TERMINOLOGY

1. Environment - The external surroundings including all of the biotic and a

biotic factors that surround and affect the survival and development of
an organism or population.

2. Biotic - Pertains to a living thing (such as plant, animal, fungus, etc.) as well as its
products (e.g. secretions, wastes, and remains).

3. A biotic - Nonliving, as in a biotic factor, which is a nonliving physical and chemical

attribute of a system, for
examplelight, temperature, wind patterns, rocks, soil, pH, pressure, etc. in
an environment.

4. Population - A group of organisms of one species that interbreed and live in the same
place at the same time.

5. Community - An ecological unit composed of a group of organisms or a population of

different species occupying a particular area, usually interacting with each other and
their environment.

6. Herbivore - An animal that consumes herbaceous vegetation.

Any animal that feeds chiefly on grass and other plants; horses are herbivores; the
sourwood dinosaurs were apparently herbivores. Animals that consume plant material as
a source of obtaining energy

7. Consumer - An organism that generally obtains food by feeding on

other organisms or organic matter due to lack of the ability to manufacture own food
from inorganic sources

8. Primary consumers – herbivores that feed on producers

9. Secondary consumers – consumers that feed on primary consumers and/or producers

10. Predators - those animals that live by preying on other organisms for food. Many
predators hunt and eventually kill their prey, such as lion preying upon
a buffalo, mantis eating a bee, baleen whale consuming millions
of microscopic planktons

11. Host - An organism that is infected with or is fed upon by

a parasitic or pathogenic organism (for example, a virus, nematode, fungus).
The term can also be applied, loosely, to a plant supporting an epiphyte. An animal or
plant that nourishes and supports a parasite; the host does not benefit and is often harmed
by the association.(medicine) recipient of transplanted tissue or organ from a donor.
An organism that a parasite is situated within.

12. Prey - the organism that haunted or eaten

13. Decay – to pass gradually from a sound, prosperous, or perfect state, to one of
imperfection, adversity, or dissolution; to waste away; to decline; to fail; to
become weak, corrupt, or disintegrated

14. Energy - often stored by cells in bio molecules, like carbohydrates (sugars) and lipids.
The energy is released when these molecules have been oxidized during cellular
respiration. The energy released from them when they are oxidized during cellular
respiration is carried and transported by an energy-carrier molecule called ATP.

15. Pyramid - is often represented in a way that the producers are at the bottom level and
then proceeds through the various tropic in which the highest is on top.
16. Element – A fundamental component of a composite entity

17. Biogeochemical cycle - is a pathway by which a chemical element or molecule moves

through both biotic (biosphere) and a biotic (lithosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere)
compartments of Earth.

18. Law of tolerance - A law stating that the abundance or distribution of an organism can be
controlled by certain factors (e.g. the climatic, topographic, and biological requirements
of plants and animals) where levels of these exceed the maximum or minimum limits of
tolerance of that organism.
19. Nich - The specific area where an organism inhabits.

- The role or function of an organism or species in an ecosystem.

- The interrelationship of a species with all the biotic and a biotic factors affecting
it.

.
20. Decomposer - An organism whose ecological function involves the recycling
of nutrients by performing the natural process of decomposition as it feeds on dead or
decaying organisms

21. Grassland - a plant community of drought-adapted shrubs, usually found in rocky and
rapidly drained shallow soils. Dense vegetation consisting of stunted trees or bushes.

22. Scavenger - An animal (such as a vulture or coyote)

that eats carcasses abandoned by predators, digs through trashcans for food

23. Dominant Species - The species that predominates in an ecological community,

particularly when they are most numerous or form the bulk of the biomass

24. Parasite - An organism that obtains nourishment and shelter on another organism.
- Parasites can cause harm or disease to their host. They are generally much
smaller than their hosts.
Summary
1. What Is Ecology

