BIOLOGY
CHAP 19 - ORGANISMS & THEIR ENVIRONMENT
REFERENCE VIDEO LINKS
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CE19.1.1 State that the Sun is the principal source of energy input to biological systems
CE19.1.2 Describe the flow of energy through living organisms, including light energy from the Sun
and chemical energy in organisms, and its eventual transfer to the environment
CE19.2.1 Describe a food chain as showing the transfer of energy from one organism to the next,
beginning with a producer
CE19.2.2 Construct and interpret simple food chains
CE19.2.3 Describe a food web as a network of interconnected food chains and interpret food webs
CE19.2.4 Describe a producer as an organism that makes its own organic nutrients, usually using
energy from sunlight, through photosynthesis
CE19.2.5 Describe a consumer as an organism that gets its energy by feeding on other organisms
CE19.2.6 State that consumers may be classed as primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary
according to their position in a food chain
CE19.2.7 Describe an herbivore as an animal that gets its energy by eating plants
CE19.2.8 Describe a carnivore as an animal that gets its energy by eating other animals
CE19.2.9 Describe a decomposer as an organism that gets its energy from dead or waste organic
material
CE19.2.10Use food chains and food webs to describe the impact humans have through
overharvesting of food species and through introducing foreign species to a habitat
CE19.2.11Draw, describe and interpret pyramids of numbers and pyramids of biomass
E19.2.15 Draw, describe and interpret pyramids of energy
CE19.2.12Discuss the advantages of using a pyramid of biomass rather than a pyramid of numbers to
represent a food chain
E19.2.16 Discuss the advantages of using a pyramid of energy rather than pyramids of numbers or
biomass to represent a food chain
CE19.2.13Describe a trophic level as the position of an organism in a food chain, food web or
ecological pyramid
CE19.2.14Identify the following as the trophic levels in food webs, food chains and ecological
pyramids: producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers, tertiary consumers, and quaternary
consumers
E19.2.17 Explain why the transfer of energy from one trophic level to another is often not efficient
E19.2.18 Explain, in terms of energy loss, why food chains usually have fewer than five trophic levels
E19.2.19 Explain why it is more energy efficient for humans to eat crop plants than to eat livestock
that have been fed on crop plants
CE19.3.1 Describe the carbon cycle, limited to photosynthesis, respiration, feeding, decomposition,
formation of fossil fuels and combustion
E19.3.2 Describe the nitrogen cycle with reference to:
• decomposition of plant and animal protein to ammonium ions
• nitrification
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• nitrogen fixation by lightning and bacteria
• absorption of nitrate ions by plants
• production of amino acids and proteins
• feeding and digestion of proteins
• deamination
• denitrification
E19.3.3 State the roles of microorganisms in the nitrogen cycle, limited to decomposition,
nitrification, nitrogen fixation and denitrification (generic names of individual bacteria,
e.g.,Rhizobium, are not required)
CE19.4.1 Describe a population as a group of organisms of one species, living in the same area, at the
same time.
CE19.4.2 Describe a community as all the populations of different species in an ecosystem
CE19.4.3 Describe an ecosystem as a unit containing the community of organisms and their
environment, interacting together.
CE19.4.4 Identify and state the factors affecting the rate of population growth for a population of an
organism, limited to food supply, competition, predation, and disease.
CE19.4.5 Identify the lag, exponential (log), stationary.
and death phases in the sigmoid curve of population growth for a population growing in an
environment with limited resources.
E19.4.7 Explain the factors that lead to each phase in the sigmoid curve of population growth,
referring, where appropriate, to the role of limiting factors
CE19.4.6 Interpret graphs and diagrams of population growth.
Sun is the principal source of energy
• Energy is introduced into biological systems as light energy, which is absorbed by plants, where
the Sun is the principal source of energy. This energy is then transferred to chemical energy and
can pass to other organisms through feeding. When these animals die, they are broken down
by decomposers which return their nutrients to the soil.
• Even plants do not make use of all the light energy available to them. This is because some light:
• is reflected off shiny leaves.
• is the wrong wavelength for chlorophyll to trap.
• passes through the leaves without passing through any chloroplasts
• does not fall on the leaves.
