Ecology

THE EARTH IS A GREAT WEB OF INTERACTION between various biotic

organisms and nonliving, abiotic factors that make up their environment. The study of
this web, and of the interactions that shape both living organisms and the environment
in which they live, is called ecology.
Ecology is a critical component of biology; in some sense, it is the place where
everything we have learned up until now fits together and functions in the real world.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Up until this chapter we have studied biology in an increasing hierarchy:

The Cell
Biochemistry
Tissue
Organ
Organism

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Ecology takes individuals and puts them into larger contexts:

Population
Community
Ecosystem
Biome
Biosphere
Ecology is important on the SAT II Biology for another reason: it makes up about 13
percent of the questions on the core of the test. In addition, if you choose to take the
Biology E version of the test, then another 25 percent of the test will have some relation
to ecology. In other words, this chapter and the material it covers are crucial.

Populations
Ecologists are interested in the interactions between organisms. Since it takes more than
one organism to have an interaction, the basic unit of ecology is the population. A
population is a group of individuals that interbreed and share the same gene pool. While
every individual in a species has the capacity to interbreed with any other individual, a
population is a group of organisms that exist in the same specific geographic locale and
actually are interbreeding. All the killer whales in the ocean make up a species, but only
the killer whales that actually live and migrate togetheronly the killer whales that
actually interbreedmake up a specific population.
Populations are much more than the sum of their parts: a population displays patterns
and concerns that are not applicable to an individual organism. Whereas an individual is
concerned with living for as long as possible and having as many offspring as it can, a
population is concerned with maintaining its number given the resources at hand.
Population Growth
A vital characteristic of a population is the rate at which it grows. The rate of population
growth depends on a variety of factors, including birth rate, death rate, initial population
size, and resources. With unlimited resources, a population can expand very rapidly.
Two rabbits that live in Rabbit Utopia and have five male and five female offspring
every four months will produce a population of 12 rabbits after four months and 72
rabbits after eight months. Sounds like nothing, right? After one year, the population

will be 432 rabbits. After two years, there will be 93,312 rabbits. And after three years,
the population will be more than 20 million rabbits. This rabbit population is following
the trend of exponential population growth, in which there is nothing to limit the
growth of a population and that population correspondingly grows by exponential
factors. A graph of exponential growth looks like this:

Perhaps Rabbit Utopia can grow enough lettuce to support 20 million rabbits, but
normal nature cannot. In nature, when a population is small, the resources surrounding
it are relatively large and the population will grow at near exponential levels. But as
populations grow larger, they need more food and take up more space, and resources
become tight. Within the population, competition for food and space grows fierce,
predators move in to sample some of the bounty, and disease increases. These factors
slow the growth of the population well before it reaches stratospheric levels. Eventually,
the rate of population growth approaches zero, and the population comes to rest at a
maximum number of individuals that can be maintained within a given environment.
This value is the carrying capacity of the population, the point at which birth and death
rates are equal.

The carrying capacity of an environment will shift as an environment changes. When

there is a drought and less vegetation, the carrying capacity of rabbits in a population
will decrease since the environment will not be able to produce enough food. When
there is a lot of rain and lush vegetation, the carrying capacity will increase.
Population Growth and Types of Reproduction
Population growth is affected by species methods of reproduction. The two most
important types of reproduction are asexual and sexual reproduction. Each type of
reproduction has benefits and costs.
Asexual reproductionsuch as that found in plants that reproduce by shoots or
organisms that reproduce through parthenogenesisrequires less energy than its sexual
counterpart. Because it requires less time and effort, asexual production allows a
population to grow very quickly. For example, parthenogenesis occurs when an
unfertilized egg develops offspring. Parthenogenesis creates female organisms that are
identical to their mothers; the eggs of these female organisms undergo parthenogenesis
and produce more females. By eliminating the necessity of males from the reproductive

