What role do autotrophic organisms play in society? An apartment as an ecosystem Ecology of an apartment Autotrophs in an apartment (houseplants). This is the impact on the human body of electromagnetic waves, background radiation, noise and vibration levels.

Apartment as an ecosystem

Ecology of the apartment

Autotrophs in the apartment (houseplants)

• Plants in the apartment play an aesthetic and hygienic role: they improve mood, moisturize the atmosphere and release useful substances into it - phytoncides. Some indoor plants are used as medicine

Fauna of the apartment

At least two dozen species of animals live in houses that have settled in an apartment against the will of a person.

Pollution in the apartment

There are 4 types of pollution:

• Chemical

• biological

• Physical

• Microclimatic

chemical pollution

• This is indoor air pollution. The main sources are building and finishing materials, furniture, as well as pollution from the street.

biological pollution

• Air pollution of the room by spores of mold fungi, bacteria, viruses and, finally, dust.

dust

• This is a set of allergens, the main of which is a microscopic mite, which belongs to saprophytes and can cause allergies, accompanied by swelling of the throat and respiratory diseases.

physical pollution

• This is the impact on the human body of electromagnetic waves, background radiation, noise and vibration levels.

Microclimatic pollution

• The main parameters are temperature, humidity and air velocity.

Summarize

• Thinking about the deteriorating environmental situation, a person tries to make every effort and opportunity to create a favorable living environment. Each of us spends most of his time in apartments, therefore, the issue of the ecology of an apartment should become a paramount issue in the reorganization of an environmentally friendly home.

All living things on Earth need food in order to survive. Food is not only what people and animals eat, it is also minerals and nutrients that plants absorb. It would be a gross understatement to say that plants are the primary source of nutrition, as they must also feed in order to survive. Everything was created by nature in such a way that living beings could coexist harmoniously with each other. In simple terms, autotrophs and heterotrophs are plants and animals that differ in their way of feeding.

Autotrophs

For plants, food is starch and nutrients that are extracted from the soil and sunlight. They do not need to search for food, it will be enough just to use their own innate abilities and characteristics to obtain the necessary nutrients to ensure growth and development. Autotrophs are plants that get their food from rain, soil and sunlight.

Photosynthesis (the use of light) and chemosynthesis (chemical energy) play an important role in supplying cells with nutrients and minerals. During these complex processes"raw" nutrients and minerals are converted into special cells that absorb sunlight and transform it into energy. Autotrophs are also referred to as producers.

Heterotrophs

Heterotrophs are organisms that are unable to synthesize their own food. This includes animals and humans, that is, consumers who need external sources of food. The production of energy for the preservation of life and the proper functioning of the body requires the absorption and digestion of food. Without these processes, heterotrophs simply could not exist.

Heterotrophs are also called consumers. This includes herbivores (such as cattle, deer, elephants, and so on), carnivores (lion, snakes, and sharks, all those that feed on other animals), as well as omnivores (humans). Earthworms are also considered heterotrophs, eating the remains of dead plants and animals, fungi.

Autotrophs, heterotrophs: comparative characteristics

Autotrophs get their carbon from inorganic sources, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), while heterotrophs get their share of carbon from other organisms. Autotrophs are usually plants, heterotrophs are animals. Autotrophs and heterotrophs differ from each other in many respects. Autotrophs create their own food by photosynthesis or chemosynthesis with the help of non-living components of the ecosystem.

Heterotrophs depend on autotrophs for food. Autotrophs are directly dependent on energy from the sun and convert inorganic matter into organic matter. Heterotrophs depend on solar energy only indirectly, while organic substances are acquired from autotrophs and used in metabolic processes.

Photosynthesis and chemosynthesis

During photosynthesis, autotrophs use energy from the sun to convert water from the soil and carbon dioxide from the air into glucose. The latter provides energy and is used to create cellulose (which is indispensable for building cell membranes), such as plants, algae, phytoplankton, and some bacteria. Insectivorous plants use photosynthesis to generate energy, but also depend on other organisms for nutrients such as nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. Hence, these plants are also considered autotrophs.

Chemotrophs use the energy from chemical reactions to produce food. Most often, hydrogen sulfide (methane with oxygen) reacts. Carbon dioxide is the main source of carbon for chemotrophs. An example would be bacteria found in active volcanoes, hot springs, geysers, and on the seafloor. These organisms survive in the most extreme conditions.

Food chain

Autotrophs do not depend on other organisms, they themselves are the main producer and occupy the initial level of the food chain. Herbivores that feed on autotrophs occupy the second trophic level. Next are omnivorous and carnivorous heterotrophs. Finally, at the top of the food chain is a person who uses both the first and the second for food.

Biological organisms autotrophs and heterotrophs are two types of biotic components of an ecosystem that interact with each other. All living organisms can be classified as autotrophs or as heterotrophs. In an ecosystem, the flow of energy from one organism to another is described by the concept of a food chain. Each organism that depends on the next organism for food forms a linear sequence through which energy passes from one organism to another. Simply put, the food chain shows who eats whom.

