Ecological Organization
1. At the lowest level of ecological organization, you find individual species of living organisms. Every single plant and animal species on the planet, right from microscopic bacteria and fungi to mammoth blue whale and Giant Sequoias, finds a place at this level of the ecological pyramid. The distribution of these species is governed by abiotic factors of the said region.
2. The second level of this pyramid comprises the population of individual species featuring in the first level. In this case, population refers to a group of species living together in a demarcated geographical area. For instance, a herd of wildebeests in African Savannah or coyotes in North American Prairies.
3. The third level of ecological pyramid comprises communities of different species which live together in a demarcated geographical area and interact with each other. This interaction between the members of these communities often revolves around the concept of predator-prey and symbiotic relationships.
4. At the next level of ecological organization lies the ecosystem, a biological environment comprising all the living organisms and non-living things (or abiotic factors such as air, soil, and water) in a particular region and the interaction between them. Though many people refer to these levels as the levels of organization in an ecosystem, it is technically incorrect as ecosystem in itself is one of the levels of ecological organization.
5. The fifth level of an ecological pyramid is that of a biome, a major biotic community which is typically characterized by dominant forms of vegetation and climatic conditions. Some of the most prominent biomes of the world include the desert biome, rainforest biome, Savannah biome, etc.
6. The last level of the ecological pyramid is the biosphere, which is made up of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. It is also known as the zone of life on Earth, owing to the fact that all lifeforms found on the planet coexist here. Simply put, it is the sum of all the ecosystems of this planet.
Though technically there are six levels of organization in ecology, there do exist some sources which only identify five levels, namely organism, population, communities, ecosystem, and biome; excluding biosphere from the list. With the amount of biodiversity that the planet boasts of, the idea of classifying environment into different levels surely comes handy in studying the environment.