Ecosystems

Ecosystems

   An ecosystem is an environment consisting of all the organisms living in a certain area, as well as all the non-living, physical components of that particular environment. Ecosystems can be either natural or artificial.

   One example of a natural ecosystem is a rainforest. Where as an artificial ecosystem for example would be a garden. These two different places can have similarities in the form of plants and/or animals. However they also have many differences such as climate.

   Both these places will contain a huge variety of insects; some the same and some completely different. The same will go for plants; there will be many that are the same but they will also contain different ones. The reason these are different is because some plants and animals can only survive under certain circumstances. The temperature will be different as a rainforest is usually hot even with the downpours. A garden will tend to be hot in the summer and cold in the winter.  

   In the rainforest there are a vast range of animals such as: orang-utan, gorilla, boa, caiman, red-eyed tree frog, birdwing, leafcutter and, toucan and quetzal. In the garden you will find a different type of frog, butterfly, snakes and birds. These animals may not be the same; but they are from the same family.

   It is quite difficult for humans to explore the rainforest as it is a vast area and it is full of dangerous animals. However; it would be quite easy to explore a garden depending on its size as there will be a smaller amount of different animals and plants.

   Some of the animals would find it hard to live in the other ecosystem. The leopard would struggle to live in the garden as it would not have any medium/large animals to eat; unless someone lets there dog out. The hedgehog would in turn find it hard to survive in the rainforest as there are many animals that would be able to easily kill it.

   Rainforests only occupy around 3-6% of the Earth’s surface; but a staggering 50% of animals live there. With this vast amount of animals in a relatively small area it would be very difficult to know if you have discovered every living thing there. In the garden it is still hard to know if you have discovered everything as animals can be anywhere.