Levels of organization
The biological levels of organization of living things are arranged from the simplest to most complex. A population is composed of many organisms of the same species. A community is made of multiple populations of different species.
Organism- an individual animal, plant, or single-celled life form. A organism traditionally lives in a group of organisms, creating a population.
Population- all the inhabitants of a particular town, area, or country. Multiple populations of different organism groups compose a community. Community- a group of organisms living in the same place. When there are multiple neighboring communities it is referred to as an ecosystem. Ecosystem- a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment. |
Each organism in the entire biosphere, which is really the Earth are considered a member of a particular species group and are collectively referred to as a population of different organisms. One example of this would be the pine trees that exist in many forests not only located in the United States but also throughout the world. The forest's pine trees represent the population of pine trees. Different populations that inherit a certain area may live in the same specific area, making there be more than one population of different species. The forest that has the pine trees includes populations of plants, insects and other microbial populations. "A community is the sum of populations inhabiting a particular area." For instance, all of the animals, trees, flowers, insects, and other populations in a forest, together form the forest's community, where these different populations interact by doing things such as acquiring energy or other necessities. Since this forest has abiotic elements such as water and rocks, this forest would be considered an ecosystem. An ecosystem consists of all the living things in a particular area together, including it's abiotic, also known as it's non-living parts, like nitrogen or carbon dioxide in the soil or rainwater. The highest level of organization, the biosphere is considered a collection of all ecosystems, and it represents the life zones and area of earth. It includes land, water, and even the atmosphere. Taken together, all of these levels comprise the biological levels of organization, which range as far as from organelles to the biosphere.