Lets get friendly with Ecology
Ecology is defined most simply as "the relationships between living organisms, and their physical environments."[1] A physical environment can be water, the climate or terrain. An ecologist is someone that studies these interactions. A may ecologist can study how specific species compete with each other or how they could support on each other.
What are Biomes?
Biomes are subsets of the biosphere (fancy name for the earth). They are regions defined by their climate and based on temperature that can contain life. Ecology is broken down into many subsets it goes like: Biosphere, biomes, ecosystems, habitats then niches. A niche is an organisms place in their ecosystem. But we are going to focus on biomes. "There are terrestrial biomes (land) and aquatic biomes, both freshwater and marine." [2]
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Succession
New biomes are found by succession. Succession refers to the different stages of an ecosystem on its goal to becoming a climax community. Each stage of succession affects the environment because it has different communities. the first stages are small shrubs and grasses. Then smaller trees will begin to grow and eventually larger trees like oak trees which signifies the area is a climax community. (the image to the right shows succession.)
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Types of Community Interactions
There are three types of community interaction, I will break down: Competition, Predator and Prey, and Symbiosis.
Competition-
This occurs hen two different species are same organisms try to use the same resource in an area. "A resource is just any necessity of life, water, nutrients, light, shelter or food." [3] In competition their is always a clear winner and loser. The competitive exclusion principle says, " no too specie can habitat the same niche at the same time. |
Symbiosis-This is where two species live closely together and literally means "living together''[4] There are three types of symbiosis: mutualism, commensalism and parasitism.
Mutualism-when both organisms benefit from the relationship. Some species can become so dependent on the other they can't live without them. Commensalism- when one organism benefits and the other is not benefited or harmed. One of the organisms could receive shelter, food or a means of transportation. Parasitism- when one organism lives inside another and harms it. Many parasites have special adaptations to allow it to get the others resources. (images are in order of relationships.) |
Wombats tend to be solitary and try not come into contact with each other. Sometimes they will share a burrow with each other, Wombats interact with their environment by marking their scent on everything. If something new enters their habitat they will immediately mark it. Wombats also interact with their environment by also constantly digging burrows.The wombats main predators are dingoes which are an invasive species. They do not prey on other animals because they are herbivores. But their primary predator are dingoes. Wombats do have a big issue with the parasite that coause mange. Mange is a skin disease that can cause hair loss and severe scabs.