Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Ecosystem Structure and Dynamics - Coggle Diagram

- - - - 1) Producers incorporate chemicals from abiotic reservoirs into organic compounds
        2) Consumers feed on the producers, incorporating some of the chemicals into their own bodies.
        3) Both producers and consumers release some chemicals back to the environment in waste products.
        4) Decomposers play a central role by breaking down the complex organic molecules in detritus.
    - - 1) Some bacteria live symbiotically in the roots of certain species of plants, supplying their hosts with a direct source of unstable nitrogen.
        2) Free-living nitrogen-fixing bacteria in soil or water convert N2 to ammonia NH3, which then picks up another H+ to become ammonium NH4+.
        3) After nitrogen is "fixed", some of the NH4+ is taken up and used by plants
        4) Nitrifying bacteria in soil also convert some of the NH4+ to nitrate NO3- which is more readily...
        5) assimilated by plants. Plants use the nitrogen they assimilate to synthesize molecules such as amino acids, which are then incorporated into proteins.
        6) When a herbivore eats a plant, it digests the proteins into amino acids and then uses the amino acids to build the proteins it needs. Nitrogen-containing waste products are formed during protein metabolism; consumers excrete some nitrogen as well as incorporate some into their body tissues.
        7) Decomposition releases NH4+ from organic compounds back into the soil, replenishing the soil reservoir of NH4+ and, with the help of nitrifying bacteria NO3-.
        8) Under low oxygen conditions, soil bacteria known as dentrifiers strip the oxygen atoms from NO3-, releasing N2 back into the atmosphere and depleting the soil reservoir of ustable nitrogen.
    - - 37.20
        
        Organisms use phosphorus as an ingredient of nucleic acids, phospholipids, and ATP, and as a mineral component of bones and teeth for some animals.
        In the Model
        1) the weathering of rock gradually adds inorganic phosphate to the soil.
        2) Plants assimilate the dissolved phospate ions in the soil and build them into organic compounds.
        3) Consumers obtain phosphorus in organic form by eating plants.
        4) Phosphates are returned to the soil by the action of decomposers on animal waste and the remains of dead plants and animals.
        5) Some phosphate drains from terrestrial ecosystems into the sea, where it may settle and eventually become part of new rocks.
        6) The phosphorus will not cycle back into living organisms until geologic processes uplift the rocks and expose them to weathering, a process that takes millions of years.
- - - - The carbon cycle depends on photosynthesis and respiration.
        
        Photosynthesis removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and incorporates it into organic molecules, which are
        
        passed along the food chain by consumers.
        
        Cellular respiration by producers and consumers returns carbon dioxide to the atmosphere
        
        Decomposers break down the carbon compounds in detritus; that carbon too is eventually released as carbon dioxide.
        
        The increased burning of wood and fossil fuels is raising the level of carbon diovide in the atmosphere.