equation, parthenogenesis doubles the rate at which a population can grow. However, by
eliminating males and sexual reproduction, populations that employ asexual
reproduction limit their gene pool and the resulting diversity among members. In times
when an environment is changing or competitive, the lack of variation damages these
populations ability to survive.
Sexual reproduction exhausts more energy and therefore progresses slowly. A
population that reproduces through sexual reproduction will not grow as rapidly as an
asexually reproducing population, but the sexual population will maintain the diversity
of its gene pool. A sexually reproducing population is therefore more fit to survive in a
changing or competitive environment.
Sexually reproducing organisms have two reproductive substrategies:
r strategy:
Organisms such as insects have many small offspring that receive very little or no
parental care, reach sexual maturity at a young age, and reproduce only one or a few
times. In an environment with abundant resources, this life-history strategy allows
species to quickly reproduce and exploit opportunities for population growth. The
disadvantage of this strategy is that it produces high mortality and great instability when
resources dwindle.
k strategy:
The alternative strategy is to bear fewer and larger offspring that receive intensive
parental attention, mature gradually, and reproduce several times. Humans employ this
strategy and are better suited to thrive in a competitive environment, exhibiting lower
mortality rates and longer life spans. The disadvantage here is that the concerted
investment of time and energy into a few individuals makes it difficult for a population
to surmount large decreases in population size due to disasters or disease.

Communities
Just as individuals live within a population, populations exist within communities. A
community refers to all the populations that interact with each other in a given
environment and geographical area. The specific role and way of life of each population
is called a niche. When populations have overlapping niches, a variety of types of
interaction may occur, including competition, symbiosis, predation, and other food
relationships. Communities are shaped over time by ecological succession.
The Niche
Each population in a community plays a unique role in the community. This role, the
populations niche, ranges from where the members of a population live, what they eat,
when they sleep, how they reproduce, and every other characteristic that defines a
populations lifestyle within a community. You can think of the niche as a sort of node
in the network of interactions that make up a community. Wherever the niches of two
populations overlap, interaction follows.

Competition
When two populations share some aspect of a niche, such as a nesting site or a food
source, competition results. There are two basic outcomes of competition between
populations:
One population will be a more effective competitor. The population that is
more effective will eventually win and drive the second, less effective population

from their niche. With the niche freed, the winning population will grow to the carrying
capacity of the niche. (This is called competitive exclusion.)
The two populations will evolve into less competitive niches. If two
populations compete on even terms, it may be beneficial for both populations to modify
their niches so that the populations niches overlap less or not at all. In these cases,
natural selection will favor individuals in both populations that have non-overlapping
niches, and over time the two populations will evolve into different niches.
Symbiosis
Symbiosis refers to an intimate association between organisms called symbionts. The
symbiotic relationship may or may not be beneficial to the organisms involved. There
are three kinds of symbiosis: parasitism, commensalism, and mutualism. Each type of
symbiosis describes a different relationship of benefits between the two symbionts.
1.
A tapeworm is a parasite that lacks a digestive tract and therefore infects a host
and steals predigested food; parasites benefit while their hosts suffer.
2.
In commensalism, one species benefits and the other remains unaffected.
Barnacles and whales live in a commensal relationship.
3.
Finally, in mutualism, both species benefit from the presence of and interactions
with each other. Lichens, which consist of a fungus and alga that provide for each other,
respectively, moisture and food through photosynthesis, are a good example of a
mutualist relationship.
Predation
Predation refers to one organism eating another. Predation does not only refer to
carnivores. Just as an eagle eating a rodent is a form of predation, so is a rodent
munching on some grass. In fact, predation doesnt always result in the death of the
prey. An antelope that gets eaten by a lion will die, but a tree that loses a few leaves to a
hungry giraffe will go right on living.
Carrying capacity shifts in a periodic manner based on the cycles of predation. When
the population of rabbits increases, the population of coyotes that eat the rabbits will
also increase, as theres more food for the coyotes. However, at some point, there will
be so many coyotes eating so many rabbits that the rabbit population will fall in number.
The coyotes great success in eating rabbits has eliminated their food source, and as the
rabbit population declines, so will the coyote population. But as the coyote population
dwindles, the lack of predators allows the rabbit population to grow again, and so the
cycle continues.
Evolution Caused by Predation
The change in a population due to a shift in environment is one of the engines of
evolution. Imagine the rabbits and their predators, the coyotes. As the coyotes increase
in number, the rabbit population ceases to grow, and many rabbits are caught and eaten.
As the coyotes increase in number, the carrying capacity of the rabbit population
shrinks. But it is important to notice that not all rabbits are caught by the coyotes. The
faster rabbits escape capture by the coyotes far more often than the slower rabbits. Fast
rabbits survive and breed and have offspring, while slower rabbits get eaten. The next
generation of rabbits will therefore be faster because they are descended from faster
parentsthis is directional selection in action. The population of increasingly fast
rabbits means that the coyotes must be faster in order to catch the rabbits. More fast
coyotes catch rabbits and live to reproduce, creating a next generation of faster coyotes.
When two populations affect their mutual evolution in this manner it is
called coevolution.