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Food chains
A food chain with three trophic levels
• A food chain shows the transfer of energy from one organism to the next, starting with a
producer
• The source of all energy in a food chain is light energy from the Sun
• The arrows in a food chain show the transfer of energy from one trophic level to the next
• Energy is transferred from one organism to another by ingestion (eating)
• In the food chain above:
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• Examiner’s tips
• Make sure you can write a food chain involving 3 consumers, with the arrows in the correct
direction.
• Don’t include the Sun (it is not an organism).
• Always start with the producer on the left of diagram.
• Practice labelling each trophic level in your food chain under the
• organisms (producer, primary consumer, etc.).
• Don’t waste time drawing plants and animals: this will not get you any
• extra marks.
Food Webs
• A food web is a network of interconnected food chains
• Food webs are more realistic ways of showing connections between organisms within an
ecosystem as animals rarely exist on just one type of food source
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A food web shows the interdependence of organisms.
• Food webs give us a lot more information about the transfer of energy in an ecosystem
• They also show interdependence – how the change in one population can affect others within
the food web
• For example, in the food web above, if the population of insects decreased:
• The population of grass plants would increase as there are now less species feeding off them
• The populations of frogs and voles would decrease significantly as insects are their only food
source
• The population of thrushes would decrease slightly as they eat insects but also have another food
source to rely on (slugs)
• Most of the changes in populations of animals and plants happen because of human impact –
either by overharvesting of food species or by introduction of foreign species to a habitat
• Due to interdependence, these can have long-lasting knock-on effects to organisms throughout
a food chain or web
Trophic Levels
A trophic level is the position of an organism in a food chain or food web.
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• Trophic levels describe the position of an organism in a food chain, web, or pyramid.
• Animals (known as consumers) can be at different trophic levels within the same food web as
they may eat both primary, secondary and / or tertiary consumers.
• Energy flows from the sun to the first trophic level (producers) in the form of light
• Producers convert light energy into chemical energy, and it flows in this form from one
consumer to the next
• Eventually all energy is transferred to the environment – energy is passed on from one level to
the next with some being used and lost at each stage.
• Energy flow is a non-cyclical process – once the energy gets to the top of the food chain or
web, it is not recycled but ‘lost’ to the environment.
• This is in direct contrast to the chemical elements that organisms are made from, which are
repeatedly recycled.
Transfer of Energy
• For the energy to be passed on, it must be consumed (eaten)
• However not all the energy grass plants receive goes into making new cells that can be eaten.
• The same goes for the energy the vole gets from the grass, and the energy the barn owl gets
from the vole.
• Only the energy that is made into new cells remains with the organism to be passed on.
• Even then, some of this energy does not get consumed – for example few organisms eat an entire
organism, including roots of plants or bones of animals – but energy is still stored in these parts
and so it does not get passed on.
• Most of the energy an organism receives gets ‘lost’ (or ‘used’) through:
• making waste products e.g. (urine) that get removed from the organism.
• as movement
• as heat (in mammals and birds that maintain a constant body temperature)
• as undigested waste (faeces) that is removed from the body and provides food for decomposers.
• This inefficient loss of energy at each trophic level explains why food chains are rarely more than
5 organisms long.
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• In the example above, something that preyed regularly on the barn owl would only get 0.1J of
energy from each barn owl it ate.
• To survive, it would have to:
• eat a huge number of them every day to get the amount of energy it needed to survive.
• not expend much energy itself hunting them
Energy is lost at each trophic level for several reasons.
Energy Transfer in Human Food Chains
• Humans are omnivores, obtaining energy from both plants and animals, and this gives us a
choice of what we eat.
• These choices, however, have an impact on what we grow and how we use ecosystems.
• Think of the following food chains both involving humans:
• wheat → cow → human
• wheat → human
• Given what we know about energy transfer in food chains, if humans eat the wheat there is
much more energy available to them than if they eat the cows that eat the wheat.
• This is because energy is lost from the cows, so there is less available to pass on to humans.
