What Is An Ecosystem?

Welcome to another episode of Natural World Facts!
This fact file is all about What Is an Ecosystem.

Okay, so first of all. Just what is an Ecosystem? An ecosystem is a complete community of living organisms and the nonliving materials of their surroundings. This includes plants, animals, microorganisms and their environment, such as soil, rocks, and minerals. An Ecosystem also consists of the local atmosphere. Animals and plants within an ecosystem depend on each other for their survival. If conditions change, they need to adapt quickly to survive.
Ecosystems can be a variety of different sizes, ranging from an entire rain forest to a small puddle or your garden. Even an animal could be considered an ecosystem, containing many microorganisms. But some of the much larger examples, such as deserts, tundra, coral reefs or forests are called biomes. In each of these, the animals and plant life all depend on each other in different ways.

Herbivores rely on the plants (also called producers) as a food source, and carnivorous animals will prey on those herbivores. This is called a food chain, and when all the food chains in an ecosystem are joined up together they form a food web.

But what would happen if one species in the food web started to decline?

For example, slugs, rabbits and insects all eat grass. If there were fewer slugs there would be more grass for the rabbits and insects. With more food the populations of rabbits and insects would increase. However, the thrushes (which prey on the insects and slugs) would have to eat more insects to compensate for the fewer slugs, so the population of insects could decrease.

Every ecosystem consists of some form of food web. So, in a way, ecosystems are basically made up of systems of life.

Okay… so what are the components of an ecosystem? There are two different types of components, the Abiotic factors and the Biotic factors. The Abiotic factors are the nonliving components which make up the environment of the ecosystem, such as the amount of sunlight, the temperature, the amount of rainfall or how much moisture there is in the air. The Biotic factors of an ecosystem, on the other hand, are the living features, such as the producers, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and detrivores.

These living features are also the main components of a food chain, the producers being the plants at the bottom, being eaten by the herbivores which are then eaten by the carnivores.

Ecosystems also go through a number of processes, they have energy flows and cycle materials. The energy is first consumed by the plants through photosynthesis, and is converted to heat energy. The animals in an ecosystem also obtain elements such as carbon, nitrogen, or phosphorus from their environment. All these materials are then excreted or broken down by decomposers from an animals corpse.

Decomposers and scavengers break down dead plants and animals and their excrement. Decomposers are very important for all ecosystems. If they didn’t exist, the plants wouldn’t get their essential nutrients, and all the dead matter and waste would pile up and the energy and materials wouldn’t be cycled through the ecosystem.

Natural World Facts is a channel dedicated to bringing you fascinating facts about our natural world, and the wonderful animals that we share it with.

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