What is Ecosystem | Food Chain Food Web

What is Ecosystem?

Ecosystem

According to E.P. Odum, the ecosystem is the basic functional unit of organism and their environment interacting with each other and with their own component.

Ecosystem Table

Abiotic Component:-

Abiotic component comprises of soil, water, oxygen, carbon di-oxide, organic compound and other solar radiation.

Producers:-

The Producers are autoprophic element that can synthesis their own food.

Primary Consumers:-

These are purely herbivorus animal that are purely dependent on green plants.

Secondary Consumers:-

These are carnivores and omnivores. Carnivores are dependent on herbivores and omnivores are the animals that are adapted to consume herbivores and as well as plants.

Tertiary Consumers:-

These are top carnivores which depend upon other carnivores.

Decomposer:-

Decomposers attack the dead remains of producers and consumers and converted complex substances into simpler one.

What is Artificial Ecosystem?

An Artificial Ecosystem is a human made arrangement of plants, creatures, and individuals living in a region along with their environmental factors. Garden, parks, Agricultural lands are the good example of artificial ecosystem. A balanced aquarium is an example of artificial ecosystem.

Ecological Niches:

The Ecological niche includes the species of organism, environmental factors, the area in which the species live and the specialization of species population within a community. 

In other word total role of species in a community is the ecological niche.

Trophic Level:

The producers and consumers in ecosystem can be arranged in several feeding group, each known as Trophic level. A trophic level is the gathering of life forms inside a biological system which possess a similar level in an evolved way of life. 

There are five principle trophic levels inside an evolved way of life, every one of which varies in its nourishing relationship with the essential vitality source. The primary source of energy is the Sun.

What is Food Chain?

The food manufactured by green plants is utilized by themselves and also by herbivores. Herbivores fall prey to some carnivores. Thus food from one trophic level reaches to other trophic level and in this way a chain is established. This is known as Food Chain.

Food Chain

1) Grazing Food Chain:- Grazing Food Chain starts from green plants and goes from herbivores to primary carnivores and then to secondary carnivores and so on.

2) Parasitic Food Chain:- It goes from large organism to smaller ones without outright killing as in the case of predator.

3) Detritus Food Chain:- The dead organic remains including metabolic wastes and exudates derived from grazing food chain are generally termed as detritus. The energy contained in detritus is not lost in ecosystem, rather it serves as a source of energy for a group of organism called detritivores. So this way it formed and is called detritus food chain.

What is Food Web?

Many food chains exist in the ecosystem, but these food chains are not independent. This type of interrelationship interlinks the individuals of whole community. A complex of interrelated food chains makes up a Food Web.

There are three types of food webs. These are – Connectedness Web, Energy Flow web, and Functional Web.