It is arguable that predation is actually helpful to the prey population. Since predators
want to capture prey with the least possible effort, the weakest members of the prey
population are usually targeted. In this way, the predators often remove from the gene
pool of a population those prey animals that have the weakest and least fit alleles.

Food Relationships
Every organism needs food in order to live and has to get that food from somewhere.
Every organism can be classified by where it fits into the food chain. Most broadly, all
organisms fit into one of three camps:
1. Producers
2. Consumers
3. decomposers.
Producers
Producers are able to produce carbohydrates from the energy of the sun through
photosynthesis or, in some instances, from inorganic molecules through
chemosynthesis. Because they can produce their own food, producers are also called
autotrophs. Producers form the foundation of every food chain because only they can
transform inorganic energy into energy that all other organisms can use. On land, plants
and photosynthetic bacteria are the main producers. In marine environments, green
plants and algae are the main producers. In deep water environments near geothermal
vents, chemosynthetic organisms are the main producers.
Consumers
Consumers cannot produce the energy and organic molecules necessary for life; instead,
consumers must ingest other organisms in order to get these materials. Consumers are
also called heterotrophs because they must consume other organisms in order to get the
energy necessary for life. There are three types of consumers - the categories of
consumers are based on which organisms a particular consumer preys on.
1.
Primary consumers, such as sheep, grasshoppers, and rabbits, feed on
producers. Since all producers are plants or plantlike, all primary consumers are
herbivores, which is the name for a plant-eating animal.
2.
Secondary consumers eat primary consumers, making them carnivores
animals that eat other animals. Foxes and insect-eating birds are examples of secondary
consumers.
3.
Tertiary consumers eat secondary consumers and are therefore carnivores.
Polar bears that eat sea lions are tertiary consumers. Consumers that eat both producers
and other consumers are called omnivores.
Decomposers
Also called saprophytes, decomposers feed on waste or dead material. Since they must
ingest organic molecules in order to survive, decomposers are heterotrophs. In the
process of getting the energy they need, decomposers break down complex organic
molecules into their inorganic partscarbon dioxide, nitrogen, phosphorus, etc.
Food Chains and Food Webs
All predatory interactions between producers and consumers in a community can be
organized in food chains or more complex and realistic food webs. A food chain
imagines a strictly linear interaction between the levels of producers and consumers we
described above. An abstract food chain appears below on the left, with examples of
animals that fit each category appearing on the right:

Each step in the food chain is referred to as a trophic level. So the first trophic level
contains the producers (autotrophs); the second trophic level contains the primarty
consumers (herbivores); and so on.
Food chains are simple and help us to understand the predation interactions between
organisms, but because they are so simple, they arent really accurate. For instance,
while sparrows do eat insects, they also eat grass. In addition, the food chain makes it
seem as if there are only four populations in a community, when most communities
contain far more. Most organisms in a community hunt more than one kind of prey and
are hunted by more than one predator. These numerous predation interactions are best
shown by a food web:

