What is Ecology, exactly? Ecology is the study of interactions that take place between organisms and their environment. It's pretty cool if you think about it. We now know so much about the world around us that we didn't even know say, ten years ago, just from studying the world around us.
If you study an animals habitat, you will notice that it has two important factors, which are Abiotic Factors, and Biotic Factors. Abiotic Factors are the nonliving parts of an organism's environment.
The Abiotic Factors in this picture would be the water, the air, and even the sky. Pretty simple, huh?
Next, are the Biotic Factors are the living parts of an organisms environment, which would be the grass, the trees, and any organisms that may be living in the water.
Now into the Levels of Organization. Multicellular organisms have the following five levels of organization, ranging from the simplest layer to the most complex.
The bottom layer is the Individual/Organism Category. All living things are made up of cells, reproduce, responds, grows and develops.
Moving up, we come into Population. Population is a group of the same species that live in the same place at the same time. (An example would be a population of Whales).
Now we are in the Ecosystem category. An ecosystem is a population of plants and animals that interact with each other in a given area and with the abiotic components of that area.
Finally we are at the Biosphere category. A biosphere is the portion of Earth that supports life. This would be all of our charted and uncharted waters, and the continents.
Monae929
Author's Note: This wasn't meant to be a full-fledged essay, mind you. This was just some notes that I took while in Biology class a couple weeks ago that I thought I'd share with you.
