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15: Community and Ecosystem Ecology

  • Page ID
    69506
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    • 15.1: Community Ecology- Species Interactions
      Populations rarely, if ever, live in isolation from populations of other species. In most cases, numerous species share a habitat. The interactions between these populations play a major role in regulating population growth and abundance. All populations occupying the same habitat form a community: populations inhabiting a specific area at the same time. The number of species occupying the same habitat and their relative abundance is known as species diversity.
    • 15.2: Community Structure
    • 15.3: Community Dynamics
    • 15.4: Ecology of Ecosystems
      An ecosystem is a community of living organisms and their interactions with their abiotic (non-living) environment. Ecosystems can be small, such as the tide pools found near the rocky shores of many oceans, or large, such as the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil.
    • 15.5: Energy Flow Through Ecosystems
      Energy is the ability to do work. Some overlapping examples are kinetic energy, heat energy, potential energy, and chemical energy. Energy flows through a food chain from producers to top-level consumers. Food webs display trophic relationships more accurately because many species are generalists and are eaten by several different species. The number of trophic levels in a community is limited by inefficient energy transfer.


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