In fact, the more diverse and complicated the food relationships are in a community, the
more stable that community will be. Imagine a community that was correctly described
by the food chain grass
insects
sparrows
hawks. If some blight struck the
grass population, the insect population would be decimated, which would destroy the
sparrow population, and so on, until the very top of the food chain. A more complex
food web is able to absorb and withstand such disasters. If something were to happen to
the grass in the food web, the primary consumers would all have some other food
source to tide them over until the grass recovered.
Food Webs and Energy Flow
Each trophic level in a food web consumes the lower trophic level in order to obtain
energy. But not all of the energy from one trophic level is transferred to the next. At
each trophic level, most of the energy is used up in running body processes such as
respiration. Typically, just 10 percent of the energy present in one trophic level is passed
along to the next. This is called the 10% rule. If the energy present in the producer
trophic level of a food web is
kcal, you could draw an energy pyramid to show the
transfer of energy from one trophic level to the next:

The energy lost between each trophic level affects the number of organisms that can
occupy each trophic level. If the secondary consumer trophic level contains 10 percent
of the energy present in the primary consumer level, it follows that there can only be
about 10 percent as many secondary consumers as there are primary consumers. The
energy pyramid is therefore also a biomass pyramid that shows the number of
individuals in each trophic level. (A pyramid of biomass does not account for
productivity - the production in time - so consequently may not be a fair reflection of
the energy in a system.)
Biological Magnification
Because biomass drops so dramatically from one trophic level to the next, any chemical
present in a lower trophic level becomes heavily concentrated in higher trophic levels.
Beginning in the 1940s, a pesticide called DDT was sprayed on crops to stop invading
insects. The concentration of DDT in any local area was enough to kill insects, but not
enough to hurt any of the larger organisms. But as each predator ate its prey, the DDT
became concentrated in successive trophic levels. The small levels of DDT found in the
insects became much more concentrated as it was swallowed and digested by predators.
Eagles, sitting at the top of the food web, took in massive amounts of DDT in the course
of eating their prey. The DDT caused the eagles to lay soft eggs that could not protect
the developing embryos inside, which led to a severe population decline.

Ecological Succession
Just as the people living in your neighborhood can come and go, ecological
communities change over time. One way a community can change is if external
conditions shift. If the weather in a certain geographical area suddenly gets colder,
certain populations will be better off and will thrive, while others will shrink and
disappear.
However, change in communities is not always caused by external factors: populations
can change environments simply by living in them. The success of a particular
population in a particular area will change the environment to the advantage of other
populations. In fact, the originally successful population often changes the environment
to its own detriment. In this way, the populations within a community change over time,
often in predictable ways. The change in a community caused by the effects of the
populations within it is called ecological succession.
The first population to move into a geographical area is referred to as a pioneer species.
If this pioneer population is successful in its new location, it will change the
environment in such a way that new populations can move in. As populations are
replaced, changing plant forms bring with them different types of animals. Typically, as
a community moves through the stages of succession, it is characterized by an increase
in total biomass, a greater capacity to retain nutrients within the system, increasing
species diversity, and increasing size and life spans of organisms. Eventually, the

