Ecosystems:

An ecosystem is a self-regulating and self-sustaining structural and functional unit of the biosphere. This system depends upon the sun for its energy.

• Ecosystems can be small or large and are placed in nature side by side.
• There is an exchange of materials and energy within the ecosystem as well as between adjoining ecosystems.
• They are all interconnected and hence, interrelated.
• The vast network of all interconnected ecosystems constitutes the biosphere.
• It is that part of the earth’s terrestrial system – including air, land, and water – in which life develops and where life processes, in turn, get transformed. It is the life zone of the earth.

Terms related to the ecosystem:

• Organism: An organism is a fundamental functional unit in ecology because it interacts directly with the environment as well as with other organisms, e.g., a rabbit.
• Population: It refers to the organisms of the same species that are in proximity to one another, e.g a group of rabbits.
• Community: It includes all the populations occupying a given area. An ecological community consists of various organisms in an area. From a theoretical systems viewpoint, an ecological community is the aggregate of organisms in groups that eat one another and that are eaten by one another, and it is a trophic structure made up of trophic compartments (food chain and food web). The size of a community depends on our scale of reference. We might use the community to refer to all of the living things in a particular area like a pond or we might restrict our interest to the fish community or the plant community.
• A biome is a large community of vegetation and wildlife adapted to a specific climate. The five major types of biomes are aquatic, grassland, forest, desert, and tundra, though some of these biomes can be further divided into more specific categories, such as freshwater, marine, savanna, tropical rainforest, temperate rainforest, and taiga.
• The biosphere is made up of the parts of Earth where life exists. The biosphere extends from the deepest root systems of trees to the dark environment of ocean trenches, to lush rain forests and high mountaintops.
• The community and the non-living environment together are referred to as an ecological system or ecosystem, e.g., a pond with fish and plants.