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An exception occurs in deep-sea hydrothermal ecosystems, where there is no sunlight. Here primary producers manufacture food through a process called chemosynthesis. [5] Consumers (heterotrophs) are species that cannot manufacture their own food and need to consume other organisms. Animals that eat primary producers (like plants) are called ...
Gross primary production (GPP) is the amount of chemical energy, typically expressed as carbon biomass, that primary producers create in a given length of time.Some fraction of this fixed energy is used by primary producers for cellular respiration and maintenance of existing tissues (i.e., "growth respiration" and "maintenance respiration").
Ecologically distinct species, on the other hand, have a much larger effect. Similarly, dominant species have a large effect on ecosystem function, while rare species tend to have a small effect. Keystone species tend to have an effect on ecosystem function that is disproportionate to their abundance in an ecosystem. [11]: 324
Two species of comparable biomass may have very different life spans. Thus, a direct comparison of their total biomasses is misleading, but their productivity is directly comparable. The relative energy chain within an ecosystem can be compared using pyramids of energy; also different ecosystems can be compared. There are no inverted pyramids.
The base or basal species in a food web are those species without prey and can include autotrophs or saprophytic detritivores (i.e., the community of decomposers in soil, biofilms, and periphyton). Feeding connections in the web are called trophic links. The number of trophic links per consumer is a measure of food web connectance.
Other researchers believe that the relationship between species diversity and productivity is unimodal within an ecosystem. [27] A 1999 study on grassland ecosystems in Europe, for example, found that increasing species diversity initially increased productivity but gradually leveled off at intermediate levels of diversity. [28]
A species that is a dominant primary producer in its ecosystem, both in terms of abundance and influence on other organisms and the environment. founder effect The accumulation of random genetic changes in an isolated population. freshwater biology functional ecology
Species effect and diversity in an ecosystem can be analyzed through their performance and efficiency. [21] In addition, secondary production in streams can be influenced heavily by detritus that falls into the streams; production of benthic fauna biomass and abundance decreased an additional 47–50% during a study of litter removal and exclusion.