Ecology
If one part of an ecosystem falls it can effect all other parts of the ecosystem, this is called interdependence.
Competition, this where organism compete for different resources.
Animals compete for:
Plants compete for:
Territory
A mate
Food and water
Light
water
mineral ions
All these factors are limited, so to make sure they get enough organism must compete with each other. This can be either:
Inter-species is where organism from different species compete for resources (loins and hyenas competing for wilder beasts)
Intra-species is where organism from the same species compete for resources (male deer compete for mates).
Interdependence is shown by a food web that shows the feeding patterns of an ecosystem.
Within ecosystems there are two types of factors Aboitic and boitic factors.
Predator-prey graphs
This is a way of showing the relationship between predator and prey within an ecosystem, this nature is a cyclical nature.
The first four components of a food chain are:
Producer
Primary consumer
Secondary consumer
Tertiary consumer
Assessing ecosystems
Population sizes can be measured via two ways
Quadrats
Transects
These are square frames used to estimate population sizes
These can be used to investigate the effect of a factor on the distribution of a species.
Quadrats are placed at regular intervals along the line
To perform the experiment, work out length and height of you area, then assign each 1 meter box a coordinate, they using a random number generator select some coordinates. Using a quadrat count the amount of what you are looking that er within the box, then after doing this for all your boxes chosen by the random number calculate the mean of all the species. Finally multiple the mean by the total number of quadrats in the area.