• Therefore, it is more energy efficient within a crop food chain for humans to be the herbivores.
rather than the carnivores
• We often feed animals on plants that we cannot eat (e.g., grass) or that are too widely distributed
for us to collect (e.g., algae in the ocean which form the food of fish we eat)
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• Try this - Figure below shows the flow of energy through a complete food chain:
1. a) Which form of the Sun’s energy is trapped by the producer? [1 mark]
b) Into which energy form is the Sun’s energy converted when it is trapped by the producer? [1 mark]
2. a) The first consumer has received 6000 units of energy. How many units of energy (X on the figure)
have been passed to the second consumer? [1 mark]
b) How many units of energy (Y on the figure) are lost from the third consumer to the decomposers. [1
mark]
3. a) Suggest why the proportion of the energy intake which a producer loses to the environment (20%)
is smaller than that lost to the environment by a first consumer (30%). [2 marks]
b) Many countries have difficulty in producing enough food for their population. How might it help to
overcome this problem if humans were always fed as first consumers, rather than second or third
consumers? [3 marks]
Answers
1. a) Light (or solar) energy b) Chemical energy
2. a) 1200 units b) 48 units 3. a) The consumer may be warm-blooded, so some energy is lost as heat.
Consumers usually move around to find food, a mate, or escape from predators, which uses up energy,
but producers do not move.
b) Feeding as a first consumer involves eating plants. Less energy is lost to the environment when feeding
at this level, so food production is more efficient in terms of energy conservation.
Try this:
Figure below shows a food web:
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1. Select appropriate organisms form the food web to complete each column in the table below. [4
marks]
2. Ladybirds eat aphids. A very large number of ladybirds arrive in the habitat where these organisms
live. Predict some of the possible effects this could have on the organisms in the above food web. [6
marks]
Answers
a]
b) 6 suggestion such as:
• decrease in aphids because ladybirds eat aphids.
• increase in ivy because there will be fewer aphids feeding.
• decrease in wrens because there are fewer aphids to eat.
• decrease in caterpillars because the wrens now have only caterpillars for food.
• increase in oak trees because there will be fewer aphids feeding.
• increase in hogweed because there will be fewer aphids feeding.
• increase in goldfinches because there is more hogweed to eat.
Pyramids of Number
• A pyramid of numbers shows how many organisms we are talking about at each level of a
food chain.
• The width of the box indicates the number of organisms at that trophic level.
• For example, consider the following food chain:
A pyramid of numbers for this food chain would look like this.
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A pyramid of numbers doesn’t always have to be pyramid-shaped, for example:
This is because the size of the organism is also important – one large organism, like the oak tree in the
pyramid above, contains enough energy to support many smaller organisms (the insects)
Rules to remember when drawing a pyramid of numbers:
• You cannot change the trophic level of the organisms – they must stay in the same order as in
the food chain with producers on the bottom, followed by primary consumers, then secondary
consumers, then tertiary consumers
• Generally, the larger an individual organism is, the less of them there are:
Pyramids of Biomass
• A pyramid of biomass shows how much mass the creatures at each level would have without
including all the water that is in the organisms (their ‘dry mass’)
• Pyramids of biomass are ALWAYS pyramid-shaped, regardless of what the pyramid of numbers
for that food chain looks like
• This is because the mass of organisms decreases as you go up a food chain – if we take our
first food chain as an example, it’s impossible to have 10kg of grass feeding 50kg of voles
feeding 100kg of barn owls.
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A pyramid of biomass
• Pyramids of biomass provide a much better idea of the quantity of the plant or animal
material at each level of a food chain and therefore are a better way of representing
interdependence within the food chain.
The Carbon Cycle:
• Nutrients such as carbon and nitrogen are not endless resources.
• There is a finite amount of each element on the planet and as such, they need to be recycled to
allow new organisms to be made and grow.
• Carbon is taken out of the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide by plants to be used for
photosynthesis
• It is passed on to animals (and microorganisms) by feeding.
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• It is returned to the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide by plants, animals, and
microorganisms because of respiration.
• If animals and plants die in conditions where decomposing microorganisms are not present the
carbon in their bodies can be converted, over millions of years and significant pressure, into fossil
fuels.
• When fossil fuels are burned (the process is known as combustion), the carbon combines with
oxygen and carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere.
• Increased use of fossil fuels is contributing to an increase in the carbon dioxide content of the
atmosphere.
• In addition, mass deforestation is reducing the number of producers available to take carbon
dioxide out of the atmosphere by photosynthesis.
• This problem is worsened by the fact that in many areas of the world, deforestation is taking
place for land rather than for the trees themselves, and as such they are burnt down, releasing
yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The carbon cycle is simple:
• Carbon is taken out of the atmosphere by photosynthesis.
• It is passed on to animals and decomposers by feeding.
• It is returned by respiration, in plants, in animals and in decomposing.
