomass than a grass plant. Fleas and aphids would have a small biomass, giving a
true pyramid shape. Each trophic level would represent the biomass of the organisms.
May still get example where true pyramid shape not obtained.
In aquatic systems, the phytoplankton biomass may be smaller than the zooplankton so the first
two levels are inverted. The rest of the trophic levels are normal. This is characteristic of
oceanic and lake planktonic communities at certain times of the year. Zooplankton has a greater
biomass than the phytoplankton at certain times of the year. The phytoplankton exceeds during
spring, there is increased productivity causing a bloom so has a larger biomass. At other times it
is the reverse.
Biomass is a destructive method since representative sample must be killed and heated, more
expensive equipment is required and it is quite labor intensive.
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Problem.
Biomass at the time of sampling called the standing biomass can be misleading in two ways:
• This figure gives no idea of the rate of production/consumption of the biomass. If the rate of
consumption equals the rate of production, the standing crop does not necessarily give any
indication of productivity (the amount of material passing from one trophic level to the next in a
given period of time.) For example, a fertile intensely grazed pasture may have a small standing
crop of grass but higher productivity than a less fertile ungrazed pasture.
• If the producers are small, like algae, they may have a high turnover rate, they grow and
reproduce very quickly. They also have a high consumption or death rate. This means a large
tree and a small amount of algae, may have the same productivity although biomass very
different.
Pyramid of Energy-
With the pyramid of energy, can remove all of the anomalies associated with the other kinds of
pyramids, because, in the pyramid of energy, the actual amount of energy in the trophic levels is
determined. Have to determine the actual energy value for organisms at each trophic level.
Representative samples of the organisms must be taken and burned/combustion in special type of
apparatus called a bomb calorimeter to get the energy values. Once the energy values are
obtained, they are multiplied by the numbers to get the total energy value for each trophic level.
The phytoplankton has the greatest amount of energy, followed by the zooplankton. Hence the
pyramid shape would be normal for the aquatic food chains. The energy by content is always
highest at the base and gets smaller at each trophic level of the food chain as it ascends. The
pyramid of energy is the best way to represent the different trophic levels. This would have a
number of advantages:
• It takes into account the rate of production. Each bar represents the amount of energy passing
through the trophic levels at a given period of time.
• Weight for weight, two species may not have the same energy content so comparison based on
biomass may be misleading.
• With pyramids of energy, different ecosystems can be compared, as well as the importance of
the various populations within the ecosystem and inverted pyramids are not obtained.