Biology · Relationships of organisms with one another and with the environment. The idea in plain words, the rules to remember, the mistake to avoid and a worked example, written and checked by Mega Lecture.
This topic is mostly about four definitions that build on each other. A population is a group of organisms of one species, living in the same area at the same time. A community is all the populations of different species in an ecosystem. An ecosystem is the community together with its environment, all interacting.
Biodiversity is the number of different species living in an area. It is about how many species, not how many individuals.
A population grows quickly when there is plenty of food and little competition, predation or disease. Growth slows or stops when one of these factors becomes limiting. The human population is still growing, so demand for resources is rising.
Students judge biodiversity by the total number of organisms. Count the number of different species instead: 50 plants of 10 species is more biodiverse than 500 plants of 2 species.
Answer: (1) population, (2) community, (3) ecosystem.
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