ENV200H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Heterotroph, Thermodynamics, Environmental Factor
Document Summary
Review of ecosystems: what are they, what are their important characteristics, how are they organized, keystone species. Life on earth is organized into interconnected systems arranged in levels of organization (hierarchies: made up of abiotic and biotic components that cycle, four hierarchical layers, ecosystems. Places with similar abiotic characteristics: community (different on every ecosystem, population, individual. Ecosystem 2: in contrast, aquatic ecosystems often contain highly specialized species found in neither of the adjacent systems. Living: ecological community (set of species we can anticipate to have in that ecosystem: process. Flow of energy: change/sucession (is what we see a snapshot of the process of change of the ecosystem?) Ecosystems cycle energy and nutrients: five important cycles, energy, water, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus. For every environmental factor and every population there is an environmental optimum: for any particular population, numbers will be highest where all relevant environmental conditions are optimal, some organisms have generally wide ranges of tolerance (generalists).