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Abiotic components include physical conditions and non-living resources that affect living organisms in terms of growth, maintenance, and reproduction. Resources are distinguished as substances or objects in the environment required by one organism and consumed or otherwise made unavailable for use by other organisms.
Abiotic stress is the negative impact of non-living factors on the living organisms in a specific environment. [1] The non-living variable must influence the environment beyond its normal range of variation to adversely affect the population performance or individual physiology of the organism in a significant way.
The abiotic factors that environmental gradients consist of can have a direct ramifications on organismal survival. Generally, organismal distribution is tied to those abiotic factors, but even an environmental gradient of one abiotic factor yields insight into how a species distribution might look.
Abiotic and biotic factors may work together in determining the range of a species. An example might be some obligate seeder plants where the distribution is limited by the presence of wildfires, which are needed to allow their seed bank to germinate, and also use dispersal of their seeds mediated by ants.
Random distribution is rare in nature as biotic factors, such as the interactions with neighboring individuals, and abiotic factors, such as climate or soil conditions, generally cause organisms to be either clustered or spread. Random distribution usually occurs in habitats where environmental conditions and resources are consistent.
Epilobium hirsutum — Seed head. In the broadest sense, dispersal occurs when the fitness benefits of moving outweigh the costs. There are a number of benefits to dispersal such as locating new resources, escaping unfavorable conditions, avoiding competing with siblings, and avoiding breeding with closely related individuals which could lead to inbreeding depression.
Interconnected groundwater systems create a mechanism for distribution of life to wider area. [ 257 ] Mulkidjanian and co-authors argue that marine environments did not provide the ionic balance and composition universally found in cells, or the ions required by essential proteins and ribozymes, especially with respect to high K + /Na + ratio ...
Ecology – scientific study of the distribution and abundance of living organisms and how the distribution and abundance are affected by interactions between the organisms and their environment. The environment of an organism includes both physical properties, which can be described as the sum of local abiotic factors such as solar insolation ...