FUNCTION OF AN

ECOSYSTEM
AND
ENERGY FLOW IN AN
ECOSYSTEM
 INTRODUCTION

 An ecosystem has two type of components, abiotic and biotic.

• Abiotic components are the non-living physico-chemical factors of the
environment.
• Biotic components are the living organism, from microbes to highly evolved
plants and animals.
 Abiotic components
• They are the non-living environment such as air, water, soil, and the basic
elements and compounds of the environment.
 The biotic components falls under four main category
Autrotrophs or producers
Heterotrophs or consumers
Decomposers or reducers and
transformers.
 PRODUCERS

The major ecological roles of producers are:

i. Energy fixation and organic production through photosynthesis.

ii. Incorporation of minerals into protoplasm
• Plant absorb nitrates, phosphate, etc. from soil and water and
incorporate them into their protoplasm
iii. Source of food energy for heterotrophs
• They directly or indirectly serve as the primary source of food
energy for heterotrophs.
iv. Provide habitats

v. Environmental modification
• Some involved in the weathering of rocks, modification of
climate, and the modification of gas composition.
 CONSUMERS
Consumers which are heterotrophic organisms
depending the producers for food. They may be
either herbivores or carnivores.

They directly or indirectly depend upon other

living or dead organisms.

mater.
Biophages feed on living organism and saprophages on dead organic
They are mainly two groups- biophages and saprophages.

The role of consumer are:

i. Cycling of minerals.
ii. Energy utilization and
iii. Control population growth and maintain nature's balance.
 DECOMPOSERS

The role of decomposers are:

i. They are have ecological importance like recycling of essential

elements between organism and environment.
 FUNCTION OF AN ECOSYSTEM

• The relationship between living organisms and environment

are controlled by the available incoming energy from sun.
• It drives the biotic system
• Ecosystem functions are natural process or exchange of
energy that take place in various plant and animal
communication of different biomes.
• The energy exchange occurs in food chain, food web etc.
FOOD CHAIN

Food chain is the transfer of food energy from one organism to another.

The successive stages of food chain is known as trophic levels.

It is the successive stages of energy transfer.

Generalised trophic organization
FOOD WEB

• It defined as a network of interconnected food chain.

• It comprise all the food chain in a single ecosystem.
• A food chain cannot stands isolated in an ecosystem.
• The same food resource may be a part of more than one
chain.
• This is possible when the resource is at the lower tropic level.
 ENERGY FLOW IN AN ECOSYSTEM
SUN
CONCEPT OF ENERGY
• Energy is the capacity to do work.
• Solar energy is the primary energy resource of earth.
• The energy flow from the sun to plant and then all
heterotrophic organisms.
• Solar energy is transformed into chemical energy by
the process of photosynthesis.
• This is stored in plant tissues and transformed into
mechanical and heat forms during metabolic
activities.
ENERGY FLOW IN ECOSYSTEM
 LAW GOVERNING ENERGY TRANSFORMATION

• The law of conservation of energy

the energy transformed from one form into another but
it neither created nor destroyed.
The decrease in the internal energy of the system is the
sum total of work done by the system and heat given
off by the system.
• Second law of thermodynamics
Processes involving energy transformation will not
occures spontaneously unless there is degradation of
energy from a non random to a random form
THANK YOU