Ecology: Biomes, Population Interactions, Nutrient Cycles, and Threats to Biosphere

This article discusses biomes, population interactions, nutrient cycles, and threats to the biosphere. It covers topics such as tropical rainforests, competition, predation, parasitism, commensalism, mutualism, water hydrological cycle, phosphorus cycle, nitrogen cycle, carbon cycle, and climate change.

Running Head: ECOLOGY
Ecology
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Ecology
Part A: Biomes
Biome
Biomes are defined as very vast ecological areas on the surface of the earth containing
flora and fauna adapting to their surroundings. They are normally characterized by abiotic factors
like vegetation, relief, soils, temperature, geology, and climate.
Tropical Rain forest
If I were given a chance to live in one of the main biomes, I would choose tropical rain
forest majorly due to its ecological characteristics, that is, average temperatures which are
relatively high, species richness, soils having poor nutrients and annual rainfall which are also
very high. Tropical rainforest biomes receive a high amount of rainfall throughout the year.
Thus, they are always wet (Liu, Zheng, Xu, Dong & Chen, 2018). The high biodiversity in
tropical rainforests makes it favorable for me to live in such a biome. For instance, in Borneo
tropical rainforest, empirical research has reported that there are more than 15600 plant species.
The temperature of the tropical rainforests is relatively high due to their closeness to the
equator. However, I will still choose to live in such kind of biome since they receive direct
sunlight which is good for both plants and human body skins and temperature. However, the
soils of tropical rainforests are not rich in nutrient.
PART B: interaction between populations
Definition and examples of biological interactions (a, b)

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i. Competition; competition is described as a biological interaction involving two or
more organisms relying on the same environmental or a common resource which is
limited in supply. Specifically, competition is defined as a direct or indirect biological
interaction of organisms which results in fitness in the process of those organisms
sharing the same resource. Example of competition is a lion and cheetah competing
for the same Rabbit species.
ii. Predation; this is a type of biological interaction in which one organism feeds on
another organism, that is, it requires the predator to kill as well as eat the prey. In
most cases, the prey and the predator are both animals. This type of interaction
happens between species, yet if it happens within species, it is described as
cannibalism. An example of this type of biological relationship is between a crocodile
and a buffalo, lion and cape buffalo, bear and fish and cheetah and gazelle.
iii. Parasitism; this is a nonmutual biological interaction between species in which one
species known as the parasite benefit at the expense of another species known as the
host (aZhu et al., 2013). An example of parasites are tapeworms, fleas, and ticks. The
relationship is tick and a cow.
iv. Commensalism; this is a type of biological interaction in which one species
(commensal) obtains benefits from another species without benefitting or harming
that species. Examples include different fleas, lice being commensals on the birds and
skins of other mammals.
v. Mutualism; this is a type of biological interaction involving species which benefit
from each other. Example include bovine and bacteria in the intestines.

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C. In all the biological interaction, it is parasitism, competition, and predation that the
number of species is reduced, for instance, host parasitism, the weak individual in
competition and prey in predation.
PART C: NUTRIENT CYCLES
a. Water hydrological cycle; this is described as a natural sequence in which water passes
vaporizes into the atmosphere, precipitates to the earth surface in the form of solid or
liquid and eventually goes back to the atmosphere via vapor
b. Phosphorus cycle; this is the process though which phosphorus moves via biosphere,
lithosphere, and hydrosphere.
c. Nitrogen cycle; this is a sequential process in which nitrogen in the atmosphere and the
compounds of nitrogen found in the soil undergo conversion through nitrogen fixation
and nitrification into substance which can be used by green plants, these substances
returning to the lithosphere and atmosphere due to plants decay as well as denitrification
(Xia et al., 2018).
d. Carbon cycle; this a process which involves circulation of atoms of carbon in biosphere
due to photosynthesis, carbon dioxide conversion into organic compounds by flora,
which are consumed by other biological organisms, carbon taken back to the air due to
respiration (Sierra, Ceballos, Metzler & Müller, 2018).
PART D: Current threat to the biosphere
a. Climate change; https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/07/world/climate-change-new-ipcc-
report-wxc/index.html

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b. This article talks about what each country must do to mitigate climate change which is
one of the serious environmental issues in the world.
c. Climate change has many negative impacts like the loss of biodiversity, flooding, drought
and to mitigate and adapt to climate change, anthropological activities that contribute to
climate change like the use of fossil fuel should be abolished. Use of green energy,
afforestation, control of human population, awareness campaigns and resilient measures
should be adopted to mitigate climate change.

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References
Liu, J.-Y., Zheng, Z., Xu, X., Dong, T., & Chen, S.-C. (2018). Abundance and distribution of
cavity trees and the effect of topography on cavity presence in a tropical rainforest,
southwestern China. Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 48(9), 1058–1066.
https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfr-2018-0044
Sierra, C. A., Ceballos, N. V., Metzler, H., & Müller, M. (2018). Representing and
Understanding the Carbon Cycle Using the Theory of Compartmental Dynamical
Systems. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 10(8), 1729–1734.
https://doi.org/10.1029/2018MS001360
Xia, X., Zhang, S., Li, S., Zhang, L., Wang, G., Zhang, L., … Li, Z. (2018). The cycle of
nitrogen in river systems: sources, transformation, and flux. Environmental Science:
Processes & Impacts, 20(6), 863–891. https://doi.org/10.1039/c8em00042e
Zhu, S., Wang, Z., Wang, J., Wang, Y., Wang, N., Wang, Z., … Wu, R. (2013). A quantitative
model of transcriptional differentiation driving host–pathogen interactions. Briefings in
Bioinformatics, 14(6), 713–723.