in today's video we're going to cover biotic and abiotic factors so we'll discuss what each of them are and then we'll take a look at an actual ecosystem and try to spot the relevant factors though we can describe biotic factors as any living factor that affects another organism or that shapes the ecosystem in some way it's kind of a hard one to describe but if you think of something like predation then we would class that as a budget factor because it's a living process and it can influence the population of another species in this case whoever's leg that was other buttock factors would be things like competition for resources or habitat the amount of disease and the availability of food so if you're asked to find the buttock factors in an ecosystem just think of all the ways that the living organisms whether they're animals plants bacteria or anything else that's living can affect one another about factors meanwhile are all of the non-living parts of the environment that can affect organisms so these are often the chemical or physical part of the environment it includes things like the light intensity temperature carbon dioxide concentrations moisture levels the intensity and direction of the wind and the ph and mineral content of the soil so if we were to pick any one of these we could hopefully explain what an impact changing it might have on the environment for example an increase in temperature could increase the rate of photosynthesis because the enzymes involved can work faster and so as a result there might be an increase in the overall rate of plant growth it could also mean that animals have to spend less energy staying warm so they might be able to use more energy for growth or spend less time searching for food now typical questions for this topic will generally focus around identifying these various biotic and abolitic factors and then trying to explain what will happen if they change so if you think about a clownfish chilling out by its sea anemone what would be the main biotic and abiotic factors that affect it for biotic factors we have predation by bigger fish or eels we have the sea anemone itself which remember acts as the clown fishes habitat and so there could be competition for that habitat and they could also be competition for the plankton and the algae that the clownfish eat and always remember the burden of disease that the animals have then when it comes to the abiotic factors we can think of the temperature of the water which might change throughout the day or throughout the year the oxygen concentration of the water and also the levels of acidity and salt in the water then even though factors like light intensity and carbon dioxide concentration might not affect the clownfish directly they might affect other species around them like the sea anemone which will in turn affect the clownfish and that's all for today this was just a quick one so hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you next time