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v. t. e. Ecology (from Ancient Greek οἶκος (oîkos) 'house' and -λογία (-logía) 'study of') [A] is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere levels.
e. An ecosystem (or ecological system) is a system that environments and their organisms form through their interaction. [2]: 458 The biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Ecosystems are controlled by external and internal factors. External factors such as climate, parent material which ...
Plant ecology. Plant ecology is a subdiscipline of ecology that studies the distribution and abundance of plants, the effects of environmental factors upon the abundance of plants, and the interactions among plants and between plants and other organisms. [1] Examples of these are the distribution of temperate deciduous forests in North America ...
Definition. An ecotype is a variant in which the phenotypic differences are too few or too subtle to warrant being classified as a subspecies. These different variants can occur in the same geographic region where distinct habitats such as meadow, forest, swamp, and sand dunes provide ecological niches. Where similar ecological conditions occur ...
Biodiversity is commonly measured in terms of taxonomic richness of a geographic area over a time interval. In order to calculate biodiversity, species evenness, species richness, and species diversity are to be obtained first. Species evenness[181] is the relative number of individuals of each species in a given area.
Competition for shared resources reduces a plant's growth. [95] [96] Shared resources include sunlight, water and nutrients. Light is a critical resource because it is necessary for photosynthesis. [95] Plants use their leaves to shade other plants from sunlight and grow quickly to maximize their own expose. [95]
Ecological niche. The flightless dung beetle occupies an ecological niche: exploiting animal droppings as a food source. In ecology, a niche is the match of a species to a specific environmental condition. [1][2] It describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors (for example, by growing when ...
A lake ecosystem or lacustrine ecosystem includes biotic (living) plants, animals and micro-organisms, as well as abiotic (non-living) physical and chemical interactions. [1] Lake ecosystems are a prime example of lentic ecosystems (lentic refers to stationary or relatively still freshwater, from the Latin lentus, which means "sluggish"), which ...