‫‪Course: Ecosystem‬‬

‫المستوي الرابع‪ :‬كيمياء‪/‬نبات الئحة جديدة‬

‫المستوي الرابع‪ :‬ميكروبيولجي الئحة جديدة‬
‫استاذ المادة‪ :‬مها محمد الشامي‬
‫استاذ البيئة النباتية المساعد‬
‫قسم النبات علوم المنصورة‬
 Ecosystem Definition
An ecosystem is a system consisting of biotic and abiotic
components that function together as a unit. The biotic
components include all the living things whereas the abiotic
components are the non-living things. Thus, an ecosystem
science definition entails an ecological community consisting of
different populations of organisms that live together in a
particular habitat. Natural sciences like ecology and geography
define an ecosystem as a geographic area where organisms,
weather, and landscape, work together to form a “bubble.
How about in biology, what is an ecosystem? In essence, the
ecosystem definition in biology is that it acts as the
fundamental unit of nature. Just as a living organism is made
up of cells that act as the structural and functional units of life,
nature also consists of fundamental units called ecosystems.
 Ecosystem Definition
An ecosystem is a system consisting of biotic and abiotic components
 What is a simple definition of an ecosystem?
An ecosystem is a community plus the environment. Ecology, which is the
scientific study of the interactions between populations or between
organisms and the environment, can be viewed at the level of an individual,
a population, a community, or an ecosystem.
• Ecology at the level of individuals is concerned chiefly with the individual
organism’s physiology, reproduction, and development. At the level of
population, ecology deals primarily with the attributes and the various
factors affecting the population. At the level of community, ecology
studies the interactions between populations and community patterns. At
the level of an ecosystem, ecology puts all of them together to understand
how the system operates as a unit. Thus, an ecosystem ecology would be
more concerned about energy flow and nutrient cycles than about
individual species.
The term was coined in the early 1930s by the botanist, Roy Clapham, to
denote the physical and biological components of an environment.
However, it was the British Ecologist, Arthur Tansley, who first introduced
the concept: “The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts”.
Synonyms: environs; ecological community.
Levels of Organization for Ecosystem
 Another definition for Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a geographic area where plants, animals, and

other organisms, as well as weather and landscape, work
together to form a bubble of life. Bison are a keystone species
of the tall-grass prairie ecosystem of the Great Plains of the
United States and Canada.
Two components of the ecosystem: Biotic and
Abiotic
 (1) Biotic components
The biotic components include all the living things. Basically, there are two major
types of living things. They are the eukaryotes and the prokaryotes. Eukaryotes are
characterized by having membrane-bound organelles (such as a nucleus) inside their
cells. The prokaryotes, in turn, are those lacking membrane- bound organelles.
Examples of eukaryotes are plants, animals, fungi, and protests. Bacteria,
cyanobacteria, rickettsia represent the prokaryotes.
Plants, for instance, have chloroplasts that enable them to harvest light energy.
Then, they take carbon dioxide and water from their environment to convert them
into sugar, a biomolecule that can be used to synthesize chemical energy (such as
ATP). Because they are capable of producing their own food through photosynthesis,
they are referred to as the Producers. Next to the producers are the primary
consumers. They feed on the producers while they serve as a food source to the
higher levels of consumers (e.g. secondary and tertiary).
The animals are examples of consumers. The animals that feed on plants are
called herbivores whereas those that feed on other animals are carnivores. Then,
there are those that feed on both plants and animals. They are called omnivores
 Biotic components include
1-Producers: (auto-trophies)
Producers are the source of all food in an ecosystem.
-On land: green plants
- algae at Fresh water and reed swamps
-Sea phytoplankton
-Macroalgae
-Cyanobacteria
(Photosynthesis + Chemosynthesis)
2-Consumers:
• 1-Primary consumers (herbivorous)
• 2-Secondary consumers (carnivorous)
• 3-Tertiary consumers (large carnivorous)
• 4-Omniverous (mixed diet)
3- Decomposers: mostly certain types of bacteria & Fungi
4-Detritiovres: live on all detritus, parts of dead organisms.
 Detritivores

