This document discusses ecosystems and pest organisms. It begins by defining an ecosystem as consisting of biological communities and their physical/chemical environment. Examples of ecosystems like ponds and forests are provided. The main processes studied in ecosystems are energy transformations and biogeochemical cycling. Pests are defined as organisms that harm humans or human activities like agriculture. Examples of pest organisms from different taxonomic groups like insects, nematodes, plants, and plant diseases are then outlined.

1. I breath with misty fresh molecules, sleep
in a soft green pigment, play with a
rolling stones and giant mammals, grow
along with lushy mountains and shrubs
and rest with organism and decomposers.
roel c. penaflorida
Presentor MAST-1

2. Ecosystem and Pest
Organisms

3. What is Ecosystem?
An ecosystem consists of
the biological community
that occurs in some local,
and the physical and
chemical factors that
make up its non-living or
abiotic environment.

4. Examples of ecosystems -- a
pond, a forest, an estuary, a
grassland. The boundaries are
not fixed in any objective way,
although sometimes they seem
obvious, as with the shoreline
of a small pond.

5. The study of ecosystems mainly
consists of the study of certain
processes that link the living, or
biotic, components to the non-
living, or abiotic, components. The
two main processes that
ecosystem scientists study are
Energy transformations and
biogeochemical cycling.

6. BIOLOGICAL AND ECOLOGICAL
FEATURE OF ECOSYSTEM
TAXONOMY CLASSIFICATION AND
NAMING OF ORGANISM
PHYSIOLOGY METABOLIC PROCESSES OF
ORGANISM
MORPHOLOGY/ANATOMY PHYSICAL STRUCTURE OF
ORGANISM
GENETICS CHARACTERISTICS
REPRODUCTION POLULATION SIZE

7. ECOLOGY
•ecology generally is
defined as the
interactions of
organisms with one
another and with the
environment in which
they occur.

9. BIOSPHERE
The entire community of living
things – plants, animals, and
protest.
ECOSPHERE
The entire environment – the
physical environment of water,
air, rocks, soil, light and others.

11. ecosystem ecology
• INDIVIDUALS are concerned mostly about
physiology, reproduction, development or
behavior,
• POPULATIONS usually focus on the habitat
and resource needs of particular species,
their group behaviors, population growth, and
what limits their abundance or causes
extinction.
• COMMUNITIES examine how populations of
many species interact with one another, such
as predators and their prey, or competitors
that share common needs or resources.

12. IMPORTANCE
• we put all of this together and,
insofar as we can, we try to
understand how the system operates
as a whole. This means that, rather
than worrying mainly about
particular species, we try to focus on
major functional aspects of the
system.

13. Functional aspects of ecosystem
•include such things as the amount of
energy that is produced by
photosynthesis, how energy or
materials flow along the many steps
in a food chain, or what controls the
rate of decomposition of materials or
the rate at which nutrients (required
for the production of new organic
matter) are recycled in the system.

14. Simple understanding on ….

15. Concept of Ecosystem
ABIOTIC COMPONENTS BIOTIC COMPONENTS
Sunlight Primary producers
Temperature Herbivores
Precipitation Carnivores
Water or moisture Omnivores
Soil or water chemistry (e.g., P, NO3,
NH4)- phosphorous, nitrate, amonia
Detritivores
etc. Etc.

17. FUNCTIONAL ASPECT/GROUP
• is a biological category composed of
organisms that perform mostly the same
kind of function in the system; for
example, all the photosynthetic plants or
primary producers form a functional
group. Membership in the functional
group does not depend very much on
who the actual players (species) happen
to be, only on what function they perform
in the ecosystem.

18. PROCESSES OF ECOSYSTEMS

19. AMAZON

20. Stability and dynamics of
ecosystems
• Ecosystems are dynamic systems,
and a static ecosystem would be a
dead ecosystem—just as a static
cell would be a dead cell. As we
discussed above, energy is
constantly flowing through an
ecosystem and chemical nutrients
are continually being recycled.

21. EQUILIBRIUM AND
DISTURBANCE

22. • is the steady state of an ecosystem, in which
its composition and identity remain
generally constant despite fluctuations in
physical conditions and the makeup of the
biotic community. Ecosystems may be
knocked out of equilibrium by disturbances,
disruptive events that affect their
composition.
EQUILLIBRIUM

23. DISTURBANCES
are a result of natural processes. For
example, fire is a disturbance that can
be caused by lightning in a prairie or
forest ecosystem. Other disturbances
are the result of human activities.
Examples include acid rainfall,
deforestation, algal blooms, and the
introduction of invasive species.

