Living organisms within an ecosystem, including both plants and animals, are called biotic factors. These biotic factors all interact and play a role in the transfer of energy throughout the system.
All living things need energy in order to survive. In an ecosystem, energy can be passed from organism to organism. Like you when you eat your dinner, animals and plants get their energy from what they eat. A food chain can show how energy and nutrients are passed from organism to organism and what each organism eats. Some animals eat plants (herbivores) while other animals eat only animals (carnivores), but some animals eat both plants and other animals (omnivores). |
ProducersProducers (which are also called autotrophs) are organisms that make their own organic material from simple inorganic substances like plants and algae. They change energy from a source (ie:/ the sun) into the kind of energy that is useful in a food chain and ecosystem, meaning it can be passed on to other organisms.
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Consumers
Consumers (which are also called heterotrophs) are organisms that gain energy by eating other organisms. Consumers include herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores. There can be multiple consumers in a food chain. For instance, a snake (consumer-carnivore) can eat a field mouse (consumer-omnivore).
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Decomposers
Decomposers take care of the waste in every ecosystem. They break down the dead producers and consumers, giving back their energy to the environment in the forms of respiration and inorganic (nonliving) matter being transferred to the soil during decomposition. These decomposers include worms, fungi, bacteria, and beetles.
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