Abiotic factors are parts of the environment that affect living organisms and ecosystems, while not being alive themselves, like rocks, wind, temperature, and rain. Biotic factors are living parts of the environment that affect other organisms. These include plants, animals and fungi. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Physics Is a dead organism abiotic? Ben Davis May 16, A food chain or food web comprises a sequence of organisms through which energy and nutrients are taken in and used up.
Food chains begin from producers to consumers and the major feeding levels are called Trophic Levels. Producers belong to the First Trophic Level. Primary consumers, whether feeding on living or dead producers feed from the Second Trophic Level. Organisms that feed on other consumers belong to the Third Tropic Level. Mutual relationships:. Relations between organisms can be. Examples include ticks, fleas, mosquitoes, mistletoe plants and fungi. Competitive Relationships:. Plant and animal species compete over food, water, territorial space and mating with the opposite sex.
The Principle of Competitive Exclusion: explains that no two species can occupy the same niche food or space successfully in a stable community. Closely related species therefore live far from one another. This is because p lants and animals must compete for water, nutrients, light and space.
The outcome of this competition determines the character of an ecosystem. Processes through which elements that sustain life water, carbon, phosphorus and nitrogen are continuously made available to living organisms. The aboveground biomass produces several important resources for other living things, including habitat and food. Conversely, dry and cold environments have lower photosynthetic rates and therefore less biomass. The animal communities living there will also be affected by the decrease in available food.
Inorganic nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, are important in the distribution and the abundance of living things.
Plants obtain these inorganic nutrients from the soil when water moves into the plant through the roots. Therefore, soil structure particle size of soil components , soil pH, and soil nutrient content play an important role in the distribution of plants.
Animals obtain inorganic nutrients from the food they consume. Therefore, animal distributions are related to the distribution of what they eat. In some cases, animals will follow their food resource as it moves through the environment. Water is required by all living things because it is critical for cellular processes.
Since terrestrial organisms lose water to the environment by simple diffusion, they have evolved many adaptations to retain water. Organisms surrounded by water are not immune to water imbalance; they too have unique adaptations to manage water inside and out of cells.
Some abiotic factors, such as oxygen, are important in aquatic ecosystems as well as terrestrial environments. Terrestrial animals obtain oxygen from the air they breathe. Oxygen availability can be an issue for organisms living at very high elevations, however, where there are fewer molecules of oxygen in the air. In aquatic systems, the concentration of dissolved oxygen is related to water temperature and the speed at which the water moves.
Cold water has more dissolved oxygen than warmer water. In addition, salinity, current, and tide can be important abiotic factors in aquatic ecosystems. Figure 7. The mature cones of the jack pine open only when exposed to high temperatures, such as during a forest fire. Wind can be an important abiotic factor because it influences the rate of evaporation and transpiration.
Fire is another terrestrial factor that can be an important agent of disturbance in terrestrial ecosystems. Some organisms are adapted to fire and, thus, require the high heat associated with fire to complete a part of their life cycle.
For example, the jack pine Pinus banksiana —a coniferous tree—requires heat from fire for its seed cones to open. A fire is likely to kill most vegetation, so a seedling that germinates after a fire is more likely to receive ample sunlight than one that germinates under normal conditions. Through the burning of pine needles, fire adds nitrogen to the soil and limits competition by destroying undergrowth.
Answer the question s below to see how well you understand the topics covered in the previous section. This short quiz does not count toward your grade in the class, and you can retake it an unlimited number of times.
Use this quiz to check your understanding and decide whether to 1 study the previous section further or 2 move on to the next section. Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Module Ecology of Living Things. Search for:. Biotic and Abiotic Factors Distinguish between abiotic and biotic components of the environment Many forces influence the communities of living organisms present in different parts of the biosphere all of the parts of Earth inhabited by life.
Learning Objectives Define the term biogeography and the abiotic factors that impact it Discuss how abiotic factors affect species distribution Identify ways energy sources impact the biotic factors of biogeography Identify ways temperature impacts the biotic factors of biogeography Identify abiotic factors that impact plant growth Identify other abiotic factors that impact the biogeography of our world.
Practice Question How might turnover in tropical lakes differ from turnover in lakes that exist in temperate regions? However, stratification does occur, as well as seasonal turnover.
Licenses and Attributions. But fungi do not contain chlorophyll , the pigment that green plants use to make their own food with the energy of sunlight. Instead, fungi get all their nutrients from dead materials that they break down with special enzymes. The next time you see a forest floor carpeted with dead leaves or a dead bird lying under a bush, take a moment to appreciate decomposers for the way they keep nutrients flowing through an ecosystem.
Also called an autotroph. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. Tyson Brown, National Geographic Society. National Geographic Society. For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher.
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