Biotic factors: what are, characteristics, classification and examples

The Biotic factors or components They are all living organisms: animals, plants, fungi, bacteria and other microorganisms (that is, the set of the kingdoms of nature), as well as the interactions that keep between them. The set of these factors results in what we know as Biocenosis.

We recommend expanding this information with the reading of these two other ecology articles about what biocenosis and examples are and the difference and relationship between biotope and biocenosis with examples. This other article about the difference between biotic and abiotic can also help you better this issue.

Some of the main characteristics of biotic factors:

• They are those who have life.
• Normally they refer to flora and fauna, their life forms and its intra -specific relationships and interspecific relationships.
• They have specific behavior and present adaptations to survive in the environment in which they live.
• Living beings compete for food, space or other resources.
• They have reproduction strategies.
• There are several methods by which they are able to obtain the matter and energy of the physical environment. In this way, they are classified into three large groups: producers, consumers and decomponers.

Biotic or living beings can be classified in two main ways: according to the ecological organization and according to their position in the trophic or food chain.

On the one hand, in the classification of biotic factors according to the different levels of hierarchy or Ecological Organization We can find:

• Individual: Unitary, structurally and physiologically independent organism, whether unicellular or multicellular, which presents the ability to survive without needing other living beings, in a given environment.
• Population: According to Odum (1972) this concept refers to the grouping of individuals of the same species, who share space and time, so they act in the face of the same environmental factors and are freely related to each other (food and reproduction)
• Community or Biocenosis: It is the set of different populations and, therefore, of different groups of species, which inhabit the same place or territory (Biotope). The communities in their interaction with the physical or biotope environment in which they live and surround them form the different ecosystems.

On the other hand, in the classification of biotic factors according to their position in the food chain or the different trophic levels of the ecosystem they inhabit we can find:

• Producers: Autotrophic or producers are those that, from the energy they capture and of the inorganic and mineral substances provided by the physical environment, elaborate their organic components, in the processes of photosynthesis or chemosynthesis. Both processes, which present the same purpose, differ in the source of origin of energy that organisms need and extract to carry them out. In the first case, energy comes from sunlight and, in the other, from chemical reactions.
• Consumers: Consumers are heterotrophic organisms, that is, they feed on elaborated organic matter (primary consumers that consume producers) or from other organisms (secondary, tertiary and quaternary consumers and that consume other consumers) and transform it into their own organic matter. Primary or herbivorous consumers feed directly from producing organisms. Secondary consumers feed on other consumers using different tropic strategies. Some of these are: carnivorism, parasitism, omnivoria, detritivorism (scavengers, saprophagos, coprophages). Tertiary consumers and consumers are considered quaternary to superdedors.
• Decomponers: These organisms, mostly microscopic, constitute the last of the trophic levels. They are responsible for recycling organic matter, transforming it into inorganic matter to, thus, return some of its compounds to the environment. In this other post you can learn more about what are the living beings decomposing with examples.

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