Habitats, Ecosystems and Biomes

All living things on earth are complexly intertwined—animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and archaea. It’s important to understand several amazing terms of science to clearly define how and where all of these living things interact.

Habitat is the area and resources used by a particular species. For you, your habitat is your house or apartment. For the brook trout, its habitat is small spring-fed streams with sand or gravel bottom and water temperatures between 50-75 degrees. Remember—habitat is specific to one particular species!

Moving up in scale, an ecosystem is a community of organisms interacting with one another and their environment. This includes both biotic (living) and abiotic (nonliving) factors—animals, plants, microbes, water, soil, and climate, as well as the flow of energy and nutrients. For you, this would be your neighborhood (occupied by humans as well as other living things—insects, squirrels, birds, and more). For the brook trout, its ecosystem would be the freshwater stream as a whole (occupied by the brook trout and many other living things).

Going even larger in scale, a biome is a large geographic area that contains distinct plant and animal groups adapted to live in that environment. The spring-fed stream ecosystem in which the brook trout lives is a part of the larger deciduous forest biome. Major biomes across the planet include tundra, taiga, grasslands, deciduous forest, freshwater, desert, alpine, rainforest and ocean.

Additional Resources

Biomes, Ecosystems, and Habitats – National Geographic

Iowa’s Nature Series – Iowa State University Extension and Outreach

Iowa’s Native Ecosystems – Iowa Public Radio