How are specific organisms related to the nutrition process? Take the simplest network of spruce forest organisms. All participants in these relationships are united in a trophic (food) chain. In any forest there are many of them.
Many of the components of one circuit are involved in others. Together, they form a trophic network of biocenosis. Her study allows us to establish the most significant relationships of organisms in the biocenosis.
Producers and consumers
Let us imagine these relations in a general way. They begin with a group of autotrophic organisms called producers (producer to produce). These are mainly photosynthetic organisms, rarely chemotrophic bacteria.
Heterotrophic organisms act as consumers (consumo - I consume). Depending on food intake, they are divided into consumers of the first (herbivorous), second and third order (carnivorous).
What is a reducer?
Let's move on to the next group. It is called reducers (reducens - returning). This includes heterotrophic organisms - saprotrophs (sapros - rotten). What is a reducer? This is an organism that feeds on dead matter and converts it into inorganic forms. Reducers include fungi, bacteria.
In the process of nutrition, each group of organisms consumes a certain amount of substances. This determines the value of the productivity process - education and accumulation.
Links of one chain
Producers create primary products. It contains a certain amount of energy. Part of it is wasted by plants for respiration. The mass remaining after this is pure production. It is used by consumers in the nutrition process.
Consumers create secondary products. Part of it is spent during the life of animals, bacteria, and fungi. Remains pure secondary products.
The whole process consists of the links that make up the chain:
- Consumers
- reducers;
- producers.
The importance of reducers
Due to lack of energy, the existence of high ecological pyramids with long supply chains is not possible. There is a pattern of energy flow in an ecosystem. Not all organisms of one level are eaten by others. A significant part of them dies and enters the so-called litter.
What happens to dead organisms, with the energy contained in their molecules? They are not lost to the ecosystem. Bacteria and fungi use them as a source of food, and therefore, energy (fallen leaves, dead tree trunks, animal corpses).
In land, especially in forest ecosystems, a significant part of primary production is destroyed by reducers. This is evidenced by a large number of litter in meadows or in the steppes. After all, what are reducers? This is a kind of scavengers. In a sustainable ecosystem, processes are balanced: total productivity should be equal to energy expenditures. Such an equilibrium requires the complete utilization of annual primary production by consumers. This is a rather rare phenomenon, but thanks to the compensatory activity of biocomponents, the ecosystem strives for it.
The cycle of chemical elements
The second most important functional feature of the ecosystem is the flow of matter. The abiotic environment contains many chemical elements, some of them take part in the small (biological) cycle, which is characteristic of any ecosystem. These are biogenic elements that are part of organic molecules.
Of the entire periodic table containing 108 elements, 27 are of biological importance. It is they that, after the death and impact of reducers on them, return to the environment and can be used again. This cycle of matter is different from the flow of energy in the ecosystem. Energy cannot be reused. It is theoretically possible to imagine a closed cycle of the cycle of matter under ideal conditions. However, this does not happen in nature. Some of the atoms migrate along with the movement of water, air masses and living organisms.
The speed of the cycle of elements is different. Chemical transformations in living organisms are not the same. So, getting into plants, it is partially involved in the transpiration process and quickly returns to the atmosphere. Partially, it participates in the process of photosynthesis, and hydrogen is included in the composition of organic molecules, where it lingers much longer.
Oxygen, which is part of the water, immediately enters the atmosphere and is used by animals in the process of respiration. At the same time, water flows directly to the animals from the abiotic environment.
The situation is different with carbon. It enters the cycle through plants. In the reactions of photosynthesis, oxygen is formed, which is released into the atmosphere and is used when animals breathe. Carbon is bound by plants in organic molecules and is thus stored in the phytomass. Partially, it is consumed by animals and reducers. Thus, carbon from the environment passes through all trophic levels and returns to the atmosphere.
When considering these examples, it becomes clear what reducers are and what functions they perform in nature.