• microorganisms
• In addition, it is returned (in increasing amounts) by combustion of fossil fuels.
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The Nitrogen Cycle
• Nitrogen as an element is required to make proteins.
• Neither plants nor animals can absorb it from the air as N2 gas is very stable and the bonds
holding the nitrogen atoms together would need massive amounts of energy to break (the two
nitrogen atoms in a nitrogen molecule are held together by a triple covalent bond)
• However, there are two ways it can be taken out of the air and converted into something easier
to absorb:
• Nitrogen fixing bacteria found ‘free living’ in soil and in the root nodules of certain plants (peas,
beans, clover – we call them leguminous plants) take N2 gas and change it into nitrates in the
soil.
• Lightning can ‘fix’ N2 gas, splitting the bond between the two atoms and turning them into
nitrous oxides like N2O and NO2 that dissolve in rainwater and ‘leach’ into the soil.
• Plants absorb the nitrates they find in the soil and use the nitrogen in them to make proteins.
• Animals eat the plants (or other animals) and get the nitrogen they need from the proteins in the
plant or animal.
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• Waste (urine and feces) from animals sends nitrogen back into the soil as ammonium
compounds (the urea in urine contains nitrogen)
• When the animals and plants die, they decay and all the proteins inside them are broken down
into ammonium compounds and put back into the soil by decomposers.
• The plants can’t absorb ammonium compounds though, so a second type of soil bacteria,
nitrifying bacteria, convert the ammonium compounds to nitrites and then to nitrates, which
can then be absorbed by plants – and so the cycle goes on.
• Finally, there is a third, unhelpful type of (anaerobic) bacteria called denitrifying bacteria found
in poorly aerated soil (i.e., not much oxygen)
• These bacteria take the nitrates out of the soil and convert them back into N2 gas.
• Farmers can help reduce the amount of these unhelpful bacteria by ploughing and turning over
soil.
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Definitions
• A population is defined as a group of organisms of one species, living in the same area at the
same time.
• A community is defined as all the populations of different species in an ecosystem.
• An ecosystem is defined as a unit containing the community of organisms and their environment,
interacting together (e.g., a decomposing log, a lake)
• The way in which an organism lives its life in an ecosystem is called its niche.
• Living things along with non- livings mud, stones) in the pond form an ecosystem (ecosystem =
community + environment). The way tadpole lives in the pond (eats weeds, excrete waste,
disturb the sand at the bottom while moving) is its niche.
Factors Affecting Population Growth
• All living organisms compete for food, water and living space.
• Those which are the best adapted to their environments generally increase their populations at
the expense of those less well adapted.
• Population growth in most organisms is controlled by the following three factors:
• Food supply, Predation & Disease
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Human Population Growth
Human population growth globally has been increasing exponentially for the last 150 years
There are many reasons for this exponential growth, including:
• Improved technology leading to an abundance of food = rapid increase in birth rate
• Improved medicine, hygiene and health care = decrease in death rate
Growth Curve
A typical growth curve for a population in an enclosed environment
• The shape of this curve (a little like an ‘S’), gives it its name – a sigmoid growth curve
• The curve has four distinct phases:
• Lag phase – organisms are adapting to the environment before they are able to reproduce; in
addition, at this stage there are very few organisms and so reproduction is not producing larger
numbers of offspring.
• Log phase (exponential phase) – food supply is abundant; birth rate is rapid and death rate is
low; growth is exponential and only limited by the number of new individuals that can be
produced
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• Stationary phase – population levels out due to a factor in the environment, such as a nutrient,
becoming limited as it is not being replenished; birth rate and death rate are equal and will
remain so until either the nutrient is replenished or becomes severely limited
• Death phase – population decreases as death rate is now greater than birth rate; this is usually
because food supply is short or metabolic wastes produced by the population have built up to
toxic levels.
• Organisms in a natural environment are unlikely to show population growth like a sigmoid growth
curve because they are affected by many other factors, including:
• changing temperature or light
• predators
• disease
• immigration (individuals moving into the area)
• emigration (individuals moving out of the area)
• If there are no limiting factors, there will be no stationary or death phase – the log phase will continue
upwards, instead of the line leveling off. This has happened with human population growth. Human
population size has increased exponentially because of improvements on food supply and the development
of medicine to control diseases. Infant mortality has decreased, while life expectancy has increased.
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