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Given that these organisms also require a supply of nutrient salts, in other words fertilizer, for photosynthesis, their relationship with detritus is a complex one. In land ecosystems, the waste products of plants and animals collect mainly on the ground (or on the surfaces of trees), and as decomposition proceeds, plants are supplied with ...
Mucus is made up of a fluid component of around 95% water, the mucin secretions from the goblet cells, and the submucosal glands (2–3% glycoproteins), proteoglycans (0.1–0.5%), lipids (0.3–0.5%), proteins, and DNA. [7] The major mucins secreted – MUC5AC and MUC5B - are large polymers that give the mucus its rheologic or viscoelastic ...
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.
One can differentiate abiotic decomposition from biotic decomposition (biodegradation); the former means "the degradation of a substance by chemical or physical processes", e.g., hydrolysis; the latter means "the metabolic breakdown of materials into simpler components by living organisms", typically by microorganisms.
abiotic component adaptive behavior In behavioral ecology, any behavior which contributes to an individual's reproductive success and is thus subject to the forces of natural selection. allee effect A concept in population ecology that describes the positive relationship between the size of a given population and its growth. alpha diversity
NASA's 2015 strategy for astrobiology aimed to solve the puzzle of the origin of life – how a fully functioning living system could emerge from non-living components – through research on the prebiotic origin of life's chemicals, both in space and on planets, as well as the functioning of early biomolecules to catalyse reactions and support inheritance.
In this context, a phenotype (or phenotypic trait) can be viewed as any definable and measurable characteristic of an organism, such as its body mass or skin color. [ citation needed ] Apart from the true monogenic genetic disorders , environmental factors may determine the development of disease in those genetically predisposed to a particular ...
In this sense, the biosphere is but one of four separate components of the geochemical model, the other three being geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. When these four component spheres are combined into one system, it is known as the ecosphere. This term was coined during the 1960s and encompasses both biological and physical components of ...