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Ecology - Coggle Diagram
Ecology
Key terms
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Biodiversity
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It is a combination of the number of different species and the abundance of each species (evenness of numbers)
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Carbon cycle
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Respiration produces carbon dioxide from organic compounds as they are broken down to release energy
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Decomposers break down the dead organisms and return the carbon in their bodies to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide by respiration
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Eutrophication
1) Farmers add fertilisers to their soil to help their crops grow. These fertilisers are rich in nutrients
2) When rain occurs, it washes the excess fertiliser out of the soil into rivers that lead into the ocean (runoff)
3) The fertiliser causes algal blooms, where the large quantities of nutrients encourage huge amounts of algae and plankton to grow. This algae covers the ocean surface and prevents light from the Sun from passing through to the rest of the plants below
4) When all of this algae dies, it sinks to the ocean floor, where it is decomposed by bacteria. This process of decay consumes oxygen
5) Because of the unusually high amounts of death and therefore decomposition, oxygen levels drop below normal, resulting in the deaths of most animals that happen to live there.
6) This results in a positive feedback loop, and the process continues and perhaps even ramps up.
Nitrogen cycle
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Decomposers break down urea, egested material (eg faeces), and dead bodies. This results in nitrogen being returned to the soil as ammonium ions
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Pyramids (of numbers, biomass, and energy)
of biomass
Obtain the average biomass of organisms by taking a few specimens, desiccating (drying) them, and weighing the dry mass
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of energy
This is the same as a pyramid of biomass, except a calorimeter is used to find out the average energy/gram of the organism, and this number is multiplied by the biomass
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Energy flow
If the energy released in respiration is used for cell growth, then the energy can be passed up to the next trophic level
If the energy released in respiration is used for other processes then it is lost as heat energy and cannot be passed up to the next trophic level
Because of these 2 main concepts, only around 10% of the energy entering a trophic level is passed on to the next trophic level
This means that by the 4th trophic level only 0.1% of the original energy is passed down to this level, and at the 5th trophic level only 0.01% is left
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Bioaccumulation
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As you go up the trophic levels, bioaccumulation gets more and more severe, as each trophic level eats multiple organisms of the trophic level below
Only a small amount of toxic chemicals are absorbed by each organism at the first trophic level, so bioaccumulation only affects organisms that are higher up the food chain
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