community will reach a point where the mixture of populations creates no new changes
in the environment. At this point, the specific populations in the stable community are
said to make up a climax community. While individuals within a climax community
will come and go, the essential makeup of the populations within the climax community
will stay constant.
Which species are dominant in a particular climax community is determined by unique
factors of that geographical area, such as temperature, rainfall, and soil acidity. Since a
climax community does not change the environment, it also does not affect its own
dominance; a climax community will remain dominant unless destroyed by a significant
change in climate or some catastrophic event such as a fire or volcanic eruption.
Succession in Action
Imagine a catastrophic event: a forest fire rages through the Green Mountains of
Vermont. The fires burn everything and leave behind a barren, rocky expanse.
The population of trees that once lived in this area cant grow back because the fire has
changed the ground composition. Without tree roots to act as anchors, rain washes away
the soil and the ground becomes rocky and barren. This rocky ground, however, proves
ideal to lichens, the pioneer population. The lichens colonize the rocks and thrive. As
part of their life process, lichens produce acids that break down rock into soil. Lichens
need solid places to survive: they are victims of their own success. Mosses and herbs are
well suited to living in the shallow soil environment created by the lichen, and they
replace the lichen as the dominant population.
The mosses and herbs continue to build up the soil. As the soil deepens, the conditions
favor plants with longer roots, such as grasses. Eventually the land becomes suitable for
shrubs and then for trees. The early dominant trees in the community will be species
like poplar, which thrive in bright, sunlit conditions. As more trees grow in the area,
however, there is less sunlight, and maples, which grow in shade, supplant the sunstarved poplars. The maples eventually dominate the community, because they dont
change the soil composition and thrive in their own shade. The community has reached
its climax community, with maple as the dominant species. Dont forget that during all
this, the changing vegetation has brought with it various changes in animal populations.
The SAT II Biology is most likely to test your knowledge of ecological succession in an
originally rocky area, as we just covered, or in a pond. Succession in a pond follows a
similar pattern. Originally, the pond will contain protozoa, some small fish, and algae.
As individual organisms die and water runs into the pond, sediment builds up at the
bottom and the pond grows shallower. The shallower pond becomes marshlike and fills
with reeds and cattails. The standing water eventually disappears, and the land is merely
moist: grasses and shrubs dominate. As the land grows even less moist, it becomes
woodland. And as trees come to dominate, the climax community will arise from a
species that can grow in the shade of its neighbors.
You need to distinguish between Primary and Secondary succession:
Primary succession occurs from a base which is lifeless - for instance the
barren, larval slopes of a volcano after an eruption.
Secondary succession occurs when an existing habitat is modified but
much of it remains - for instance after a fire or deforestation.
Ecological Succession vs. Evolution
For the SAT II Biology, do not get confused between ecological succession and
evolution. In ecological succession, the populations that make up a community change,

but the characteristics of the individuals within the population will not change over
time. Ecological succession is something that happens to communities, while evolution
happens to populations. Although succession has different rates, it is much faster overall
than evolution.

Ecosystems
The species in a climax community interact with and depend on nonliving (abiotic)
factors in that environment. The most important abiotic factors in an environment, and
on the SAT II Biology, are the chemical cycles, the availability of sunlight and oxygen,
the character of the soil, and the regulation of these various phenomena. These abiotic
elements, along with living matter, make up an ecosystem.
Chemical Cycles
Inorganic elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and water pass through the environment in
various forms. These elements are vital to life: they are consumed, excreted, respired,
and otherwise utilized by living things. The passages of these elements between
organisms and the abiotic environment are called the chemical cycles.
The Carbon Cycle
The carbon cycle begins when plants use CO 2 from the air to produce glucose, which
both animals and plants use in respiration and other life processes. Animals consume
some of these plants as a source of food. Animals use what they can of the carbon
matter and excrete the rest as waste that decays into CO 2 . Plant and animal respiration
releases gaseous CO 2 . The carbon that plants and animals do use remains in their bodies
until death. After death, decay sends the organic compounds back into the Earth
and CO 2 back into the atmosphere.

The Nitrogen Cycle

Nitrogen is a vital component of amino acids and nucleic acids, which are the
fundamental units of proteins and DNA. The nitrogen cycle begins with inert
atmospheric nitrogen (N 2 ), which is generally unusable by living organisms. Nitrogenfixing bacteria in the soil or on the roots of legumes transform the inert nitrogen into
nitrates (NO 3 ) and ammonium (NH 4 ). Plants take up these compounds, synthesize
the 20 amino acids found in nature, and transform them into plant proteins; animals,
typically only able to synthesize eight of the 20 amino acids, eat the plants and produce
protein using the plants materials. Plants and animals give off nitrogen waste and death
products in the form of ammonia (NH 3 ). One of two things can happen to the ammonia:
(1) nitrifying bacteria transform the ammonia into nitrites (NO 2 ) and then to nitrates

(NO 3 ), which reenter the cycle when they are taken up by plants; (2) denitrifying
bacteria break down the ammonia to produce inert nitrogen (N 2 ).

