Production biology

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The production biology is part of the ecology and deals with the energy and material flows in populations and ecosystems .

According to their role one differentiates the living beings in ecosystems in

• Producers who produce the primary production . This includes all autotrophic plants as well as the autotrophic blue-green algae and bacteria . They use solar or chemical energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into energy-rich biomass and oxygen .
• Consumers who feed on the producers or other consumers are animals , heterotrophic plants and some hunting mushrooms . They convert the biomass back into carbon dioxide and water for energy production while consuming oxygen.
• Destructors , which process the metabolic waste of consumers and dead living beings back into inorganic substances. These include in particular bacteria and fungi. They too produce carbon dioxide and water from the biomass while consuming oxygen.

There are several trophic levels among consumers :

• First-order consumers are herbivores or bacteria eaters, such as copepods .
• Second-order consumers are creatures that feed primarily on first-order consumers, such as small fish that eat copepods.
• Third and higher order consumers feed primarily on consumers of the previous trophic level, for example perch, on which ospreys live.

As a rule of thumb, the biomass of living beings decreases by a factor of 10 from one trophic level to the next.

In general, the majority of the carbon that is organically bound in the biomass by the primary producers and the energy bound in it is converted into the ecosystem itself by consumers and destructors within a few years. Under special conditions, especially in the deep sea, in deep lakes, in temperate forests, in moors and in the tundra, not all of the biomass is re-mineralized, but converted into humus, peat or water sludge. If these are sealed off from the air in geological periods, coal and petroleum can be produced from them . This is how the current oxygen content of the earth was created.

Due to the current excessive consumption of fossil fuels and the associated release of carbon dioxide, the flows of matter on earth are out of balance. This is a major cause of climate change due to the increased greenhouse effect .