Even if it doesn’t look like it, all living things constantly interact with their environment. For
instance, every time you take a breath, you get oxygen from the air, and every time you
breathe back out, you release carbon dioxide into the world around you. Both oxygen and
carbon dioxide are vital gases that different organisms can use. You, a human, need the
oxygen for energy and need to get rid of the carbon dioxide, because it’s a waste matter.
Just like us, all other organisms take something from their environment while putting waste back
into it. When several kinds of organisms interact with each other in one particular area, it’s called
an ecosystem. In the forest, living beings (plants, animals, insects, fungi and bacteria) all interact
with each other and with the soil and water to form the forest’s specific kind of ecosystem.
So, how does it work? Every organism in the forest can be put in one of three categories.
Depending on which category they’re in, they’ll interact with each other and the forest’s
resources in a different way. The categories are producer, decomposer and consumer. Let’s
look at each one.
Producers are living things that can make their own energy out of non‐living resources all
around them like, oxygen and water. They’re also known as autotrophs. Autotrophs do not
need to kill anything in order to eat. Plants and algae, for example, are producers. In the
forest’s ecosystem, the trees, shrubs and moss are all producers. They turn water and sunlight
into the energy they need to live and grow, through a process called photosynthesis. And
remember that carbon dioxide you expelled as waste matter? Well, for plants, carbon dioxide
is a vital gas. It is used to help aid with the process of photosynthesis.
