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Abiotic components include physical conditions and non-living resources that affect living organisms in terms of growth, maintenance, and reproduction. Resources are distinguished as substances or objects in the environment required by one organism and consumed or otherwise made unavailable for use by other organisms.
A presentation on information flow in living systems. Living systems are life forms (or, more colloquially known as living things) treated as a system. They are said to be open self-organizing and said to interact with their environment. These systems are maintained by flows of information, energy and matter. Multiple theories of living systems ...
An ecosystem (also called an environment) is a natural unit consisting of all plants, animals, and micro-organisms (biotic factors) in an area functioning together with all of the non-living physical factors of the environment. [34]
[8] [9] Philosophical definitions of life have also been put forward, with similar difficulties on how to distinguish living things from the non-living. [10] Legal definitions of life have been debated, though these generally focus on the decision to declare a human dead, and the legal ramifications of this decision. [ 11 ]
For example, zoology is the study of animals, while botany is the study of plants. Other life sciences focus on aspects common to all or many life forms, such as anatomy and genetics . Some focus on the micro-scale (e.g. molecular biology , biochemistry ) other on larger scales (e.g. cytology , immunology , ethology , pharmacy, ecology).
Ecosystems are dynamically interacting systems of organisms, the communities they make up, and the non-living components of their environment. Ecosystem processes, such as primary production, nutrient cycling, and niche construction, regulate the flux of energy and matter through an environment.
The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities on Earth was not a single event, but a process of increasing complexity involving the formation of a habitable planet, the prebiotic synthesis of organic molecules, molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell ...
Biotic factors of the ecosystem are living things; such as plants, animals, and bacteria, while abiotic are non-living components; such as water, soil and atmosphere. Plants allow energy to enter the system through photosynthesis, building up plant tissue.