In any environment, living organisms experience the combined effect of various conditions. Abiotic factors, biotic factors and anthropogenic factors affect the features of their life and adaptation.
What are environmental factors?
Living organisms inhabit several habitats. These include water, airborne and soil. Some species live in other organisms. They are called parasitic. Each of them is characterized by certain properties. They are called environmental factors. These properties can be combined into three groups. These are abiotic factors, biotic and anthropogenic. They have a cumulative effect on living organisms.
All conditions of inanimate nature are called abiotic factors. This, for example, the amount of solar radiation or moisture. Biotic factors include all types of interactions between living organisms. Recently, human activity has a growing influence on living organisms. This factor is man-made.
Abiotic environmental factors
The action of inanimate factors depends on the climatic conditions of the habitat. One of them is sunlight. The intensity of photosynthesis, and hence the saturation of air with oxygen, depends on its quantity. This substance is necessary for living organisms to breathe.
Abiotic factors also include temperature and humidity. The species diversity and vegetation period of plants, especially the life cycle of animals, depend on them. Living organisms adapt to these factors in different ways. For example, most angiosperms dump foliage for the winter to avoid excessive moisture loss. Desert plants have a rooted root system, which reaches considerable depths. This provides them with the necessary amount of moisture. Primroses have time to grow and bloom in a few spring weeks. And they experience a period of dry summers and cold winters with little snow underground in the form of a bulb. In this underground modification of the shoot, a sufficient amount of water and nutrients accumulate.
Abiotic environmental factors also suggest the influence of local factors on living organisms. These include the nature of the relief, the chemical composition and saturation of the soil with humus, the level of salinity of the water, the nature of ocean currents, the direction and speed of the wind, and the directivity of radiation. Their influence is manifested both directly and indirectly. So, the nature of the relief determines the effect of winds, humidity and light.
The influence of abiotic factors
Inanimate factors have different effects on living organisms. Monodominant is the effect of one predominant influence with a slight manifestation of the rest. For example, if there is not enough nitrogen in the soil, the root system develops at an insufficient level and other elements cannot affect its development.
Strengthening the action of several factors simultaneously is a manifestation of synergism. So, if there is enough moisture in the soil, plants better begin to absorb both nitrogen and solar radiation. Abiotic factors, biotic factors and anthropogenic factors can also be provocative. With an early thaw, plants are likely to suffer from frost.
Features of the action of biotic factors
Biotic factors include various forms of the influence of living organisms on each other. They can also be direct and indirect and manifest quite polar. In certain cases, organisms have no effect. This is a typical manifestation of neutralism. This rare phenomenon is considered only in the case of complete absence of direct effects of organisms on each other. Inhabited in general biogeocenosis, proteins and moose do not interact in any way. However, they are affected by a general quantitative ratio in the biological system.
Examples of biotic factors
A biotic factor is commensalism. For example, when deer carry the fruits of burdock, they do not get any benefit or harm from it. At the same time, they bring significant benefits, resettling many plant species.
Mutually beneficial relationships often arise between organisms . Their examples are mutualism and symbiosis. In the first case, mutually beneficial cohabitation of organisms of different species occurs. A typical example of mutualism is the hermit crab and sea anemone. Its predatory flower is a reliable protection for an arthropod animal. A sea anemone uses as a dwelling.
A closer mutually beneficial cohabitation is symbiosis. His classic example is lichens. This group of organisms is a collection of strands of fungi and cells of blue-green algae.
Biotic factors, examples of which we have examined, can be supplemented by predation. In this type of interaction, organisms of one species are food for others. In one case, predators attack, kill, and eat their prey. In another, they are engaged in the search for organisms of certain species.
The effect of anthropogenic factors
Abiotic factors, biotic factors have long been the only ones that affect living organisms. However, with the development of human society, its influence on nature increased more and more. The famous scientist V.I. Vernadsky even singled out a separate shell created by human activity, which he called the Noosphere. Deforestation, unlimited plowing of lands, extermination of many species of plants and animals, unreasonable nature management are the main factors that change the environment.
Habitat and its factors
Biotic factors, examples of which were given, along with other groups and forms of influences, in different habitats have their own significance. The ground-air vital activity of organisms is largely dependent on fluctuations in air temperature. And in the water, the same indicator is not so important. The effect of the anthropogenic factor is currently acquiring special significance in all habitats of other living organisms.
Limiting factors and adaptation of organisms
A separate group can distinguish factors that limit the life of organisms. They are called limiting or limiting. For deciduous plants, abiotic factors include the amount of solar radiation and moisture. They are limiting. In the aquatic environment, its salinity level and chemical composition are limiting. So global warming leads to the melting of glaciers. In turn, this entails an increase in the content of fresh water and a decrease in the level of its salinity. As a result, plant and animal organisms that cannot adapt to this factor and adapt, inevitably die. At the moment, this is a global environmental problem for mankind.
The limiting factor in the aquatic environment is also the amount of carbon dioxide and sunlight, which reduce the species diversity of plants with depth. Predatory and parasitic organisms, competition for food and a partner of the opposite sex, the spread of viruses that cause epidemics of various diseases of humans and animals, also significantly change the conditions and limit the number of species of organisms.
So, abiotic factors, biotic factors and anthropogenic factors act in combination on different groups of living organisms in their habitats, regulating their abundance and vital processes, changing the species richness of the planet.