Autotrophs, heterotrophs, chemotrophs: role in the ecosystem

All food chains start at the producer level. The main consumers eat producers for energy. Primary consumers are eaten by secondary consumers; secondary consumers are eaten by tertiary consumers, and so on.

A common example for explaining the concept of a food chain is an ecosystem where the grass is the producer and the mouse that eats the grass becomes the main consumer. The mouse turns out to be prey for the snake, which becomes a secondary consumer. Eagles eat snakes and become tertiary consumers.

The role of heterotrophs and autotrophs, as well as chemotrophs in nature, cannot be overestimated. Dead animals decompose, and thus the nutrients are returned back to the soil. This cycle of nutrient flow from one level to the next repeats periodically between the biotic and non-living components of the ecosystem.

Despite many differences, autotrophs and heterotrophs are directly dependent on each other. In order to survive in the global sense of the word, they are simply necessary for each other, since they are one of the most important components of the ecosystem, although in theory chemotrophs and autotrophs could exist without heterotrophs, the latter cannot live without someone else's vital energy.

An apartment is a heterotrophic ecosystem that resembles a city in miniature. Like a city, it exists at the expense of energy and resources, since its main inhabitants - people and animals living with them, are heterotrophic.

Autotrophs in an apartment are houseplants(flowers in pots, parsley in a box on the windowsill, a few stems aquatic plants and microscopic plankton in the aquarium).

Plants in the apartment play an aesthetic and hygienic role: they improve our mood, moisturize the atmosphere and release into it useful material- phytoncides that kill microorganisms. There is a special science - phytodesign (design is a type of engineering design activity to give industrial products an attractive look) - the ability to create beautiful interior, elegantly placing various indoor plants on the windowsill, walls or special stands, racks, pyramids. The more plants in the room, the cleaner the atmosphere, the more oxygen and fewer microorganisms in it. (Fig. 99.)

room air well cleans chlorophytum, geranium releases a lot of phytoncides into the air.

Fauna of the apartment. In addition to cats, dogs, budgerigars, hamsters, fish in an aquarium, at least two dozen species of animals live in houses that have settled in apartments against the will of man. Of the mammals, these are mice and rats, and in wooden houses, in addition, and common voles. Rodents are especially numerous in warehouses from closets to large food warehouses. The more food, the faster they multiply, and therefore the main way to control the number is to deprive rodents of food. There are special drugs that poison rats and mice, and mechanical means fight them (mousetraps).

Many different insects settled in the houses. The most common insects in apartments are various moths (furniture, clothes and fur coats). Today, there is practically no chemical that she would be "afraid of." Moth quickly adapts to new drugs and can eat socks and hats sprinkled with mothballs, tobacco, lavender. Moth prefers woolen things with the smell of sweat. Therefore, they are well ventilated and stored wrapped in fresh newspapers (the moth is not afraid of printing ink, but does not like it) or in closed plastic bags.

Sometimes lice and fleas appear in apartments, but these insects are easy to get rid of if hygiene rules are followed. During the years of the Great Patriotic War when there was not enough soap, lice became a carrier of dangerous diseases, such as typhus.

Microscopic mites can also live in apartments, causing scabies or a variety of allergic diseases: bronchial asthma, rhinitis, conjunctivitis, dermatoses.

Their main habitat is pillow feathers, mattresses and bedspreads, as well as old furniture, carpets, soft toys. They are also on the clothes of people living in infected apartments.

Cockroaches - black and red ("Prussians") "built in" well into the ecosystem of the apartment. You can fight them by maintaining cleanliness: store food in tightly closed jars, cover up the cracks through which these "tenants" go from room to room or from apartment to apartment. Using poisonous drugs against cockroaches is dangerous for humans. Biologists have developed a safe way for people to deal with cockroaches - the use of drugs that act on their reproductive system. Cockroaches that have tried these drugs do not give offspring.

Among the usual inhabitants of the apartment are also bugs, bred in flour or cereals. To protect against them, products should be stored in tightly closed jars, placing a few cloves of garlic there. You can store food in canvas bags, previously boiled for 30 minutes in a saturated salt solution.

There are many animals in the apartments that spend only part of their time in them. The main ones in the summer are house flies, which are dangerous because they can carry pathogens. Larvae of green and blue blowflies can destroy fish and meat left open for a short time. The fight against flies is simple: nets are pulled over the windows, and insects that have got into the apartment are destroyed with crackers, caught on adhesive tapes.

AT last years mosquitoes appeared in apartments, and not only those that fly in from the street, but also those that constantly live and breed in basements and other damp places. This house mosquito is so small that it is impossible to feel how it sits on the body, and its bites are painful. You can fight mosquitoes only by eliminating their ecological niches - leaks from pipes and wet places in basements.

Only in apartments do tiny yellow pharaoh ants live, feeding on the remains of human food.

Air pollution. The source of pollution can be toxic emissions of synthetic resins, which are impregnated with particle boards (furniture is made of them), evaporation of chemical floor coverings - linoleum and PVC films, gas combustion products in gas ovens and slabs. Air pollution from tobacco smoke is hazardous to health.

