Biotic and Abiotic

Biotic and Abiotic

  • Submitted By: geops
  • Date Submitted: 12/02/2008 9:17 AM
  • Category: Science
  • Words: 1852
  • Page: 8
  • Views: 1251

Georgi Stoyanov BIOL1202 11/25/08 Taskstream Assignment 4 to survive and reproduce. Some abiotic factors are water availability, light intensity and level of pollutant. Biotic factors are all the living things or their materials that directly or indirectly affect an organism in its environment. This would include organisms, their presence, parts, interaction, and wastes. Some biotic factors are parasitism, disease, and predation. The difference is that biotic are living and abiotic are non-living. Abiotic factors change habitat characteristics and may determine the way and /or intensity of biotic interactions among and between natural populations. Abiotic factors and biotic influences interact between each other and change each other. We can say they’re interdependent. a. In ecology, energy flow (calorific flow) refers to the flow of energy through a food chain. Solar energy is fixed by the photoautotrophs, the so called primary producers, like green plants which fix the energy in forms such as glucose and ATP by photosynthesis. The primary consumers consuming these photoautotrophs are herbivores. They absorb most of the stored energy in the plant through digestion, and transform it into the form of energy they need, adenosine triphosphate, through respiration. A part of the energy received by the herbivore is converted to bodily heat (an effect of respiration), which is radiated away and lost from the system. Energy loss also occurs in the expulsion of egesta, which contains undigested energy compounds. Secondary Consumers then consume the primary consumers. Energy that had been used by the primary consumers for growth and storage is thus absorbed into the secondary consumers through the process of digestion. As with primary consumers, secondary consumers convert this energy into a more suitable form (ATP) during respiration. Again some energy is lost from the system, since energy which the primary consumers had used for respiration cannot...