EE-Unit-I An Ecosystem and the Different Components of It

An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the living organisms in a particular area as well as the non living component such as air, water, soil, and sunlight. It is the basic functional unit as it includes both the organism and its environment each influencing the properties of the other and are necessary for the survival and maintenance of life. The entire group of organisms inhabiting a particular ecosystem is called as a community. An ecosystem consists of four components and any recognizable unit of nature can be considered an ecosystem if it includes these four components.

The four components are:
1. Non living environment (abiotic component). These include air, water, soil, sunlight, and basic elements or components of the environment. The non living components enter the body of the living organisms, take part in various metabolic activities and then return back to the environment.
It can be further divided into
a. Climatic, which includes physical factors such as temperature, relative humidity etc.
b. Inorganic substances such as water, carbon, nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, etc.that helps in transporting and regulating the materials in the ecosystem.
c. Organic substances such as protein, carbohydrates, lipids etc. which largely form the living body that connects the biotic and abiotic components.

2. Producers or energy transducers (biotic component). These convert solar energy into chemical energy with the help of inorganic substances such as water and carbon dioxide and organic substances such as enzymes. The producers are autotrophic or self nourishing organisms and they are mostly green plants, which posses the green pigment called chlorophyll that converts solar energy into chemical energy particles. These include grasses, shrubs, plants, trees, phytoplankton, sea weeds etc.

3. Consumers (biotic component). These depend on other organisms for their nutrition. They are also called heterotrophs or other nurishing. Depending upon their food habits they may be classified into
a. Herbivores or plant eaters such as zooplankton, insects, rabbits, squirrels, deer, cattle, elephant etc.
b. Carnivores or flesh eaters such as praying mantis, snakes, leopard, tiger, lion etc.

4. Decomposers (biotic component). These are heterotrophic organisms which depend upon dead organic matter for their food. They break down complex organic matter like cellulose, hemicllulose, chitin etc. that are found on plant and animal bodies, into simple substances. These are mainly microorganisms such as bacteria, actinomycetes and fungi. There are also decomposer organisms such as the invertebrate animals like protozoa and oligochaetes such as earthworms, enchytraeid worms, etc. which uses dead organic matter for their food.