Detritivores are heterotrophs that obtain nutrients by

consuming detritus. There are many kinds of invertebrates,
vertebrates and plants. By doing so, all these detritivores
contribute to decomposition and the nutrient cycles.
Detritivores ‫هي كائنات غيرية التغذية تحصل على العناصر الغذائية عن‬
.‫طريق استهالك المخلفات‬
1) Biotic components(food chain)
 (2) Abiotic components
The abiotic components include all the non-living things,
such as rocks, soil, minerals, water sources, and the local
atmosphere. The abiotic components also have their
ecological role. For example, elements and compounds serve
as sources of nutrients. They are essential to the growth and
metabolism of an organism. Apart from providing nutrients,
they also provide organisms a place to live and thrive —
a habitat.
 Abiotic components include
1-Atmosphere which consists of:
1-Nitrogen gas 78.08%
2-Oxygen gas 20.95%
3-Argon 0.93%
4-Carbon oxide 0.03%
5-Traces of hydrogen gas, helium, krypton, zynon, ozone, methane
2-Climatic factors
Include light, temperature, precipitation, winds, humidity, evaporation etc.
3-Edaphic factors
It includes soil texture, organic matter in soil, soil reaction (pH), minerals, etc.
4-Water bodies
• It includes water pH, salinity, light, oxygen, depth, tidal, nutrients, etc.
5-Physiographic factors (topography)
It includes the structure and behavior of the earth's surface, such as: elevation,
wadis, slopes, exposure, etc.
 Kinds of organism's interactions
The biotic and the abiotic components interact with one
another as a system and are linked to one another via
nutrient cycles and energy flows. For instance, energy
and nutrients enter the system via the photoautotrophs.
They are organisms that carry out photosynthesis, such
as plants and green algae. Then, the heterotrophs, for
example, animals, feed on the photoautotrophs. This
makes the energy and the nutrients move through the
system. The death of these organisms incites
decomposition by the decomposers. This process
releases the nutrients back to the environment to be re-
used by the organisms.
 Kinds of organism's interactions (1)
1- Predation &Competition
2-Commensalism
3-Parasitism
4-Symbiosis (Mutualism)
5-Alleopathy (Amensalism)
1-Competition and Predation
When one entity hunts another animal to suffice its
nutritional requirements, it is referred to as predation. A
predator is an entity that hunts its prey. For example, a
snake eats a frog and carnivorous plants eat insects.
Competition, on the other hand, is when populations or
even an individual compete for food resources. It is often
referred to as exploitative or consumptive competition.
 Kinds of Organism's interactions (2)
2-Commensalism
It is an imbalanced type of interaction wherein one entity
benefits while the other is neither harmed nor benefited.
For example: Metabiosis – One entity is dependent on the
other for survival example: Epiphytes.
3-Parasitism
One entity benefits from other entities and they harmed,
but not necessarily killed. The entity that is harmed is the
host and the one benefited is the parasite. When the host
is killed, this type of behavior is referred to as
parasitoidism. These parasites can be living on the surface
of the host, often addressed as ectoparasites, while
endoparasites live inside the host( ‫هالوك الفول وحامول‬
‫)البرسيم‬.
 Kinds of organism's interactions (3)
4-Mutualism(Symbiosis)
• Both species involved in the interaction are benefited. These
interactions take place in three patterns:
• a- Facultative mutualism – Species survive on their own under
favorable conditions
• b-Obligate mutualism – One species is dependent for survival on
the other (Lichens)
• c-Diffusive mutualism – One entity can live with multiple partners
• These relationships have three purposes:
5-Amensalism(Alleopathy)
• In this type of interaction, when one population finds itself in
danger the other population is not majorly affected. For instance,
Tall and wide plants hinder the growth of comparatively smaller
plants. Some plants even secrete substances that repress the
growth of nearby plants in order to remove competition.
•
 Food Chain and Food Webs

• The movement of energy and organic matter

(nutrients) from one organism to another makes up
a food chain. A typical food chain in a grassland
might move from grasses (producer) to rabbits
(primary consumers that eat grasses) to snakes
(secondary consumers that eat rabbits) to hawks
(tertiary consumers that eat snakes). Ecosystems
contain many food chains that overlap and
interconnect to form a food web.
 A food chain & a food web

Organisms in a community are linked through what they eat

and what eats them. A food chain is a single pathway
connecting a producer with several levels of consumers. In a
typical marine food chain, dinoflagellates convert energy from
sunlight into food through photosynthesis and store it in their
tissues. Copepods feed on dinoflagellates and incorporate this
energy into their own tissues. The energy is transferred to
sunfish when they feed on copepods, to small sharks that feed
on sunfish, and to large sharks that feed on small sharks. The
feeding relationships in an ecosystem consist of many food
chains interconnected into a network called a food web.
To learn more about this, proceed to: Processes
of the Ecosystem.
The biotic and abiotic components can also serve as environmental
(ecological) factors that affect the ecosystem. The biotic components whose
biological activity creates an impact in the ecosystem are referred to as
the biotic factors. The abiotic factors, in turn, include the non-living things
and the physical aspects of an ecosystem, such as climate, temperature, and
pH.
An example of a biotic factor is the extent of predation in an ecosystem. If
there is an increase in the number of predators, predation activity would
likely increase. This, in turn, could significantly lessen the population
density of their prey. If their prey is a key species, meaning another group of
organisms depends on them for survival, then the decline (or worse, the
extinction) of these key species could also lead to the decline (or worse, the
extinction) of the organisms relying upon them.
As for the abiotic factor, they can regulate the size or the density of a
species population. For instance, acid rain, which is unusually acidic
precipitation and has high levels of hydrogen ions, can produce detrimental
effects to the soil (e.g. leaching) as well as to the plants and aquatic animals
that are sensitive to low pH.
Pyramid Number of individuals