Chapter - 6
Organisms and their Environment
For Farther please visit my YouTube Chanell:- :-
Yeshaneh Tube: የሻነህ ቲዩብ
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC36ChnHmU7YX2tcz1VrE0gQ 1
Introduction
• What is ecology?
• Ecology is the study of the interactions of organisms with each
other and their environment.
• the hierarchy defines each of the following.
✓ Species ~ population ~ community ~ ecosystem ~ biosphere
Levels of Ecological Study
• Organismal ecology
• Population ecology
• Community ecology Biological organization
• Ecosystem ecology
• Landscape ecology
• Global ecology 2
• Organismal ecology - the study of individual organisms' behavior,
physiology, morphology, etc. in response to environmental
challenges.
• Population ecology - the study of factors that affect and change the
size and genetic composition of populations of organisms.
• Community ecology - the study of how community structure &
organization are changed by interactions among living organisms.
✓ Communities differ in their species richness (number of d/t
species), and the relative abundance of different species.
• Ecosystem ecology - the study of entire ecosystems, including the
responses and changes in the community in response to the abiotic
components of the ecosystem.
✓ A complex network of interacting system
3
✓ Ecologists call relationships between species in community
interspecific interactions.
✓ Interspecific interactions affect species survival and reproduction
in different ways.
✓ e.g. mutualism, commensalism, predation, parasitism etc...
4
✓ Landscape ecology – study of the exchanges of energy,
materials, organisms and other products of between ecosystems
✓ Spatial heterogeneity as caused by different factors
✓ Global ecology - the study of the effects of regional change in
energy and matter exchange on the function and distribution of
organisms across the biosphere.
5
Population ecology
• A population consists of the individuals of a given species that
occur together at one place and time.
Population distributions
• No population occurs in all habitats throughout the world.
• Each population has its own requirements such as
temperature, humidity, food
• Although several species of a population may share a habitat
they each have their own niche.
✓ A niche is a very narrow range where a species fits within a
habitat.
6
Population dynamics
Key features of populations
✓ Size: number of individuals in an area
✓ Density: measurement of population per unit area or unit volume
✓ Dispersion: describes the spacing of organisms relative to each other
✓ Immigration: movement of individuals into a population
✓ Emigration: movement of individuals out of a population
✓ Growth Rate: Birth rate (b) − death rate (d) = rate of natural
increase (r)
7
Factors that affect future population growth
Immigration
+
Natality + Population
- Mortality
-
Emigration
8
Population dispersion
❖Dispersion patterns of population can be classified into three:-
1. Random:
✓ equal chance of being anywhere.
✓ neutral interactions
✓random distributions are not common in nature.
2. Uniform:
✓ regular: uniformly spaced.
✓ exclusive use of areas/Antagonistic interaction
✓ individuals avoid one another.
✓this spacing results from competition for resources.
3. Clumped:
✓ unequal chance of being anywhere.
✓ mutual attraction between individuals.
✓patchy resource distribution.
✓clumped distributions are common in nature
9
10
11
Dispersal mechanism
1. Passive dispersal
• movement is assisted by agents (wind, water, animal, etc.)
e.g. fruits and seeds are eaten & carried by animals.
2. Active dispersal
• movement of an organism as adult or juvenile with no
assistance or by themselves.
• animals’ movement is mainly active
✓ wild beasts in East Africa migrate long
distances following the geographic
pattern of seasonal rainfall and fresh
vegetation
12
Carrying Capacity (k):
• Is the maximum population size that can be supported by
the available resources of a place.
✓ determined by availability of food, habitat, water, and
other necessities in the environment.
❖ declining birth rate or increasing death rate are caused
by several factors including:
✓ limited food supply
✓ the build up of toxic wastes in the habitat
✓ increased disease
✓ Predation, etc.
13
Ecosystem and Energy flow
✓ System = regularly interacting and interdependent components
forming a unified whole.
✓ Ecosystem = an ecological system; a community and its physical
environment treated together as a functional system.
✓ An ecosystem is the unit composed of all the living things in a single
place at a given time, in addition to the important non-living
components of the system.
✓ The biosphere the largest and most encompassing ecosystem .
It encompasses all the microorganisms, plants and animals on Earth.
14
How energy flows in the ecosystem?
❖ Plants are producers as they produce carbohydrates from
✓ CO2, H2O and solar energy.
❖ Consumers get their energy by feeding on producers or other
consumers.
❖ Decomposition is the breakdown of wastes and dead
organisms by organisms called decomposers through the
process of biodegradation.
✓ e.g. bacteria and fungi,
15
◆ Detrivores :obtain energy and nutrients by eating dead plants
and animals, as well as animal waste.
✓ e.g.: small insects, earthworms
❖ Detrivores and decomposers ACT at every trophic level.
16
1. Food chains: Food chains show the flow of energy from
plant to animal and from animal to animal.
➢ Each step in a food chain is called a trophic level.
Level Organism Energy Source Example
1st Producer Obtain energy from Grass, algae
the Sun (plants)
2nd Primary Obtain energy from 1st Grasshoppers
consumer producers (herbivores)
3rd Secondary Obtain energy 1st consumers Frogs, crabs
consumer (carnivores)
4th Tertiary Obtain energy from 2nd Hawks, sea otters
consumer consumers (top carnivores)
17
18
Limits on Food Chain Length
❖ Two hypotheses attempt to explain food chain length: the
dynamic stability hypothesis and the energetic hypothesis
➢dynamic stability hypothesis proposes that long food
chains are less stable than short ones
➢energetic hypothesis suggests that length is limited by
inefficient energy transfer
❖ most data support the energetic hypothesis
2. Food webs:
• is interconnected form of food chains.
