Abiotic & Biotic Factors
- The environment in which communities of plants and animals live is changing all the time
- These changes are caused by abiotic (non-living) and biotic (living) factors
- These factors affect communities in different ways, for example:
- For some species, certain factors may cause their population size to increase, whereas for other species their population size may decrease
- For some species, certain factors may cause the distribution of their populations (i.e. where they live) to change
Abiotic factors
- In Biology, ‘abiotic’ means non-living
- An abiotic factor is a non-living factor within an environment such as temperature, light intensity and water availability
- The table below explains how these abiotic factors may affect a community of organisms
- One abiotic factor not included in this table is the presence and levels of pollutants, which can change the size and distribution of populations of certain species
- For example, lichen are very sensitive to air pollution and are not able to grow if the concentration of sulphur dioxide (an air pollutant) gets above a certain level
Abiotic Factors that Affect Communities Table
Biotic factors
- In Biology, ‘biotic’ means living
- A biotic factor is a living factor in the environment such as competition, predation and disease
Biotic Factors that Affect Communities Table
