Tag: issues of the environment

An ecosystem is fundamentally composed of two interacting parts: the biotic (living) community and the abiotic (non-living) environment.

Biotic factors refer to all living organisms in an ecosystem. Grass is a living plant, while water, sunlight, and oxygen are abiotic factors.

The term biocenosis was coined by Karl Mobius in 1877. It describes the interacting organisms living together in a habitat (biotope). Based on the concept of biocenosis, ecological communities can take in various forms zoocenosis for the faunal community, phytocenosis for the flora community and microbiocenosis for the microbial community.

Nice is the ecological role and space that an organism fills in the ecosystem. The ecological niche involves both the place where an organism live and role that an organism carries out in its habitat e.g. A plant growing in garden along with soil, climate, sunlight, nutrients etc.

Forests provide excellent introduction to the foundational concepts of ecology, since they are among the most structurally and biologically diverse of the planets ecosystems. Forests are built upon highly complex relationships between living and non-living components. In a forest, abiotic factors include fundamentals such as sunlight, moisture, nutrients, bedrock and topography. Biotic components are the living members of the system. A defining trait of an ecosystem is the cycling of nutrients and energy between organisms and their environment, and it is these abiotic components that provide the foundation for interaction between members of ecological communities. 

Living organisms constantly take in or give out various abiotic factors. Thus, each biotic factor affects the quality of the abiotic factor around itself and thus affects the lives of the other biotic factors with which it share the ecosystem.

Abiotic factors are the non living part of ecosystem. This can be distinguished into organic and inorganic. Organic include proteins, methane, carbohydrates etc., whereas inorganic includes iron, magnesium, oxygen, nitrogen etc.

An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment, interacting as a system. The fundamental source of energy in almost all ecosystems is radiant energy from the sun. The autotrophs processes the light energy and use the energy stored within the simple carbohydrates to produce the more complex organic compounds. The flow of energy through the ecosystem drives the movement of nutrients within the ecosystem. Decomposers play a key role in many of these cycles, returning nutrients to the soil, water, or air, where they can be used again by the biotic constituents of the ecosystem.

A species whose presence and role within an ecosystem has a disproportionate effect on other organisms within the system. A keystone species is often a dominant predator whose removal allows a prey population to explode and often decreases overall diversity. It includes the American alligators, beavers, bees, elephants, gopher tortoises, grizzly bears, hummingbirds, ivory tree corals, jaguars, mountain lions, mycorrhizal fungi, Pacific salmon and prairie dogs. Thus, Mycorrhiza is a keystone species.

The biosphere is the world of living organisms together with soil layers (land or lithosphere), water (hydrosphere) and air (atmosphere) on the earth surface. Hence, it consists of 4 parts as land, water, air and living organisms. Of which  land, water and air are abiotic or non-living components and living organisms are biotic or living components. 
Producers are one of the type of biotic component, which produce their own food material from simple inorganic substances like $CO _2$ and water in presence of sunlight. E.g., Plants.
Consumers are one of the type of biotic component, which consume food prepared by producers. E.g., Human being, animals.
Decomposers are one of the type of biotic component, which derive their food material from dead, decaying matter. Eg. Bacteria, fungi.
Hence, option A, B and C are incorrect. 
Air is a abiotic or non-living type of component of biosphere. Therefore, option D is correct.