The sub discipline of biology that concentrates on the relationships between organisms and
their environments; it is also called environmental biology. Ecology is concerned with
patterns of distribution (where organisms occur) and with patterns of abundance (how many
organisms occur) in space and time. It seeks to explain the factors that determine the range of
environments that organisms occupy and that determine how abundant organisms are within
those ranges. It also emphasizes functional interactions between co-occurring organisms. In
addition to being a unique component of the biological sciences, ecology is both a synthetic
and an integrative science since it often draws upon information and concepts in other
sciences, ranging from physiology to meteorology, to explain the complex organization of
nature. Environment is all of those factors external to an organism that affect its survival,
growth, development, and reproduction. It can be subdivided into physical, or a biotic,
factors, and biological, or biotic, factors. The physical components of the environment
include all non biological constituents, such as temperature, wind, inorganic chemicals, and
radiation. The biological components of the environment include the organisms. A somewhat
more general term is habitat, which refers in a general way to where an organism occurs and
the environmental factors present there.

A recognition of the unitary coupling of an organism and its environment is fundamental to

ecology; in fact, the definitions of organism and environment are not separate. Environment
is organism-centred since the environmental properties of a habitat are determined by the
requirements of the organisms that occupy that habitat. For example, the amount of inorganic
nitrogen dissolved in lake water is of little immediate significance to zooplankton in the lake
because they are incapable of utilizing inorganic nitrogen directly. However, because
phytoplankton are capable of utilizing inorganic nitrogen directly, it is a component of their
environment. Any effect of inorganic nitrogen upon the zooplankton, then, will occur
indirectly through its effect on the abundance of the phytoplankton that the zooplankton feed
upon. Just as the environment affects the organism, so the organism affects its environment.
Growth of phytoplankton may be nitrogen-limited if the number of individuals has become so
great that there is no more nitrogen available in the environment. Zooplankton, not limited by
inorganic nitrogen themselves, can promote the growth of additional phytoplankton by
consuming some individuals, digesting them, and returning part of the nitrogen to the
environment.

Ecology is concerned with the processes involved in the interactions between organisms and
their environments, with the mechanisms responsible for those processes, and with the origin,
through evolution, of those mechanisms. It is distinguished from such closely related
biological sub disciplines as physiology and morphology because it is not intrinsically
concerned with the operation of a physiological process or the function of a structure, but
with how a process or structure interacts with the environment to influence survival, growth,
development, and reproduction. Major subdivisions of ecology by organism include plant
ecology, animal ecology, and microbial ecology. Subdivisions by habitat include terrestrial
ecology, the study of organisms on land; limnology, the study of fresh-water organisms and
habitats; and oceanography, the study of marine organisms and habitats.

The levels of organization studied range from the individual organism to the whole complex
of organisms in a large area. Aetiology is the study of individuals, population ecology is the
study of groups of individuals of a single species or a limited number of
species, gynaecology is the study of communities of several populations, and ecosystem, or
simply systems, ecology is the study of communities of organisms and their environments in
a specific time and place.

Higher levels of organization include biomes and the biosphere. Biomes are collections of
ecosystems with similar organisms and environments and, therefore, similar ecological
properties. All of Earth's coniferous forests are elements in the coniferous forest biome.
Although united by similar dynamic relationships and structural properties, the biome itself is
more abstract than a specific ecosystem. The biosphere is the most inclusive category
possible, including all regions of Earth inhabited by living things. It extends from the lower
reaches of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans.

The principal methodological approaches to ecology are descriptive, experimental, and

theoretical. Descriptive ecology concentrates on the variety of populations, communities, and
habitats throughout Earth. Experimental ecology involves manipulating organisms or their
environments to discover the underlying mechanisms governing distribution and abundance.
Theoretical ecology uses mathematical equations based on assumptions about the properties
of organisms and environments to make predictions about patterns of distribution and
abundance.
 2. The community

Assemblages of living organisms that occur together in an area. The nature of the forces
that knit these assemblages into organized systems and those properties of assemblages that
manifest this organization have been topics of intense debate among ecologists since the
beginning of the twentieth century. On the one hand, there are those who view a community
as simply consisting of species with similar physical requirements, such as temperature, soil
type, or light regime. The similarity of requirements dictates that these species be found
together, but interactions between the species are of secondary importance and the level of
organization is low. On the other hand, there are those who conceive of the community as a
highly organized, holistic entity, with species inextricably and complexly linked to one
another and to the physical environment, so that characteristic patterns recur, and properties
arise that one can neither understand nor predict from a knowledge of the component species.
In this view, the ecosystem (physical environment plus its community) is as well organized as
a living organism, and constitutes a super organism. Between these extremes are those who
perceive some community organization but not nearly enough to invoke images of holistic
super organisms. See also Ecosystem.

