Ecology of Florida: Analyzing Ecosystems, Nutrient Cycles & Wildlife

This essay provides a detailed overview of the ecology of Florida, focusing on its wetland biome and the diverse ecosystems it encompasses, including coral reefs, marshes, dunes, and mangroves. It discusses the roles of key nutrients like phosphorus, nitrogen, sulfur, and mercury in the South Florida wetlands, highlighting their impact on plant life and the cycling of these elements within the environment. The essay further explores the various plant and animal species inhabiting Florida, such as corals, sea turtles, fish, alligators, and panthers, and examines the ecological relationships within these communities. It also addresses the importance of fire in maintaining certain ecosystems like pinelands. This assignment is available on Desklib, where students can find a wealth of resources, including past papers and solved assignments.

Running head: ECOLOGY OF FLORIDA
ECOLOGY OF FLORIDA
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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ECOLOGY OF FLORIDA
Introduction:
Ecology can be defined as the scientific study that concerns around the distributions,
abundance as well as relations of organisms and even with their interactions with the
environment. Ecology is mainly seen to include the study of the biotic factors like bacteria, plant
as well as the animal population and even different nonliving abiotic components like that of the
metals, gases and other chemicals present in the environment (Menges et al., 2016). It mainly
describes the web or the network of different relations among the organisms at different scales of
the organizations. Ecologists are seen to research from everything starting from the role of timey
bacteria to that of the nutrient cycling to the effects of different landforms and biomes on the
earth’s atmosphere (Anderson, 2016). In this assignment, a detailed description of the biome of
Florida would be discussed along with that of the nutrient cycle and other animals and plants that
inhabit the region.
Biome of Florida:
Florida is in the Wetland Biome which is one of the largest biomes on the Earth. Such
biomes are mainly seen to be wet and humid and these make the biome idea for the large array of
different plant as well as the animal species. These areas mainly comprise of wetlands which are
mainly composed of fresh or saltwater bodies. These make them a natural source of fish as well
as aquatic plant lives and other aquatic animals like turtles and frog (Odum, 2018). A large range
of birds as well as alligators are also seen to make their homes in the region of these wetlands.
Researchers have found that South Florida is the home for different types of ecosystems that
include the coral reefs, marshes, dunes, swamps, mangroves, hardwood, hammocks, pinelands,
mangroves as well as scrubs.

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Over 30 different types of corals are found in the waters of Florida. It has been seen that
the individual corals are found to be interconnected colonies that mainly comprise of soft and
fleshy polyps secreting complex shells made of calcium carbonate. Most of the corals growing in
the sunlight are seen to depend on tiny algae that are called as the zooxanthellae living in their
soft tissues. The latter provide oxygen and food for the polyps. Here, dunes are mainly created
by wind. However, they are held in certain places by grasses which actually trap the sand grains
when they are moved across the beach (Brownscombe et al., 2019). Dunes that are found to be
stabilized by the grasses are seen to protect the coast from that of the winds and the pounding
waves. The beaches in Florida are seen to be the important nesting sites for the different sea
turtles and that of the shorebirds. It has been found that habitat loss because of real estate
development had resulted in declining in the nesting shorebirds as well as the population of the
sea turtle.
Animals that are found in the freshwater marshes are mainly seen to include fish,
different invertebrates, frigs, snakes and alligators, white tailed deer, the Florida panther and
other mammals. Different types of water-birds and wading birds are found to nest as well forage
in different as well. In the places of hammocks, different species of trees are found which sabal
palm, live oak, red maple, gumbo limbo, red maple and gumbo limbo and cocoplum. Many types
of epiphytes and ferns can be found here as well (Bjorndal et al., 2017). Different types of
wildlife in hammocks are also found and they are seen to be include different tree snails and
even raccoons, opposums, birds as well as snakes, lizards, tress frogs and different large animals
like that of Florida panther, bobcat and even deer. Different types of mangroves are found to be
included in the biome of Florida and these are mainly seen to include red mangrove, black

