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V.C.E. Biology Unit 2 Living in an Ecosystem Living Together • Environment – organisms interact with the biotic and abiotic characteristics of their environment. • Within any particular environment there is a community of living things – that is many populations of different species. • A population is the members of one species in the same place at the same time. Ecosystems • An ecosystem is all the populations of living things at a given place at a given time interacting with their abiotic surroundings and each other. • The largest ecosystem is the Earth – we call this a biosphere. • The Earth has many smaller ecosystem types – each of these is self-sustaining. Places to Live • Within an ecosystem, each species has a niche – a part of the ecosystem which gives it most (or all) the things it needs to survive. • A habitat is the term given to the space within the ecosystem that a single organism lives in – some organisms have very specific habitat requirements, others can exist within a broader range of habitats. Naming Ecosystems • Ecosystems are described in general terms as freshwater, marine or terrestrial. • Then to be more specific we name them either by their dominant species and/or structural characteristics, eg; Eucalypt Woodland Basalt plains grassland Warm Temperate Rainforest Studying Ecosystems • To study an ecosystem one must work systematically – we use transects and quadrats to collect information about the distribution, abundance and diversity of abiotic and biotic characteristics. • Transect – a straight line through an ecosystem, usually on a compass bearing. • Quadrat – a square (10m x 10m) along one side of the transect from which information is collected.