Every community comprises a given group of species, and their number and identities are
distinguishing traits. Most communities are so large that it is not possible to enumerate all
species; microorganisms and small invertebrates are especially difficult to census. However,
particularly in small, well-bounded sites such as lakes or islands, one can find all the most
common species and estimate their relative abundances. The number of species is known as
species richness, while species diversity refers to various statistics based on the relative
numbers of individuals of each species in addition to the number of species. The rationale for
such a diversity measure is that some communities have many species, but most species are
rare and almost all the individuals (or biomass) in such a community can be attributed to just
a few species. Such a community is not diverse in the usual sense of the word. Patterns of
species diversity abound in the ecological literature; for example, pollution often effects a
decrease in species diversity.

The main patterns of species richness that have been detected are area and isolation effects,
succession gradients, and latitudinal gradients. Larger sites tend to have more species than do
small ones, and isolated communities (such as those on oceanic islands) tend to have fewer
species than do less isolated ones of equal size. Later communities in a temporal succession
tend to have more species than do earlier ones, except that the last (climax) community often
has fewer species than the immediately preceding one. Tropical communities tend to be very
species-rich, while those in arctic climates tend to be species-poor. This observation
conforms to a larger but less precise rule that communities in particularly stressful
environments tend to have few species. Communities are usually denoted by the presence of
species, known as dominants, that contain a large fraction of the community's biomass, or
account for a large fraction of a community's productivity. Dominants are usually plants.
Determining whether communities at two sites are truly representatives of the “same”
community requires knowledge of more than just the dominants, however. “Characteristic”
species, which are always found in combination with certain other species, are useful in
deciding whether two communities are of the same type, though the designation of “same” is
arbitrary, just as is the designation of “dominant” or “characteristic.”

Communities often do not have clear spatial boundaries. Occasionally, very sharp limits to a
physical environmental condition impose similarly sharp limits on a community. For
example, serpentine soils are found sharply delimited from adjacent soils in many areas, and
have mineral concentrations strikingly different from those of the neighbouring soils. Thus
they support plant species that are very different from those found in nearby non serpentine
areas, and these different plant species support animal species partially different from those
of adjacent areas.

Here two different communities are sharply bounded from each other. Usually, however,
communities grade into one another more gradually, through a broad intermediate region
(an acetone) that includes elements of both of the adjacent communities, and sometimes other
species as well that are not found in either adjacent community. The environment created by
the dominant species, by their effects on temperature, light, humidity, and other physical
factors, and by their biotic effects, such as allelopathy and competition, may entrain some
other species so that these other species' spatial boundaries coincide with those of the
dominants.

More or less distinct communities tend to follow one another in rather stylized order. As with
recognition of spatial boundaries, recognition of temporal boundaries of adjacent
communities within a sere (a temporary community during a succession sequence at a site) is
partly a function of the expectations that an observer brings to theendeavor. Those who view
communities as super organisms are inclined to see sharp temporal and spatial boundaries,
and the perception that one community does not gradually become another community over
an extended period of time confirms the impression that communities are highly organized
entities, not random collections of species that happen to share physical requirements.
However, this super organism conception of succession has been replaced by an
individualistic succession. Data on which species are present at different times during a
succession show that there is not abrupt wholesale extinction of most members of a
community and concurrent simultaneous colonization by most species of the next
community. Rather, most species within a community colonize at different times, and as the
community is replaced most species drop out at different times. That succession is primarily
an individualistic process does not mean that there are not characteristic changes in
community properties as most successions proceed. Species richness usually increases
through most of the succession, for example, and stratification becomes more highly
organized and well defined. A number of patterns are manifest in aspects of energy flow
and nutrient cycling.