▪ animals that eat plants and other animals are called
omnivores.
▪ many animals are part of more than one food chain in an
ecosystem because they eat or are eaten by several
organisms. 19
20
3. Food pyramids (Ecological pyramid):-
✓ is a model that shows the loss of energy from one trophic
level to another.
❖ when one organism consumes another, the energy stored in
the food in the organism is transferred to the consumer.
❖ however, not all of this energy is incorporated into the consumer’s
tissues, 80 - 90 % of it is used for chemical reactions and is lost as
heat.
✓ this means ecosystems can support fewer organisms at higher
trophic levels.
21
Only about
10% of the
energy from
one level is
passed on to
the next level
22
Practice
• If 30,000 J of energy is trapped by green plants for
photosynthesis how much will be available
➢ A/ for herbivorous/ grazers like cow?
➢ B/ for carnivores like lion?
300 J
3,000 J
30,000 J
23
Environments
❖ is the surrounding or external factors and forces (conditions)
that affect an organism or a group of organisms.
❖ Can be physical (air, water, soil) and biological (plants,
animals).
❖ Spheres system can be:-
✓ Biosphere contains all of earth’s living things:
microorganisms, plants, and animals.
✓ Atmosphere contains all the air in earth’s system
✓ Lithosphere – land crust,
✓ Hydrosphere -water contains all the solid, liquid, and gaseous
water of earth.
24
25
Factors that affecting the survival
and welfare of a population
❖ Those factors are classified as abiotic and biotic
➢ 1. Abiotic factors: involve all those factors that are non-living.
✓ Soil pH
✓ Soil humidity
✓ Soil temperature
✓ Air temperature
✓ Wind speed
✓ Intensity
✓ Soil nutrients
26
✓ Environmental changes
❖ Climate:
✓ Temperature – Rise or decrease in average temperatures.
✓ Global warming- emission of “greenhouse gases”
automobiles, industrial factories, and other sources.
✓ Rainfall – Increase or decrease in precipitation
❖ Land
• Deforestation - Loss of trees in tropical rainforests
• Soil degradation: Soil erosion
27
2. Biotic Factors
❖ Biotic factors : factors that are the result of living things.
✓ Competitors
✓ Predators
✓ Decomposers
✓ Population Density
✓ Disease (Malaria, HIV, Ebola, TB, Corona, etc.….
• Limiting factors: some abiotic and biotic factors affect the
organisms sufficiently to limit population growth.
• E.g., the limiting factor for a plant population near a chemical
factory may be the soil pH.
• Liebigs Law of the minimum: The success of an organism
depends on several requirements.
• If one of these is present in minimal quantities this will limit
the organism regardless of the abundance of the others.
28
Humans Adversely Influence Ecosystems
1. Population growth: Too many people using more resources
2. Over consumption: industrialized societies are using more
resources per person than people from poor nations.
3. Advancing Technologies: we introduce technology without
knowing how it will influence the environment
4. Direct harvesting: large loss of rainforest & its biodiversity.
5. Pollution: is any contamination of the environment.
6. Atmospheric Changes: greenhouse gases due to the burning of
fossil fuels and depletion of our ozone layer.
7. Desertification: is a complex process involving multiple natural
and human-related causes.
➢ Desertification results from a combination of climate changes
causing prolonged drought and unsustainable human activities,
including overgrazing and deforestation. 29
Human impacts on ecosystem
30
Conservation
❖ What is conservation?
❖ is set of management strategies for preventing the loss of
natural resource through several causes.
❖ Two approaches of conservations:
1. In situ:
✓ Conservation of species in their natural habitat.
✓ e.g. natural parks, nature reserves
2. Ex situ:
✓ Conserving species in isolation of their natural habitat.
✓ e.g. zoos, botanical gardens and seed banks
31
The advantages of in situ conservation
✓ species continue to live in their environment
✓ the species have more space
✓ bigger breeding populations can bee kept
✓ it is cheaper to keep an organism in its
natural habitat
• there are also problems with in situ
conservation
✓ it is difficult to control illegal
exploitation (e.g. poaching)
✓ the environment may need restoring
and alien species are difficult to
control. 32
Ex situ conservation: Captive breeding
• The three sides to ex-situ conservation
• Zoos, parks and botanical gardens
• Seed banks
• Gene banks
• The Hawaian goose was practically extinct
in the wild.
• 12 birds were taken into captivity
• A population of 9000 was released back
into the wild.
• However, the experiment failed because
the original cause rats had not been
eliminated.
• The rats eat the eggs and the nestlings of
the geese.
33
Pere David’s deer success or failure?
• Pere David’s deer was a native species of China
• In 1865, 18 were taken into zoological collections
• Meanwhile it became extinct in the wild
• By 1981 there were 994 individuals scattered through
zoological collections
34
For Farther please visit my YouTube Chanell:-
1. Yeshaneh Tube: የሻነህ ቲዩብ
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC36ChnHmU7YX2tcz1VrE0gQ
2. Telegram:
https://t.me/yeshanehtube
35
