Name: hunter Davis

Chapter 2 Section 1 Outline

I. Ecology
Organisms depend on other organisms and nonliving factors in their
environment for survival.
Ecology scientific discipline in which the relationships among living organisms
and the interaction the organisms have with their environments are studied.
Ecologists observe, experiment, and model using a variety of tools and methods.
II. The Biosphere
The biosphere is the portion of the earth that supports life.
The biosphere includes the land, water, and the lower part of the atmosphere.
A. Biotic Factors
Biotic Factors are living factors in an organisms environment.
Interactions among organisms are necessary for the survival of species in the
same geographic location.
B. Abiotic Factors
Abiotic Factors are the nonliving factors in an organisms environment.
Organisms adapt to survive in the abiotic factors in their natural
environment.
III. Levels of Organization
The biosphere is too large to study as a whole.
Ecologists divide the biosphere into levels to study.
The levels of organization are:
Organism
Population
Biological community
Ecosystem
Biome
Biosphere
The levels increase in complexity as the number and the interactions between
organisms increase.
A. Organisms, populations, and biological communities
The lowest level of organization is an individual organism.
Organisms of a single species that share the same location at the same time
make up a population.
A Biological Community is a group of interacting populations that occupy
the same place at the same time.
B. Ecosystems, biomes, and the biosphere
An Ecosystem is a biological community and all of the abiotic factors that
affect it.
A Biome is a large group of ecosystems that share the same climate and have
similar types of communities.
IV. Ecosystem Interactions
A habitat is an area where an organism lives.
A niche is the role or position an organism has in its environment.
V. Community Interactions
A. Competition
Occurs when more than one organism uses a same resource at the same
time
Competition is stronger when resources are scarce.
B. Predation
Predation the act of an organism consuming another organism for food.
The organism that pursues the other is a predator and the one being
pursued is the prey.
C. Symbiotic relationships
Symbiosis is a close relationship that exists when two or more species live
together.
There are 3 types of symbiosis
Mutualism both organisms benefit.
Commensalism one organism benefits and the other is neither
helped nor harmed.
Parasitism one organism benefits at the expense of another.