Energy transfer

The relations betwixt the unlike components of an ecosystem are so close that, if one of them is damaged, the whole ecosystem is affected. The main relations are those established between free energy flows and nutrient flows. The ecosystem is an open system equally far as energy is concerned, that is energy continuously gets in and out of the system. The free energy enters mainly from the sun, goes through and biotic community and its nutrient chain, and goes out as heat, organic matter and resulting organisms. More than into particular, the organisms produced are able to catch and use the solar free energy in order to transform some inorganic compounds into organic compounds, through the photosynthesis. These compounds are used past producers in two ways: to alive and to grow (the organic compounds form new structural elements of plant similar leaves and new branches). Herbivores, by eating vegetables, absorb their organic substances and metabolise them, i.e. transform them into other organic substances that can exist used for all vital functions (breathing, movements, trunk temperature, and many others) and employ them as structural material in order to abound. Carnivore animals acquit quite similarly, eating other animals. The process goes on in this way, from one category of organisms to another 1. The transfer of energy through the food chain determines some heat to exist lost into the environment, according to the 2d thermodynamics principle. This ways that carnivores will have less energy, while eating, than herbivores, that in turn will receive from their food less free energy than the corporeality used by plants when they metabolise their food (the organic affair that is formed thank you to the photosynthesis process). The energy transfer pct for a trophic level to the adjacent i is defined as "ecological efficiency" or efficiency of the food chain.

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