Biology - Ecology (Natural Environment)

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Hello Steemians, last time we talked about Ecological levels(organism, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere) in my previous post. I will not be going too far from our ecological system, and so we will be touching some aspects of our natural environment.

The natural environment is the natural occurrence of both living and nonliving things in the ecosystem. Just like I explain when talking about ecology, living organisms are generally affected by their environment in one way or the other. Some of these things are water, air, animals, stones, plants, soil, sun, etc. we can talk about our natural environment by looking at terms like Ecology, Population, Community, Habitat, and Ecosystem.

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Importance of natural environment to the organism

• It served as food for some organisms
• It's home to organisms
• It enables the interaction between non and living things things
• It provides conditions for reproduction
• It provides security for the organism

Organisms and their environments Interaction

• Water from the ground and rain flow into body waters like streams and river
• The streams/rivers then flow into large water bodies like oceans and lake
• The water gets back into the atmosphere from lakes and the ocean. Through the process of evaporation and transpiration in plants.
• The water in the atmosphere precipitates and forms water vapor, which condenses to form clouds.
• The water vapor is moved by the wind from above the ocean to above land.
• The condensed water then falls back as rain. The rainwater penetrates the ground, which is then absorbed by plants and the cycle continues

• Resources for living organisms to survive in an ecosystem are limited, so they are forced to compete among themselves for the limited resources. For example, a lion and a tiger will both hurt a goat for a meal. So you see the two organisms are competitors within their ecosystem.

• Some other organisms are a source of food for others, which makes some to be prey to others in an ecosystem. For example, a cat is a predator, while a rat is a prey.

• Some organisms live in a closed relationship with others, having a mutual understanding. An example is parasitism, where an organism lives and depends on its host.

• Some organisms are anatomically in structure, and their physiological or behavior enables them to be able to adapt and survive in an ecosystem. For example, a chameleon can change its color depending on its environment to stay away from its predators.

We are going to end, you can see how the Natural environment interacts with living organisms. Talking about our natural environment, we are simply putting together the reaction of both living and nonliving things. Next, we will be looking at the Food chain and the Food web.

Thanks for reading.