What Are All the Living Organisms in the Biosphere & Their Effects on Each Called?

What is the Biosphere?

• The biosphere refers to all of Earth's living organisms and where they live. Life's organisms means anything living including plants, animals, human beings and microorganisms. Organisms live in bodies of water like oceans, lakes, ponds and rivers. Organisms also live in forests, caves and deserts. All of this combined makes up a biosphere.

Ecosystems

• Every living organism interacts with the environment. Every living organism also has its own environment in which it lives and survives. Two priniciple processes happen in ecosystems: the nutrition cycle and energy flow. The nutrition cycle is the recycling of nutrients from one type of organism to another. Energy flow refers to photosynthesis, or sunlight energy going to producers such as plants, then on to animals including humans, or the consumers. Organisms also interact with nonliving things in their environment, called abiotic factors.

Populations

• A population refers to a group of individuals that live within a specific place. The individuals are of the same species, such as a group of chimpanzees, dolphins or people. Another example is a group of giraffes living on a savannah.

Communities

• Communities are arranged such that organisms, several populations of differing species, exist together in the same area. Symbiosis, predation and competition occurs between them. Symbiosis is when two species participate in a symbiotic relationship; one eats the other, or both benefit. An example of the prior is when people are harmed by a parasite such as a virus. The virus harms, using the human body as a host on which to survive. In the latter, both species form a partnership such as the group of bacteria living and thriving in the human intestine. The bacteria uses the human body as a host, while also providing a type of immunity.