Interconnectedness in the Rainforest Ecosystem

In the rainforest ecosystem, everything is connected to one another. There is an interconnectedness existing in this ecosystem. To continue to function, the ecosystem depends on the interactions between the biotic and abiotic factors. An ecosystem survives by a combination of energy flow and matter recycling. To understand the interconnectedness of the ecosystem, food webs and food chains could be observed. Each organism depends on each other to survive and maintain their populations. In the food web, there are the producers and the consumers. The producers produce their food by the sun; they are autotrophs. This is one of the main ways energy is introduced into the ecosystem from the sun to the organisms. Herbivores depend on these producers for their food and energy. Carnivores depend on the herbivores for their food and energy, and omnivores depend on the producers and consumers for their food and energy. A dependency can be seen as the organisms rely on one another for energy.

Food webs do not only show the transferring of energy through the organisms, but it also shows the predator-prey relationships. This is important because this is one of the main ways a specie population is maintained. In the rainforest, there is a high biodiversity, so there is a large amount of organisms occupying the area. An example of this would be the jaguars prowling the area. They feed on preys such as tapirs and peccaries. Because of this, the number of peccaries and tapirs living in that area are kept to a certain balance. If the predators are lost, the populations of these preys would steadily increase causing there to be less plants in the area. Fewer resources could cause some organisms population, which depends on this source for food, to deplete. So if this keystone specie is lost, the whole ecosystem is affected.

Not only is predation observed, but symbiotic relationships are also seen: mutualism, commensalism and parasitism. An example of mutualism would be the