24. RESISTANCE AND
RESILIENCE

25. • The ability of an ecosystem to remain at
equilibrium in spite of disturbances is
called resistance. How readily an
ecosystem returns to equilibrium after
being disturbed is called resilience.
Some ecologists consider resistance to
be an element of resilience—one that
acts on a short timescale

26. Defining Ecologically Based
Pest Organisms
PEST is any animal or plant
detrimental to humans or human
concerns, including crops, livestock
and forestry. The term is also used of
organisms that cause a nuisance, such
as in the home. An older usage is of a
deadly epidemic disease, specifically
plague. In its broadest sense, a pest is
a competitor of humanity

27. VERTEBRATES
• Birds
• Pigeons and seagulls
eat human food and
carry disease
• Many birds, such as
crows, eat crops

28. The common myna was
declared as one of the
world's most invasive
species and one of only
three birds in the top 100
species that pose an impact
to biodiversity, agriculture
and human interests. In
particular, the species
poses a serious threat to
the ecosystems where it
was named "The Most
Important Pest/Problem"

29. AMPHIBIANS
Cane toads have had serious
negative effects on many
ecosystems to which they have
been introduced, especially in
Australia. The toad's skin is
toxic, killing many wild and
domestic animals that attempt
to eat it.

31. MAMMALS
• Mice, rats, and other small rodents
damage crops and stored produce.
• Tigers prey on farming communities in
(for example) parts of India.
• Wild boars damage crops, spread disease,
and prey upon livestock.

32. INVERTEBRATES
•The classification
of an insect as a
pest is a
subjective one,
based on its
potential damage
to human needs
and/or natural
habitats and
ecosystems.

33. INSECT PEST
• Pest insects can: damage or kill
agricultural crops, ornamental plants, or
native plants in situ; consume and/or
damage harvested food; cause illness or
unproductivity in agricultural animals
(ie: cattle); and vector human diseases
or cause pain.

34. •Some insects are beneficial at one
stage of life and a pest at another
stage, for example many
lepidopterans may be serious pests
as larvae, while they may be
pollinators in adulthood.
•Some insects that are considered
pests in human settlements/gardens
are actually more a beneficial insect
than pestiferous: example: bees (the
main pollinators of human food
supplies).

35. Agricultural and domestic
arthropods

36. Examples of agricultural and
horticultural insect pests include:
• aphids and other Hemipteran pests,
• thrips,
• Lepidopteran, Dipteran, and
Coleopteran larvae,
• spider mites,
• locusts and crickets.
• Ants, cockroaches, flies and wasps
• Termites, woodworm and wood
ants cause structural damage

37. NEMATODES
• Root-knot nematodes are plant-parasitic
nematodes from the genus Meloidogyne.
They exist in soil in areas with hot
climates or short winters.

38. The soybean cyst nematode (SCN),
Heterodera glycines, is a plant-
parasitic nematode and a devastating
pest of the soybean (Glycine max)
worldwide.

39. Potato root nematodes or potato cyst nematodes
(PCN) are 1-mm long roundworms belonging to the
genus Globodera, which comprises around 12
species. They live on the roots of plants of the
Solanaceae family, such as potatoes and tomatoes.

40. Plants and plant disease
• Weeds-is a plant considered undesirable in a
particular situation, "a plant in the wrong place".
Examples commonly are plants unwanted in
human-controlled settings, such as farm fields,
gardens, lawns, and parks. Taxonomically, the term
"weed" has no botanical significance, because a
plant that is a weed in one context is not a weed
when growing in a situation where it is in fact
wanted

41. PLANT DISEASES
• Organisms that cause infectious
disease include fungi, oomycetes,
bacteria, viruses, viroids, virus-
like organisms, phytoplasmas,
protozoa, nematodes and parasitic
plants.

42. Bacterial leaf blight and stalk rot Pseudomonas avenae subsp. avenae
Bacterial leaf spot Xanthomonas campestris pv. holcicola
Bacterial stalk rot Enterobacter dissolvens = Erwinia dissolvens
Bacterial stalk and top rot
Erwinia carotovora subsp. carotovora
Erwinia chrysanthemi pv. zeae
Bacterial stripe Pseudomonas andropogonis
Chocolate spot Pseudomonas syringae pv. coronafaciens
Goss's bacterial wilt and blight (leaf freckles and wilt)
Clavibacter
michiganensis subsp. nebraskensis = Corynebacterium
michiganense pv. nebraskense
Holcus spot Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae van Hall
Purple leaf sheath Hemiparasitic bacteria
Seed rot-seedling blight Bacillus subtilis
Stewart's disease (bacterial wilt) Erwinia stewartii
Corn stunt (achapparramiento, maize stunt, Mesa Central or
Rio Grande maize stunt)
Spiroplasma kunkelii
BACTERIAL DISEASES OF CORN

43. Curvularia leaf spot
Curvularia clavata
Curvularia eragrostidis = Curvularia maculans
Cochliobolus eragrostidis [teleomorph]
Curvularia inaequalis
Curvularia intermedia
Cochliobolus intermedius [teleomorph]
Curvularia lunata
Cochliobolus lunatus [teleomorph]
Curvularia pallescens
Cochliobolus pallescens [teleomorph]
Curvularia senegalensis
Curvularia tuberculata
Cochliobolus tuberculatus [teleomorph]
Didymella leaf spot Didymella exitalis
Diplodia ear rot and stalk rot
Diplodia frumenti
Botryosphaeria festucae [teleomorph]
Diplodia ear rot
Stalk rot
Seed rot
Seedling blight
Diplodia maydis
FUNGAL DISEASES OF CORN

45. "I bequeathe myself to the dirt, to grow from the
grass I love;
If you want me again, look for me under your boot-
soles."
- Walt Whitman