Where in the World??
Where in the World??The animals at the Brandywine Zoo come from a variety of locations in the world. As you study the animals, it is important that you learn about where they live. They are a part of specific biomes, ecosystems, communities, and populations. They have particular habitats.
Biomes
Scientists have divided our world into different biomes, such as tundra,
grasslands, deserts, rainforests, deciduous forests, and marine environments.
A biome is a large geographical region with plants and animals that are
able to live in that location with its particular climate because they
have adapted in different ways to the amounts of water, heat, and soil
in that area.
Ecosystem
How the living
things interact with each other and interact with the nonliving things
in a particular area is called an ecosystem.
There is a difference between an ecosystem and a biome. An ecosystem is much smaller than a biome. An ecosystem can be as small as an aquarium in a soda bottle or as big as an ocean. For example, in science class we made a terrarium in one soda bottle and an aquarium in another soda bottle. These were each their own little ecosystem. A biome can be thought of many similar ecosystems throughout the world grouped together. For example, in the forests there is the rotting tree stump ecosystem, the forest floor ecosystem, the canopy ecosystem, etc. They are all a part of one biome - the deciduous forest biome.
Community
The living things
in an ecosystem are called a community. The community consists of all the
plants and animals that live and interact with each other in that ecosystem.
Communities are sometimes named for the kind of place where they live,
like pond communities or salt marsh communities.
Population
Communities are
made up of populations. A population is a group of the same kind of living
thing in a community. For example, all the scarlet macaws in the rainforest
make up one population. It is the population of scarlet macaws. The cotton
top tamarins make up another population, and so on.
Habitat
The special place
in a community in which a plant or animal lives is called its habitat.
The ecosystem can be considered the neighborhood where an animal lives,
and the habitat would be its address in that neighborhood. Within a community
there are many habitats. The habitat of an animal supplies it with everything
it needs to survive - food, water, and a home. Some animals are able to
live in more than one habitat. Others are not. Some are very limited in
their habitats.
Niche
Although animals
share the same habitat, each organism has its own niche, or role, to play
in a habitat. The way each animal lives may be very different from the
way the other animals in that habitat live. Sometimes what one animal does
effects the others, and sometimes it doesn't.
These are descriptions of some of the different areas where some of the animals at the Brandywine Zoo live in the wild. After reading a description of the area, try to identify which animals live in that area.
tundra temperate grasslands tropical rainforest desert deciduous forest