In each case, specific measures must be taken to reduce the concentration of harmful pollutants in the room air. Particleboard furniture is covered with paint and varnishes that reduce the emission of harmful substances, linoleum is not used in bedrooms, exhaust devices are installed above gas stoves that collect unburned residues. And, of course, rooms are ventilated to reduce air pollution. Clean the air and some indoor plants.

A lot of dust accumulates on books. Therefore, they should be regularly vacuumed and, if possible, kept in glazed shelves and cabinets. Dust and carpets accumulate, especially if they are walked on in the same shoes as on the street (it is necessary to change into indoor shoes). Carpets should be regularly cleaned with a vacuum cleaner or beaten out with a stick on the street, it cleans snow well from dust. One of the main pollutants is lint falling from bedding, underwear and outerwear in the process of wear. The source of dangerous pollution is the old foam rubber in armchairs and sofas, which breaks down and pollutes the air with the smallest particles. Foam rubber should be replaced every 5-7 years.

Energy saving and resource saving. As in a miniature city, energy enters the apartment ecosystem from the outside - in the form of electricity, gas, hot water. By water pipes water enters the apartment. A person, the main inhabitant of the apartment, acquires various things and food products. Both in the urban ecosystem and in the apartment ecosystem, it is very important to reduce the consumption of resources and especially energy. Reduces the consumption of resources by any neat housewife, whose products do not spoil; due to timely repair and careful handling, clothes are worn for a long time and serve for a long time Appliances; serviceable water taps and drain tanks.

Saving energy in an apartment can be very effective. If extra light bulbs do not burn, when the refrigerator is opened, the necessary products are quickly removed from it, the TV is on for a limited number of hours, then the energy savings will be significant. It is important to save heat by insulating doors and windows. Gas savings are possible when using gas stoves and columns.

Waste problem. From the waste that is generated in each apartment, a huge mass of city household waste is formed in landfills and a significant part of urban sewage. In countries such as Germany or Sweden, the owner himself divides apartment waste into fractions - paper, organic food residues, plastic, etc., puts it in containers different colors and facilitate their further processing. In Russia, such sorting of household waste has not yet been organized.

test questions

1. Why can an apartment ecosystem be called a “city in miniature”?

2. What plants are grown in the apartment?

3. What animals make up the fauna of the apartment?

4. What sources of air pollution are there in the apartment?

5. How can you save resources and energy?

Reference material

Some indoor plants are used as medicines (for example, aloe and colanchoe, the leaves of which are applied to abscesses, and the juice is taken orally for various internal diseases), we get vitamins and phytoncides from onions grown on the windowsill.

Electromagnetic pollution (electric smog) poses a significant health hazard to residents modern apartment, stuffed with electrical appliances and covered with synthetic carpets, walking on which charges a person with static electricity. All this causes headaches. There were even cases when such an electrified tenant, sitting at a computer, erased all information from his memory. Electrosmog is especially dangerous in the bedroom, where TVs and even electronic alarm clocks should not be placed.

Forced inhalation of tobacco smoke by non-smokers is called passive smoking. It causes great harm to health, because in the smoke that the smoker does not inhale, many toxic substances can be contained in higher concentrations than in the smoke inhaled by the smoker. When puffed, the temperature in the burning zone of the cigarette rises sharply, and the supply of oxygen is sufficient for complete combustion tobacco. At the same time, if a smoker consumes smoke filtered by a cigarette filter, then non-smokers who come into contact with him at the time of smoking receive combustion products of cigarette smoke without any purification.

To save energy when using electric stoves, you need to choose the right pots. The bottom of the pan must be perfectly flat and the same diameter as the burner, because if it is convex or dirty, the contact between the bottom and the burner is reduced and the heating time is increased. You can save energy by reducing the power after the pot is hot. AT Western Europe and especially in Japan, where energy is very expensive, they use the "tower" way of cooking: pot on pot. Peas, beans are steamed in the upper pan, main dishes are heated.

In Japan, refrigerator-sized microwave ovens have been created that burn household waste at night, when energy is cheaper.

An example of one of the options for an ecologically organized dwelling is given by T. Miller, author of the three-volume Life in environment". He used a decommissioned school bus to set up his house (saving building material, use of secondary raw materials), which sheathed with boards and installed on a heat-insulating foundation. The wheels from the bus were sold. To heat his home, Miller uses solar cells and thermal collectors, and to cool it in hot weather - cold air, which is driven by a fan from pipes buried in the ground to a depth of 5.5 m. In the future, Miller is going to install such a number of solar panels, which will allow not only to provide the house with electricity, but also to sell it. To illuminate the home, light bulbs are used that are 2.5 times more economical than conventional ones, and they last at least 5 years. A low-flow toilet is used. All organic waste is composted and used as fertilizer. The paper is sent for recycling. Old things are not thrown away, but distributed free of charge to those in need. Miller is constantly improving his "ecological lair" in order to reduce the cost of energy and resources for its provision.