 Ecology is derived from the Greek OIKOS,

meaning Household and LOGOS, meaning “ Stusy

“. Thus, the study of the environmental house
includes all the organisme in it and all of the
fungsional processes that make the house
habitable.
 Level of organization hierarchy
 A. Biotic components : Genes, Cells, Organs,
Organisms, Population and Communities.
 B. Abiotic components equals Biosystem : Genetic
systems, Cell systems, Ogan system, organismic
system, Population systems and Ecosystems.
 The community and the non living environment
function together as an ecological system or
Ecosystem.
 The components and processes that make an
ecosystem functional are the interaction of
the three basic component :
 1. The community
 2. the flow of energy
 3. The cycling of materials

 Concept of habitat and ecological niche.

 The habitat of an organism is the place where it lives, or

the place where one would go to find. The ecological
niche, however, include not only thephysical space
occupied by an organism but also its functional role in
the community ( for example, its trophic position ) and its
position in environmental gradient of temprature,
moistuture. pH,soil, and other condition of existence.
 - The Ecological niche is a central concept in the
ecology of organism. There are many definition of
the niche. George Evelyn Hutchinson made
conceptual advancesand intruduced the most
widely accepted definition : “ The niche is the set of
biotic and abiotic condition in which a species is
able to persist an maintain stablepopulation sizes.
The ecological niche is devided into the
fundamental and the realized niche. The
fundamental niche is the set of environmental
 Living organisms and their nonliving
environment are inseparably interrelated and
interac upon each other. Any unit (
abiosystem ) that includes all the organisms
that function together ( The biotic community
) in a given area interacting with the physical
environment so that a flow of energy leads to
clearly defined biotic structures and cycling
of materials between living and nonliving part
is an ecological system or ecosystem.
 ENERGY IN ECOLOGICAL SYSTEM
 Energy is defined as the ability to do work. The
first law of thermodynamics or energy
conservation law, states that energy may be
transformed from one type into another but is
neither created nor destroyed. The second law,
states no process involving an energy
transformation will spontaneusly occur unless
there is a degradation of the energy from a
concentrated form into a dispersed form. For
example, heat in a hot object willspontaneusly
tend to become dispersed into the cooler
surroundings. Because some energy is always
dispersed into unavailable heat energy, no
spontaneously transformation of energy.
 Organisms, ecosystems, and the entire
biosphere posses the essential
thermodynamic characteristic : They can
create and maintain a high state of internal
order or a condition of low entropy ( en= in,
trope= transformation ( a low amount of
disorder or unavailable energy in system ).
Ecosystem and organisms are, accordingly,
open, nonequilibrium, thermodinamic system
that exchange energy and matter with the
environment to decrease internal but increse
external entropy.