yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Populations, communities, and ecosystems | Middle school biology | Khan Academy


3m read
·Nov 10, 2024

In biology, it's useful to have some shared language so we can communicate and describe the world around us in ways that we can all understand together.

So here, we're going to talk about populations, communities, and ecosystems, and as we'll see, these are all related ideas.

So first of all, a population is talking about the members of a specific species in an area. For example, in this picture, we have a population of zebra. I have one zebra there, one zebra there. There might be some others that we can't see; in fact, there are likely to be. So these are each members of a population of zebra.

Now we have other populations in this picture. We have a population of buffalo. These three are members of that population. We have a population of antelope; in fact, there is a bunch of antelope in this picture. So we have many members of that population. We even see some animals here in the background. I can't quite make out what they are, but that could be a different population. Let's say if those are elephants, they might be elephants the way I see them, but that could be members of a population of elephants.

So if that is a population, what is a community? Well, a community is all of the living species that live in the same area. So we have a community of animals that is made up of populations of buffalo, of zebra, and of antelope.

And I want to make clear that the populations, or when we're talking about the communities, we're not necessarily just talking about large animals like this. We could be talking about populations of mosquitoes. We could be talking about populations of fish in this pond if there are any fish. We could have a population of a certain species of plant. Likewise, when we're talking about communities, we're talking about collectively all of the living organisms together.

Now last but not least, what would be an ecosystem then? Well, an ecosystem is all of the living organisms plus all of the non-living things. So the ecosystem that we see here would also include the water; it would also include the dirt; it would also include the air. Organisms like those that we see right here are constantly interacting with both the living and non-living parts of their environment.

These interactions are how organisms get food, shelter, water, and warmth. These interactions are how organisms survive and produce offspring.

So let's get a little bit more practice with this idea of populations, communities, and ecosystems. We will do that by looking at this picture right over here. Pause this video and think about what are the populations here.

Well, you might not know the name of all these different types of fish, but you can see that there's a population of this gold-colored fish right over here. There's also another population of this blue-colored fish. We could keep looking for other populations. Looks like there's a population of this silver-colored, or I guess longish silver fish, right over here.

But once again, it's not just the fish. There's a population of coral. There are populations of microorganisms that we can't see here. The community would be all of these living organisms that live close to each other.

And we'll see sometimes they compete with each other, sometimes they eat each other, but sometimes they help each other, or sometimes they don't matter that much to each other. We'll study that into a lot more detail.

And then the ecosystem includes all of the above plus the water, plus the oxygen that is in the water, plus the sand at the bottom of the ocean.

So I'll leave you there. Hopefully, you now have a sense of what biologists are talking about when they talk about populations, communities, and ecosystems.

More Articles

View All
Getting Ducks in a Row | Port Protection
We’re trying to make a better life, not just for us, but also the community. What a day! Beautiful, isn’t it? Oh, you dumped that tote. That’s cool! Yeah, I got rid of that. Thank you! After a year of planning and weeks of hard work, Hans and Timmy Porte…
How Airbnb Will CRASH the Housing Market
Nobody is paying attention to something that could finally burst the Ducky Long bubble in the U.S. housing market. Everyone is worried about the housing market crashing. Stocks have gotten crushed this year; bonds have pummeled. The concern is that real e…
Obligations of citizenship | Citizenship | High school civics | Khan Academy
In this video, we’re going to learn about the obligations of U.S. citizenship. Obligations are actions that citizens are required to fulfill, or they’ll face punishment by law. Unlike the responsibilities of citizenship we talked about in the last video, …
One, Two, Three Bites, You’re Out | Wicked Tuna: Outer Banks
Michael: “Let that one go, all right? Got a double on, baby! What do you want me to do with this one?” TJ: “Let him go! Just cranking up. Keep it tight on them! Get tight on him!” F: “Watch out! What we’re here for, baby! Got a double on here. I think h…
Hinduism Introduction: Core ideas of Brahman, Atman, Samsara and Moksha | History | Khan Academy
We’re now going to talk about Hinduism, which is one of the largest religions on Earth, practiced by over a billion people. It’s interesting for several reasons. First, it is considered to be one of the oldest religions that is still practiced. Some histo…
What The Most Carefree Philosopher Can Teach Us | ZHUANGZI
Many centuries ago, a curious Taoist philosopher named Zhuangzi sat by the riverbank, absorbed in the gentle flow of the water, as his fishing rod lay nearby. Unexpectedly, two vice-chancellors appeared before him, having been dispatched by the Prince of …