Download Marine Ecosystems

Ecology and Ecosystems
 Marine ecology studies the relationships and
interactions of the abiotic and biotic aspects of the
environment
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Abiotic factors are the non-living parts and will include rocks,
sand, water, temperature,salinity, light, wind, etc
Biotic factors are the living parts and will include plants,
animals, fish, bacteria, etc
4 Branches of marine ecology include:
 Biological oceanography
 Chemical oceanography
 Geological oceanography
 Physical oceanography
Ecology Terminology
 1. Ecosystem- a community of organisms and their abiotic
environment.
 2. Community- a collection of different organisms living
and interacting in an ecosystem
 3. Population- a group of the same species living and
interacting within a community
 4. Habitat- includes the area and conditions in which you
find an organism
 5. Microhabitat- same as a habitat but on a very small
scale. Example: tiny organisms living between the grains
of sand
 6. Niche- an organisms role in its habitat
Energy Flow
 Photosynthesizers and chemosynthesizers bring energy from
the sun and chemicals into the food web
 This energy transfers up through the food web but only
10% of it is available to pass on to the next trophic level
 This limits the number of organisms at each trophic
level
 Numbers of organisms drastically decline as you go from
primary producers to high level predators
 There are far more primary producers such as
plankton and grasses and very few top predators such
as sharks
 High primary production creates the potential for
more organisms at high trophic levels
Energy Flow
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If pollution causes a substantial decline in an ecosystem’s
primary consumers it will disrupt energy flow to all the other
trophic levels
 It will cause a decline in population numbers at each trophic
level
 We see this happening with a decline in commercial fishing
production
 In past years New Jersey saw a decline in many species of
organisms due to pollution