The cycling of water and phosphorus are also important, as these substances are limited
and vital to the life processes of most organisms.
The Water Cycle
The majority of the Earths water resides in the oceans and lakes, which act as water
storage depots. This water escapes into the atmosphere through evaporation and
condenses into clouds. Precipitation in the form of rain, snow, hail, etc., returns water to
the ocean and lakes and also brings water to dry land. Water on land may either return to
the oceans and lakes as runoff or penetrate into the soil and seep out as groundwater.

Oxygen, Sunlight, and Competition

Oxygen and sunlight are both vital to most forms of life. The relative abundance or lack
of oxygen in a particular geographic or physical locale will create competition among
organisms and drive evolution. Oxygen is abundant in the atmosphere and is therefore
readily available to terrestrial species. But in order to penetrate aquatic environments,
oxygen must be dissolved in water, where it exists in smaller concentration.
Like oxygen, sunlight is necessary to life for most organisms. In terrestrial species,
competition for sunlight has pushed evolution of plants, with some plants growing
broader leaves and branching to capture more rays. Sunlight cannot travel through water
as easily as it can travel through air, so at great ocean depths, light is scarce. At these

sorts of depths, autotrophic organisms have to find some way to produce energy that
does not use light, such as chemosynthesis.
The Soil
The nature of soil determines which populations can be sustained in a given ecosystem.
High acidity inhibits most plant growth but may be ideal for some plants that are better
adapted to acidic soil. The texture of the soil and amount of clay it contains affect its
ability to retain water, while the presence of minerals and decaying organic matter
influences the types of plant life that can be supported.

Biomes
Different climatic conditions are produced by the geography and uneven heating of the
Earth. Plant and animal forms that are characteristic of a particular geographic area with
a common climate constitute biomes. Each biome is characterized by specific climax
communities. All the biomes together form the biosphere.
Terrestrial Biomes
The various biotic and abiotic factors at play on Earth result in six major terrestrial
biomes. Terrestrial biomes are categorized according to the types of plants they support.
The fundamental characteristics of each type are described in the list below.
TROPICAL RAIN FOREST
Rain forests have the highest rainfall of all biomes (100180 inches per year), which
results in the greatest animal and plant diversity. Trees form canopies that block sunlight
from reaching the ground. Most animal species live in the canopy, while the forest floor
is inhabited predominantly by insects and saprophytes and consists of soil low in
nutrients. Decomposed products on the forest floor are washed away or quickly
reabsorbed by plants. Tropical rain forests can be found in Central America, the Amazon
basin in South America, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia.
SAVANNA
This biome is characterized by grassland with sparse trees, with extended dry periods or
droughts. Tropical savannas generally border rain forests and receive a yearly total of 40
to 60 inches of rainfall. They support large herbivores, such as antelope, zebra,
elephants, and giraffe. Most tropical savannas exist in Africa. Temperate savannas, such
as the Pampas in Argentina and the prairies east of the Rocky Mountains in the United
States, receive only about 10 to 30 inches of rain a year. Grasses and shrubs dominate
the landscape and support insects, birds, smaller burrowing animals, and larger, hoofed
animals such as bison.
DESERT
Deserts are the driest biome, receiving less than 10 inches of rain per year. They exhibit
radical temperature changes between day and night. Animals of the desert such as
lizards, snakes, birds, and insects are typically small and have adapted to the dry, hot
climate by being nocturnally active. Plants, such as cactus, have evolved waxy cuticles,
fewer stomata, spiky leaves, and seeds capable of remaining dormant until sufficient
resources are available. Deserts exist in Asia, Africa, and North America.
TEMPERATE DECIDUOUS FOREST
Rainfall in temperate deciduous forests is evenly distributed throughout the year. The
biome has distinct summer and winter seasons. It has long growing seasons during the
summer. In winter, the deciduous plants drop their leaves and enter a period of

