Animals: bears, raccoons, skunks, squirrels, wood mice, deer, rabbits, wolves, foxes, bobcats, elk, grass snakes, porcupines, eagles, hawks, owls, and more.
Plants: trees, mosses, ferns, shrubs, flowers, vines, fungi, lichens, and more
Abiotic factors include the sunlight, water, rocks and soil, temperature, altitude,minerals, rain, wind, and the amount of nutrients in the ecosystem.
The carrying capacity of an ecosystem is the top population that a species can have in an ecosystem proportional to the available resources in the area. If, say, the rabbit or overly cute squirrel population got too large, then the resources would almost be gone, starting off more competition until the population dies down and the species could thrive now that there's more resources for all of them.
Limiting Factors and Predator/Prey Relationships
Limiting Factors are resources that have limited supply, like food, water, and shelter, or the amount of prey in relationship with the predators. If the fox population is too low, then animals like rabbits and mice will have a larger population, but if the fox population is too large, then the rabbits will almost all die. Limiting factors also play a part in this, if the rabbit population is too large, then resources will become scarce, and they will die off too, also effecting the foxes.
Energy roles are how/where an organism is in the food pyramid.There are four levels to this: producers(plants), 1st level consumers(herbivores), 2nd level consumers(carnivores), and 3rd level consumers(top dogs). In the forest, the first level would be trees, ferns, shrubs, ect, the second level would be squirrels, rabbits, and deer, in the third level is snakes, raccoons, and skunks, at the fourth level are bears, eagles, hawks, ect.
In the producer level, organisms absorb energy from the sun, at level two, energy comes from those plants mentioned a second earlier, in level 3, organisms eat mostly level two consumers, and at level 4, you eat most of all meat. Producers are so important because they transfer the solar energy to chemical energy that we can use.
Food Chains and Food Webs
Food webs are more accurate than food chains because they have more organisms, more options of who eats what, and this is true for all ecosystems in the world.
If a species were missing from the food web, this could mean any number of starved predators or populations rising in prey which will greatly upset the balance in the ecosystem.
At the base are the decomposers that eat the remains of organisms, then are the producers that have 10000kcals of energy, then the primary consumers with 1000kcals of energy, then the secondary consumers with 100kcals of energy, then the tertiary consumers with 10kcals of energy. The pyramid shape is ideal to show this because it gets narrower as it gets higher up, like how energy works. Producers have the most energy and are thus are usually the bottom of the pyramid, while top carnivores are at the top because there is less energy in the prey.
In photosynthesis, water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide(CO2), are needed to produce glucose(the sugar that a plant feeds on), oxygen, and released carbohydrates. Photosynthesis takes place in the chloroplasts of a cell and in essence converts radiant energy to chemical energy.
A tropism is the turning of a part or all of a plant in response to an external stimuli. In the forest, plants would use phototropism to get as much radiant energy from under the trees as possible. Tropisms are the botanist equilivant of survival instinct, and all plants will respond to the effects in their ecosystem.
The Role of Decomposers
In any standard food chain, the end is the third-level consumer, but where does the nutrients go after that? Well, once they die, decomposers take the nutrients and pass them back into the soil. Without decomposers, nothing much would grow and much less would survive. In the forest, decomposers could range from the standard forms of fungi to earthworms, to beetles.
A plant or animal would need adaptations because they would need to survive in their own ecosystem. in the forest, an animal might need to fly, climb trees, crack acorns, search for food in all places; and a plant might utilize phototropism to get the most light from under the trees or hydrotrophism to get water.
If an plant or animal was dumped off in another ecosystem than it's own, it's traits wouldn't be valuable for staying alive in that ecosystem.
Natural selection is the gradual process which heritable traits are passed to become more or less common among a species. Take insects and birds. The insect with better speed, defense, and camo will survive, and ones that don't would be eaten off until the one remaining species is the superior insect.