ORGANISMS AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT

Ecosystem:
- A unit containing all of the organisms and their environment, interacting together in a
given area.
- It can refer to the community and all he physical factors that influence it.
- Examples of ecosystems are; pond, forest, mountain etc.
Community:
- All the organisms of all the different species living in the same area.
- All populations of all species in an area.
Population:
- A group of organisms of one species living in the same area at the same time.
Habitat:
- An area where an organism lives
Niche:
- The role of an organism in an ecosystem, based on the way it lives its life.
Energy Flow
All living organisms, animals and plants alike, need energy. All the energy in an ecosystem
comes from the sun (solar energy).
- Some of the energy in sunlight is captured by plants to make organic substances (food)
like glucose, starch, fat, proteins etc.
- Some of the energy is reflected back
- Some of the energy is not used by plants because it is of wrong wavelength
When plants photosynthesize and make organic compounds (food), they would be converting
solar energy into chemical energy (in the food stored). When the plants need energy, they
break down the organic compounds they store (mainly by respiration). Animals get energy by
eating plants or other animals that would have eaten plants. This means that both plants and
animals store chemical energy (originally from solar energy). This stored chemical energy can
be transferred to the environment (mainly in the form of heat).
Feeding relationships
Producer:
 - Green plants that make organic nutrients (food) using the captured solar energy through
photosynthesis. They are the source of all the food in the ecosystem. All the other
organisms depend on the food made by these plants.
Consumers:
- Organisms that obtain their energy by feeding on other organisms
Primary consumer/Herbivore
- An animal which gets energy by feeding directly on plants. Examples include locusts,
aphids, hare, rabbit etc.
Secondary consumer:
- This is a carnivore (flesh eating) that gets its energy by feeding on herbivores.
Tertiary consumer:
- Animal (carnivore) that eats secondary consumers.
Decomposer:
- Organism that gets its energy from dead or waste organic material. Examples are
bacteria, fungi etc.
Food chain
- The transfer of energy from one organism to the next
- The sequence by which energy, in the form of food, passes from a plant to consumers
through ingestion
- Every food chain starts with a producer, followed by primary consumer, secondary
consumer and tertiary consumer
******write the food chain on page 266 (Mary Jones, IGCSE Biology).
***** Make three more food chains of your own using different organisms
- In a food chain, the arrows show the flow of energy
- Every stage in the food chain is called a trophic level
Sources of inefficiency in energy transfers (energy losses)
- Respiration: when an organism is respiring, some of the energy from food is lost to the
environment as heat mainly through radiation
- Losses during consumption: some parts of plants may fall to the ground and herbivores
may not be able to pick them up. Some parts like tubers and roots may be hidden in the
soil and are not accessible for consumption. Most animals cannot eat bones and hooves
of other animals.
 - Indigestible material: there are some materials like seeds which are able to pass through
the digestive system without being digested. They are eventually lost in faeces
- Excretion: Faeces and urine still contain substantial amounts of energy in them. That is
why cow-dung can actually be used for cooking or to make biogas.
The energy that is lost at each trophic level does not reach the next trophic level. This means
the further along the food chain, the less the energy there is. This is why most food chains do
not exceed five trophic levels. The available energy in the fourth or fifth trophic level is no
longer sufficient to sustain organisms in the next trophic level. The number of organisms at
each trophic level becomes less and less along a food chain for the same reason.
** Energy is not recycled. It is progressively lost along the chain e.g as heat from respiration.
**Which is wiser, humans feeding on plants or feed plants to livestock and then eat meat, milk
and eggs from livestock?
Food web
- It is a network of interconnected food chains
- A number of interlinked food chains
The diet of a consumer is more varied in an ecosystem than a food chain suggests. This is why a
food web is more informative than a food chain.
****** Draw a food web on page 266 (Mary Jones, IGCSE Biology). Try to name all the animals
in this food web that are secondary consumers. If one named consumer was to be poisoned
and die, what would be the consequences in the ecosystem? If humans where to harvest some
plant species or introduce some animal species that eat grasshoppers, what would be the
effect?
Pyramid of numbers
It shows how many living organisms are involved at every trophic level. The size of the block
represents the number of organisms. It does not, however, consider the size of the organisms
involved or the energy relationships e.g a large tree with many leaves is considered to be one
organism despite the amount of energy it stores. This results in upside down pyramids
** Draw the pyramid of numbers on page 267 and 268 (Mary Jones, IGCSE Biology).
Pyramid of biomass
It shows the mass of organisms at every trophic level. It gives a much better idea of the actual
quantity of plant or animal material, rather than numbers, at each trophic level. It can be based
on fresh mass (with moisture) or dry mass (without moisture). Fresh mass is not reliable as it
fluctuates, unlike dry mass.
****Draw a pyramid on page 268 (Mary Jones, IGCSE Biology)
 Pyramid of energy
The amount of energy within each organism has to be found. This is done by completely
burning a dead organism from each trophic level and record the temperature rise for a given
quantity of water that is heated. The energy in the organism can be determined and if it
multiplied by the number of organisms at each trophic level, the energy pyramid can be
constructed.
****Draw the energy pyramid on page 268 (Mary Jones, IGCSE Biology).
- It is much more energy efficient for humans to be primary consumers (eating plant
material; maize, wheat, potatoes) than being secondary consumers (eating animal
products; meat, milk, eggs) because energy would have been wasted
- Humans feed at different trophic levels within one meal (eating meat, vegetables, rice)
- As population increases, diets may have to change to vegetarian ones.
- The number of trophic levels must be reduced to obtain more food from a given area of
land
- Feeding on animals rather than plants (for humans) is only an advantage in that meat is
easier to digest and humans cannot digest cellulose. Animals will digest cellulose and
convert it into products that become valuable to humans (when they eat the animals).