Ecosystem vocabulary
Organism → population → community → ecosystem.
Five key levels of organisation in ecology, from the smallest:
- ORGANISM: an individual living thing (one squirrel, one oak).
- POPULATION: all the individuals of ONE SPECIES in a habitat. E.g. all the grey squirrels in Central Park.
- COMMUNITY: all the populations of different species sharing the habitat. Squirrels + birds + insects + trees + ...
- ECOSYSTEM: the community PLUS the non-living surroundings (rocks, water, air, temperature).
- BIOME: a large area of land or sea with similar ecosystems (e.g. rainforest, desert, tundra, ocean).
A HABITAT is the place where an organism lives. Different species in the same ecosystem often have slightly different MICROHABITATS — for example, an oak tree's canopy is one microhabitat, its trunk another, and the leaf-litter another.
- Organism < Population < Community < Ecosystem < Biome.
- Habitat = where an organism lives.
- Biomes = large-scale ecosystems (rainforest, desert, etc.).