A person who is concerned with the protection and preservation of the environment is called an environmentalist.
The term 1ecology’ has been derived from Greek words oikos meaning house and logos meaning study. Ecology is the study of the relationship of organs with one another and their environment. A biologist who studies the relationships between living organisms and their environment is called ecologist.
Ecosystem
Think of the world as a large soccer ball. A soccer ball is made up of smaller pieces. If you assume the world to be a soccer ball, then it would have many pieces, and each piece would have animals, plants, insects and microorganisms. It will also include the natural resources like sunlight, water, air soil and atmospheric factors like temperature, rainfall and wind. All of these together make an ecosystem and in this ecosystem living things interact with each other for food, energy and shelter.
An ecosystem is a region where living organisms interact among themselves and with their physical environment. An ecosystem could be big, small or tiny in size. An ecosystem is a unit with a definite energy flow among its residents. The parts of ecosystem are typical to that ecosystem. The species (a species is a group of living organisms capable of reproducing naturally among themselves) in an ecosystem are interdependent for their survival, for example, in a forest ecosystem.-
- Herbivores depend on plants for food,
- Animals like squirrels make homes in trees,
- Birds use different plant materials to built their nests,
- Ants, beetles, birds and monkeys make shelter on trees.
In turn,
- Plants depend on animals for pollination and dispersal of seeds which help plants to get enough space to grow,
- Carbon dioxide released by animals during respiration is used by plants to make food.
Thus, the survival of an organism is affected by living and non living things around it.
In a soccer ball, different pieces are held together by stitches. In a similar way, the different ecosystems are connected together as the units or biomes that exchange food and energy at different atrophic or food levels. They merge and develop seamlessly.
What makes up an ecosystem?
An ecosystem has two main components –biotic and abiotic.
Plants, animals and microorganism constitute and abiotic.
Non-living things like light, temperature, air, water, humility and soil in the environment constitute the abiotic components.
