Ecosystem | Vocabulary | Khan Academy

Hello wordsmiths! I have to keep my voice down. You see, you've caught me observing a word in its natural habitat. Here we can see the words at play: nominalizing and conjugating, brachiating, snoozing. There's a waterfall of vowels, there's the conate bamboo. All of this together, all the words and the situation in which they live, it's one big ecosystem.

Let me, let me—right, let me back up. Ecosystem is the word we're looking at in this video. 'Ecosystem' is a noun; it means all living and non-living things that are found in a specific environment. So if this forest I'm in is a rainforest, we're talking about everything in that rainforest: birds, and monkeys, and bugs, and vines, and mosses, and rocks, and rivers. All of it together is an ecosystem.

Let's talk about this word's derivation. 'Eco' is an interesting prefix because now it means having to do with the environment. But it ultimately comes from the Greek 'oikos,' meaning home or dwelling place. The Earth is our home is the thinking there. 'System' comes to us from Greek too, and it means the whole thing together, basically. It's composed of word parts that mean a thing that sticks together.

So an ecosystem, right, is the way a home, an environment, works all together as a single unit. The fish eat the bugs, and the bugs pollinate the plants, and the plants feed the monkeys. The monkeys distribute the seeds: a system, an ecos system, you see?

So with these two word parts, 'eco' and 'system,' what can you come up with? What words can you assemble? Let me give you 10 seconds, and we'll meet back here after a quick music break.

All right, here we go! Here are three I came up with:

Ecology. This is the study of natural environments. 'Logy' is a suffix that means the study of. Like biology is the study of 'bios,' life; neurology is the study of brains; and ecology is the study of 'eco,' the 'oikos,' the house that we all live in called planet Earth.

Economy. This is the common word that plays on that same 'oikos' root because this word has to do with money, right? Uh, but originally it had a meaning more like household management. The economy is the way business behaves for a whole country. Right? How's the economy doing? But it's playing on the idea of a household budget: how much was a dozen eggs this week? How much was a can of coconut milk, a jar of peanut butter?

And systematic! Methodical doing something efficiently, applying a system to how you do something. Let's say I'm systematic about making breakfast sandwiches. Maybe I'll bake a whole tray of eggs and cut them into squares and put them on the little buns. I got a system! I'm being systematic.

And let's be systematic about teaching you the meaning of ecosystem by using it in a sentence or two. In a Pacific kelp forest ecosystem, sea otters eat kelp, hungry sea urchins. This is the sort of environment it is, right? It's an undersea forest, and it's not just the kelp. It's everything present there: from the algae and the sand, and the rocks and the seawater, to the living creatures. You have to back up and see all of them working in concert. It's all connected.

Here's another one: vultures provide an essential ecosystem service by eating carrion, by eating dead things. I realize now that my vulture looks more like a dodo! I love the fluffy ruff that vultures have at the base of their necks. Anyway, vultures are contributing to the functioning of the ecosystem by eating carrion.

You're a part of it too, by the way. You're part of an ecosystem of learners and knowledge and rocks and moss and vultures and otters and sea urchins and bugs and monkeys. You're connected to it too, and may that knowledge give you strength. You can learn anything!

David out.