BIO 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Woolly Mammoth, Detritivore, Food Web
21 Feb 2017
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Document Summary
All ecosystems consist of biotic (living) and abiotic (nonliving) components. Nutrients - atoms and molecules that organisms obtain from their environment. Nutrients can be recycled (ex: your body includes oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen atoms that were once part of a dinosaur or a wooly mammoth) They are transported around earth but never leave earth. Solar energy is captured through photosynthesis and then flows from organism to organism. Eventually all of life"s energy is converted to heat that is given off to the environment and can"t be used to drive the chemical reactions of living organisms. Life requires a continuous input of energy. Sun producers consumers decomposers. Energy is passed from one trophic level to the next. Each category of organisms = trophic level. Producers (autotrophs) - make their own food using inorganic nutrients and solar energy from the environment. Consumers (heterotrophs) - organisms that cannot photosynthesize. Acquire energy and nutrients from molecules in the bodies of other organisms.
