ECOLOGY

1. ECOLOGY MR. ARJUNE ANTIVO LUMAYNO

2. OPENING PRAYER ..\youtube videos\When God Ran Animated Music Video.mp4

3. Course Description • This course is designed to introduce the students to the concepts and principles that deal with the interactions between the organisms and their environment and thus determine the distribution and abundance of organisms.It will also provide the students an understanding of man’s role in manipulating his environment to create solutions for problems in pollution, depletion of basic natural resources, and the like. This course also relates with the study of biological science previously learned by the students since it entails the study of the structure and functions of living things. Students will be made to analyze and assess the present environmental issues and concerns that affect them through a research paper. Finally, students will be made to propose solutions on minimizing or eradicating environmental problems.

4. What is ecology? • the study of the relationship of plants and animals to their physical and biological environment.

5. Physical environment • light and heat or solar radiation • Moisture • Wind • Oxygen • carbon dioxide • nutrients in soil • Water • atmosphere.

6. Biological environment • organisms of the same kind as well as other plants and animals.

7. history • The term ecology was introduced by the German biologist Ernst Heinrich Haeckel in 1866; it is derived from the Greek oikos (“household”), sharing the same root word as economics. Thus, the term implies the study of the economy of nature.

8. Sir Arthur. G. Tansley(British ecologist, 1935) refers to a whole community of organisms and its environment as one unit. • E. P. Odum(American ecologist) - “the study of the structure and function of nature, which includes the living world”. He referred ecosystem as the basic fundamental unit of ecology • Charles Elton (British ecologist) - “the study of scientific natural history” • Andrewartha (Australian ecologist) “the study concerned with the distribution of organisms” • S. Mathavan- “an ecosystem is a sum total of living organisms, the environment and the process of interaction between the various components of the ecosystem”

9. Ecosystem • a biological system consisting of all the living organisms or biotic components in a particular area and the nonliving or abiotic components • provide a variety of goods and services upon which people depend • network on interactions among organisms, and between organisms and their environment • can be defined as a structural and functional unit of biosphere or segment of nature consisting of community of living beings and the physical environment, both interacting and exchanging materials between them.

10. Key processes • (a) the capture of light energy and carbon through photosynthesis • (b) the transfer of carbon and energy through food webs • (c) the release of nutrients and carbon through decomposition

11. An ecosystem may be natural (like forest, lake, ocean etc.) or man-made (such as an aquarium, a crop field etc.), temporary (like a rain fed pond) or permanent (like a lake, forest, etc.), aquatic (such as pond, ocean etc.) or terrestrial (like grassland, forest, etc.). • An ecosystem may be as small as a drop of pond water and as large as an ocean. • Ecosystems can be recognized as self - regulatingand self - sustaining units.

14. STRUCTURAL COMPONENTS OF AN ECOSYSTEM D:\nice videos\AVSEQ01.DAT

15. Autotrophs • (Gr: auto - self, trophos - feeder) are also called producers, convertors or transducers. • These are photosynthetic plants, generally chlorophyll bearing, which synthesize high-energy complex organic compounds (food) from inorganic raw materials with the help of sunlight, and the process is referred as photosynthesis. • It forms the basis of any biotic system. • In terrestrial ecosystems, the autotrophs are mainly the rooted plants. • In aquatic ecosystems, floating plants called phytoplankton and shallow water rooted plants called macrophytes are the dominant producers.

16. Heterotrophs • (Gr: heteros - other; trophs - feeder) are called consumers, which are generally animals feeding on other organisms. • Consumer's also referred as phagotrophs (phago - to ingest or swallow) or macroconsumers are mainly herbivores and carnivores

17. Herbivores • referred as first order consumers or primary consumers, as they feed directly on plants. • (Ex. Terrestrial ecosystem consumers like cattle, deer, rabbit, grass hopper, etc.) • (Ex. Aquatic ecosystem consumers like protozoans, crustaceans, etc.)

18. Carnivores • animals, which feed or prey upon other animals.

19. Primary carnivores(Second order consumers) include the animals which feed on the herbivorous animals. (fox, frog, predatory birds, smaller fishes, snakes, etc.) • Secondary carnivores(Third order consumers) include the animals, which feed on the primary carnivores. These are preyed upon by some larger carnivores. (wolf, peacock, owl, etc.) • Tertiary carnivores(Quaternary consumers) include the animals, which feed on the secondary carnivores. (lion, tiger, etc.)

20. Saprotrophs • (Gr: sapros - rotten; trophos - feeder) are also called decomposers or reducers. They break down the complex organic compounds of dead matter (of plants and animals). • do not ingest their food. Instead they secrete digestive enzymes into the dead and decaying plant and animal remains to digest the organic material. Enzymes act upon the complex organic compounds of the dead matter. • absorb a part of the decomposition products for their own nourishment. The remaining substances are added as minerals to the substratum (mineralization).

21. Abiotic Components • These include the non-living, physico - chemical factors such as air, water, soil and the basic elements and compounds of the environment.

22. Climatic factors – include the climatic regime and physical factors of the environment like light, humidity, atmospheric temperature, wind, etc. • Edaphic factors – related to the structure and composition of soil including its physical and chemical properties, like soil and its types, soil profile, minerals, organic matter, soil water, soil organisms.

23. Structural Characteristics of Ecosystems • Natural ecosystem • Artificial ecosystem

24. Functional Characteristics of Ecosystems • dependent on how all of the organisms interact and influence one another, how the energy of the ecosystem operates. • Can only be considered as a whole, not piecemeal, as every part of the ecosystem has a functional effect on another. • Pertains to the exchanges and interactions between the living and non-living components.

25. Nutrient Cycling • Energy Transfers • Habitats

26. Nutrient Cycling • One role of ecosystems is the transformation and processing of nutrients. As an example, wetlands adjacent to agricultural fields can reduce the nitrate from fertilizer to nitrogen gas and return it to the atmosphere. Similarly, phosphorus entering the water can be absorbed by soil particles and partially decomposed organic matter. These two processes remove nutrients that could pollute nearby streams and rivers.

27. Energy Transfers • The production, utilization and transfer of energy are one of the primary functions of any ecosystem, and one that greatly varies between systems. Energy production begins with primary producers, plants and algae, using carbon dioxide, water and sunlight to generate organic carbon through photosynthesis. Once this carbon has been fixed by plants, it can be transferred to animals grazing on the vegetation or it can be deposited in the soil where it will be decomposed

28. Habitats • Habitat components vary with respect to each individual species, but key components are often types of soil, precipitation, temperature, elevation and the occurrence of natural disturbances. Some physical processes that result in the formation of suitable habitat include flooding, rock weather, soil erosion and accumulation of soil organic matter.

29. HOMEOSTASIS IN THE ECOSYSTEM

30. Homeostasis • (from Greek: hómoios, "similar", and stásis, "standing still") • It is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties such as temperature or pH. It can be either an open or closed system. • Homeostasis or homoeostasis is the property of an open system, especially living organisms, to regulate its internal environment so as to maintain a stable condition, by means of multiple dynamic equilibrium adjustments controlled by interrelated regulation mechanisms.

31. It was defined by Claude Bernard (1926) and later by Walter Bradford Cannon (1932). • Typically used to refer to a living organism, the concept came from that of milieu intérieur that was created by Claude Bernard and published in 1865. • It is one of the fundamental characteristics of living things. It is the maintenance of the internal environment within tolerable limits.