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Phytotoxicity describes any adverse effects on plant growth, physiology, or metabolism caused by a chemical substance, such as high levels of fertilizers, herbicides, heavy metals, or nanoparticles. [1] General phytotoxic effects include altered plant metabolism, growth inhibition, or plant death. [2]
A pyramid of energy shows how much energy is retained in the form of new biomass from each trophic level, while a pyramid of biomass shows how much biomass (the amount of living or organic matter present in an organism) is present in the organisms. There is also a pyramid of numbers representing the number of individual organisms at each ...
Plant ecophysiology is concerned largely with two topics: mechanisms (how plants sense and respond to environmental change) and scaling or integration (how the responses to highly variable conditions—for example, gradients from full sunlight to 95% shade within tree canopies—are coordinated with one another), and how their collective effect on plant growth and gas exchange can be ...
According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, "natural food sources of vitamin B 12 are limited to foods that come from animals." [24] Like raw vegans who do not consume B 12-fortified foods (for example, certain plant milks and some breakfast cereals), fruitarians may need to include a B 12 supplement in their diet or risk vitamin B 12 ...
A food pyramid and a corresponding food web, demonstrating some of the simpler patterns in a food web A graphic representation of energy transfer between trophic layers in an ecosystem Energy flow is the flow of energy through living things within an ecosystem . [ 1 ]
Indirect effects – organisms directly affected by the loss of food, which has declined due to toxins. Sublethal effects – toxins or compounds that do not induce significant mortality but make the organism sick or make it change its behavior [9] Increased sensitivity to toxicants when additional environmental stressors are present [10]
Ecosystem complexity was once thought to reduce stability by enabling the effects of disturbances, such as species loss or species invasion, to spread and amplify through the network. However, other characteristics of network structure have been identified that reduce the spread of indirect effects and thus enhance ecosystem stability. [24]
Out of a total of 28,400 terawatt-hours (96.8 × 10 ^ 15 BTU) of energy used in the US in 1999, 10.5% was used in food production, [3] with the percentage accounting for food from both producer and primary consumer trophic levels. In comparing the cultivation of animals versus plants, there is a clear difference in magnitude of energy efficiency.