Living organisms form communities and
these relationships within and between
these communities are affected by
external influences.
Physical factors that may affect organisms are temperature, availability of
nutrients, amount of light, availability of water, availability of oxygen and carbon
dioxide and the presence or absence of predators.
Quantitative data on the distribution
of organisms can be obtained by
random sampling with quadrats and
sampling along a transect.
Transects and quadrats are used to
help collect quantitative data about
organisms in their habitats. The
collected data can be analysed to
find the mean, median and mode
values of organisms in a particular
area.
All the conditions that surround a living organism is called the environment. A habitat
is the place where an organism lives. A population is the number of members of a
single species that live in a habitat. Populations of different organisms that live
together in a habitat is known as a community. An ecosystem is a community of
species and the habitat in which it lives.