dormancy. Beech and maple dominate in colder variations of this biome, while oak and
hickory are more prevalent where temperatures are warmer. Animals in deciduous
forests are both herbivorous and carnivorous, such as deer, fox, owl, and squirrel. The
forest floor is fertile and contains fungi and worms. Temperate deciduous forests exist
mainly on the east coast of North America and in central Europe.
TAIGA
The taiga is a forest biome but is colder and receives less rainfall than deciduous forests.
Coniferous (cone-bearing) trees, especially spruce, dominate the taiga. The trees also
have needle-shaped leaves that help conserve water. Taiga forests sustain birds, small
mammals such as squirrels, large herbivorous mammals such as moose and elk, and
large carnivorous mammals such as wolves and grizzly bears. Taiga exist mainly in
Russian and northern Canada.
TUNDRA
This biome is located in the far north and is covered by ice sheets for the majority of the
year. The soil, down to a few feet, remains permanently frozen, though in the summer,
the topsoil can melt and support a short growing season. Very few plants grow in the
northernmost parts of the tundra, but lichens, mosses, and grasses occupy some more
southern areas. Animals must be well suited for extreme cold or must migrate. The
tundra supports large herbivores such as reindeer and caribou, large predators such as
bear, and some birds.
Aquatic Biomes
Aquatic biomes account for 70 percent of the Earths surface and contain the majority
of plant and animal life. Aquatic biomes also account for a vast portion of the
photosynthesis, and therefore oxygen production, that occurs on Earth. There are two
types of aquatic biomes, based on the type of water found in each: marine and
freshwater.
MARINE
Marine biomes refer to the oceans that all connect to form a single, great body of water.
Since water has an immense capacity to absorb heat with little temperature increase,
conditions remain uniform over these large aquatic bodies. Marine biomes are divided
into three zones: intertidal/littoral, neritic, and pelagic.

The intertidal zone, also called the littoral zone, is the region where land and water
meet. It experiences periodic dryness with changing tides and is inhabited by algae,
sponges, various mollusks, starfish, and crabs.
The neritic zone extends to 600 feet beneath the waters surface and sits on the
continental shelf, hundreds of miles from shores. Algae, crustaceans, and numerous fish
inhabit this region.
The pelagic zone consists of a photic zone (reaching 600 feet below sea level) and
below that an aphotic zone. Light penetrates the photic zone, which is why it contains
photosynthetic plankton. The photic zone also is home to heterotrophs such as bony
fish, sharks, and whales that prey on these producers as well as on each other. No light
penetrates the aphotic zone, which is a kind of watery circus of the bizarre, where
extreme cold water, darkness, and high pressure have spurred strange evolutionary
paths. The region is home to some chemosynthetic autotrophs. Other denizens of the
deep are scavengers that feed on dead organic matter falling from the higher realms and
predators who feed on each other.
FRESHWATER
Freshwater biomes include rivers, lakes, and marshes. Life here is affected by
temperature, salt concentration, light penetration, depth, and availability of
dissolvedCO 2 and O 2 . Freshwater biomes are much smaller than marine biomes, so
conditions are less stable. Organisms that live in these regions must be able to handle
the greater extremes. The very nature of freshwater also demands special characteristics
of the organisms that live within it. In freshwater environments, the salt concentration
within the cell of an organism is higher than the salt concentration in the water. A
concentration exists between the interior of cells and the exterior environment: water
from the environment is constantly diffusing into the organism. Organisms in freshwater
need homeostatic systems to maintain proper water balance.