Living organisms are characterized not only by spatial and temporal structure but by an
apparent purpose or activity termed teleonomy. In the first place, the various species within a
community have different tropic relationships with one another. One species may eat another,
or be eaten by another. A species may be a decomposer, living on dead tissue of one or more
other species. Some species are omnivores, eating many kinds of food; others are more
specialized, eating only plants or only animals, or even just one other species. These tropic
relationships unite the species in a community into a common endeavour, the transmission of
energy through the community. This energy flow is analogous to an organism's mobilization
and transmission of energy from the food it eats.

By virtue of differing rates of photosynthesis by the dominant plants, different communities

have different primary productivities. Tropical forests are generally most productive, while
extreme environments such as desert or alpine conditions harbour
rather unproductive communities. Agricultural communities are intermediate. Algal
communities in estuaries are the most productive marine communities, while open ocean
communities are usually far less productive. The efficiency with which various animals
ingest and assimilate the plants and the structure of the tropic web determine the secondary
productivity (production of organic matter by animals) of a community. Marine secondary
productivity generally exceeds that of terrestrial communities. A final property that any
organism must have is the ability to reproduce itself. Communities may be seen as possessing
this property, though the sense in which they do so does not support the super organism
metaphor. A climax community reproduces itself through time simply by virtue of the
reproduction of its constituent species, and may also be seen as reproducing itself in space by
virtue of the propagates that its species transmit to less mature communities. For example,
when a climax forest abuts a cutover field, if no disturbance ensues, the field undergoes
succession and eventually becomes a replica of the adjacent forest. Both temporally and
spatially, then, community reproduction is a collective rather than an emergent property,
deriving directly from the reproductive activities of the component species.
3. Food cycle & food chains

A food chain shows how each living thing gets its food. Some animals eat plants and some
animals eat other animals. For example, a simple food chain links the trees & shrubs, the
giraffes (that eat trees & shrubs), and the lions (that eat the giraffes). Each link in this chain is
food for the next link. A food chain always starts with plant life and ends with an animal.
Plants are called producers because they are able to use light energy from the Sun to produce
food (sugar) from carbon dioxide and water. Animals cannot make their own food so they
must eat plants and/or other animals. They are called consumers.

There are three groups of consumers. First group animals that eat only plants are
called herbivores (or primary consumers). The second group animals that eat other animal are
called carnivores. This carnivores that eat herbivores are called secondary consumers. Other
categories in consumer which carnivores that eat other carnivores are
called tertiary consumers. For examples killer whales in an ocean food web (phytoplankton
→ small fishes → seals → killer whales).

The last categories in groups is which animals and people who eat both animals and plants
are called omnivores. In a food chain, energy is passed from one link to another. When a
herbivore eats, only a fraction of the energy (that it gets from the plant food) becomes new
body mass; the rest of the energy is lost as waste or used up by the herbivore to carry out its
life processes (e.g., movement, digestion, reproduction). Therefore, when the herbivore is
eaten by a carnivore, it passes only a small amount of total energy (that it has received) to the
carnivore. Of the energy transferred from the herbivore to the carnivore, some energy will be
"wasted" or "used up" by the carnivore. The carnivore then has to eat many herbivores to get
enough energy to grow.
4. Plant animal communities : Interrelationship

Plants and animals are not distributed randomly over the landscape. Each organism
lives in an environment which best provides the needs of that organism: food, water,
air, temperature, etc. The climate, geology, and topography of any spot on Earth are
the chief factors which determine these environments. The species of animals and
plants that live in a particular area also are greatly affected by the intensity, frequency
and regency of human activity.

The Nature Reserve, with 2,420 acres situated on the northern edge of the Ozarks, has
a great diversity of plant and animal communities. This diversity is due to its geologic
history, the inclusion within its boundaries of three miles of the Meramec River, and
its past use by man. The communities found on the Reserve are as follow:

• Glade • Woodland
• Tallgrass Prairie • Bottomland Forest
• Meadow • Wetland

• Farmland • River