Biology › Section S · Ecosystems and conservation › Topic S.1
Ecology of ecosystems
An ecosystem is a community plugged into its physical surroundings: sunlight, water, soil and air. Seeing who eats whom, how the system copes with shocks, and how ecologists test ideas on something too big to put in a lab is the starting point for managing any of them.
In this topic
- What counts as an ecosystem
- Kinds of ecosystems
- Disturbance, resistance, and resilience
- Worked example: measuring resistance and resilience
- Food chains and trophic levels
- Food webs: the realistic picture
- Worked example: reading a pond food web
- Studying whole ecosystems
- Modelling ecosystems
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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