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mangrove as well as white mangrove. They are found to be protected habitat, breeding grounds
as well as nursery areas to different types of land and marine animals.
Pinelands are the most common plant communities where the Longleaf pine and slash
pines act as the dominant trees and the different understory plants are seen to include palmettos,
wildflowers, and ferns. Fire is found to be important for the young pine seedlings that require lot
of sunlight for surviving and fire also kills other hardwood competitors. Different wildlife
examples that are also found here are deer, squirrels, skunks, opossums, tortoises, birds and
snakes. Another section is the scrubs that are mainly the communities mostly composed of
pinewoods and also thick understory of oaks and saw palmetto (Platt et al., 2015). Animals that
are seen to be present in the scrub ecosystems are well adapted to the different hot-desert like
conditions. Different animals that are found in these regions are the gopher tortoises, lizards,
spiders, insects, scrub jays and many others. Scrubs are mainly found in the well-drained as well
as nutrient poor sandy soils and the plants that are grown here well adapted to grow in scrub
conditions.
Phosphorus and nitrogen:
Phosphorus is an element that is found to be of particular concern in the South Florida
wetlands. Researchers have found that high concentration of phosphorus in its dissolved state in
canals that drain the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) are discharged in the South Florida
wetlands. It has been found in the wetland marsh that phosphorus gets absorbed by the surface
peat or they might be used by plants. After that, they are included in the peats or that they are
used by plants and were incorporated later in the peats after the plants die or shed their leaves
(Murphy et al., 2017). Phosphorus is mainly gets deposited in the peats largely as the organic

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phosphorus in the dead plant debris. The dead plant debris gets converted to peats and the
phosphorus gets released into different types of water in the pore spaces in the peats. The
dissolved phosphorus that were found in the pore becomes available to be uptaken by the aquatic
plants that are rooted in the peats by up taking of micro-organism in the peat or might be by the
diffusion or migration back into surface water. Concentrations of phosphorus (in the form of
phosphate), and nitrogen (in the form of ammonium) are found to remain dissolved in pore water
and they often exceed the concentration that are present in the surface water. Researchers can
measure the changes in concentration between surfaces and pore water and with that of the
knowledge of rates of peat accumulation, calculation can be done for estimation the rate at which
elements are recycles and the rates by which they might diffuse as well as migrate back in the
surface water (Cronk et al., 2016).
Sulfur and mercury:
Sulfur is a very important component of concern in South Florida wetlands mainly
because of its role in circling mercury. In the surface areas of different wetlands, dissolves
oxygen is present and sulfur is seen to be existing, primarily in the oxygenated ionic form as
dissolved sulfate. Sulfate can be found to enter into the wetland from the various canal
discharges as well as from rainfall and groundwater discharge. It has been seen that under certain
oxygen free and reducing conditions in the peat, sulphate reducing bacteria use the sulpahte in
their metabolic activities and produce hydrogen sulphide. It has been seen to react with different
metals forming insoluble metal sulphides in the peat (Bauman et al., 2017). Mercury that remains
present in the peats is also seen to react with hydrogen sulphide to form mercuric sulphide which
poses little health hazard though. However, researchers believe that sulphate-reducing bacteria

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are found to be involved in the production of toxic methylmercury (CH3 Hg+) which is the
byproduct of the sulphate reduction process (Tucker et al., 2017).
Conclusion:
Florida mainly covers biome of wetlands with huge number of animals and plants spread
throughout. Phosphorus, nitrogen, sulfur and mercury are governing chemicals present in this
region.

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References:
Anderson, C. J. (2016). Ecology and Impacts of Introduced Non-Human Primate Populations in
Florida (Doctoral dissertation, University of Florida).
Bauman, W. A., Bohannon, R., & O'Brien, K. J. (Eds.). (2017). Grounding religion: A field
guide to the study of religion and ecology. Taylor & Francis.
Bjorndal, K. A. (2017). Foraging ecology and nutrition of sea turtles. In The Biology of Sea
Turtles, Volume I (pp. 213-246). CRC press.
Brownscombe, J. W., Danylchuk, A. J., Adams, A. J., Black, B., Boucek, R., Power, M., ... &
Haak, C. R. (2019). Bonefish in South Florida: status, threats and research
needs. Environmental Biology of Fishes, 102(2), 329-348.
Cronk, J. K., & Fennessy, M. S. (2016). Wetland plants: biology and ecology. CRC press.
Menges, E. S., Pace-Aldana, B., Haller, S. J., & Smith, S. A. (2016). Ecology and conservation
of the endangered legume Crotalaria avonensis in Florida scrub. Southeastern
naturalist, 15(3), 549-575.
Murphy, S. M., Ulrey, W. A., Guthrie, J. M., Maehr, D. S., Abrahamson, W. G., Maehr, S. C., &
Cox, J. J. (2017). Food habits of a small Florida black bear population in an endangered
ecosystem. Ursus, 28(1), 92-105.
Odum, H. T. (2018). Environment and society in Florida. Routledge.

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Platt, W. J., Orzell, S. L., & Slocum, M. G. (2015). Seasonality of fire weather strongly
influences fire regimes in south Florida savanna-grassland landscapes. PLoS One, 10(1),
e0116952.
Tucker, R. C., Rothermel, B. B., & Daskin, J. H. (2017). Preparing Florida pasture for grassland
restoration: Seedling establishment after herbiciding and tilling. Natural Areas
Journal, 37(1), 39-49.