01:119:115 Lecture Notes - Lecture 44: Primary Succession, Ecosystem Ecology, Limiting Factor
Document Summary
Dominant species are those that are most abundant or have the highest biomass. One way to discover the impact of a dominant species is to remove it from the community. Keystone species exert strong control on a community by their ecological roles, or niches. Ecological succession is the sequence of a community and ecosystem changes after a disturbance. Secondary succession begins in an area where soil remains. Introduction: ecosystem= all the organisms living in a community, as well as the abiotic factors with which they interact, regardless of an ecosystem"s size, its dynamics involve two main processes, energy flow-one way, chemical cycling-recycling. Energy flows through ecosystems, while matter cycles within ecosystems. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. Every exchange of energy increases the entropy of the universe (some is always lost) Energy enters an ecosystem as solar radiation ( the sun), is conserved and is lost from organisms as heat.