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Alice Helliwell Define and describe the following: ecosystem, community, assemblage, guild, niche and habitat. The term ecosystem is a holistic concept concerning plants, the animals habitually associated with them and all the chemical and physical components of the immediate environment, which together form a recognisable, fairly self-contained entity (Tansley 1935). The relationships between living entities in the ecosystem are manifested, not in a vacuum, but in physio-chemical settings i.e. a stage consisting of non-living (abiotic) environmental substances and gradients. This refers to basic inorganic elements and compounds such as water, carbon dioxide, calcium, carbonates and phosphates, or organic compounds, prevalent as by-products of organism activity or decay. Ecological relationships are also shaped by physical factors, such as edaphic conditions, gradients of current, wind speed and direction, moisture and solar radiation with its concomitants of light and heat. Within this arena act the biotic or living components i.e. plants, animals and microorganisms, all...

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