Ecosystem Essay

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An ecosystem is a community of plants, animals and smaller organisms that live, feed, reproduce and interact in the same area or environment. Each individual plant and animal could not exist by itself on planet Earth. All living organisms need millions of other living organisms to survive. How these organisms interact with the sun, soil, water, air and each other in a specific are is called an ecosystem. In the following paragraphs I will be organization that make up an ecosystem and their organizations.
There are two major kinds of ecosystems Aquatic and Terrestrial. An Aquatic ecosystem is in a body of water, where animals, plants and their physical environment interact in water. The two main parts of aquatic ecosystems are Marine Ecosystems and Fresh Water ecosystems. The Marine ecosystem covers approximately about 71% of the earth surface and they can be divided into different zones and categories. The zone of the Marine ecosystem is divided depending upon the water depth and shoreline features. The Oceanic zone is the open part of the ocean where animals like sharks and whales live. The intertidal zone is the area between high and low tides and includes coral reefs, lagoons and salt marshes. The benthic zone in where many invertebrates live. There are also thousands of plant species that live in the ocean like algae, seaweeds, sea grasses and mangroves. (Mann KH 2006)
Aquatic ecosystem is also categorized as Fresh water ecosystem. These include ponds, lakes, streams, and rivers, streams and wetlands. Ponds and lakes are often called lentic ecosystems. This means that they have still or standing waters, not moving like rivers or streams. Lakes are often divided up into four zones of biotic communities: Littoral zone - Lim...

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• Living things are composed of cells that have a complex, organized structure.
• Living things maintain their complex structures and their internal environment called homeostasis.
• Living things respond to stimuli from their environment.
• Living things have a capacity to evolve.
• Living things acquire energy from their environment and convert it in different forms.
• Living things grow.
• Living things reproduce.
If something follows one or just a few of the rules listed above, it does not necessarily mean that it is living. To be considered alive, an object must exhibit all of the characteristics of living things. For example a virus can be seen as a living thing because it has the capacity to make someone very ill, but in reality viruses are not living things. Viruses don’t reproduce have no energy and they don’t respond to stimuli. (Audesirk T. 2011)

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