What are the components of a forest ecosystem?

Producers are plants that are at the bottom of all terrestrial food chains, and store energy from the sun in the chemical bonds within their molecules. This energy is transferred up the food chain by consumption, creating a complex food web in which each species has links to several others, either as a predator or a prey species.

Fundamental to the functioning of ecosystems is the recycling of nutrients such as carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. When organisms die, they in turn are consumed by decomposers that break down the organic matter and return the nutrients to either the soil, or the atmosphere.

Within a forest ecosystem, there is a substantial quantity of dead material, and an extensive population of decomposers. In the wet eucalypt forests of southern Tasmania, for example, there are over 1200 species of wood-eating beetles and roughly the same number of fungi, whereas there are just 21 different mammal species.

Fire is one of the dominant abiotic (non-living) factors in forest ecosystems, so many of the non-rainforest producers have developed adaptations to encourage rapid regrowth after fire events. These include dormant buds called lignotubers located at the base of the trunk, and epicormic buds which lie under the bark at intervals up the trunk. These are stimulated to sprout and grow if the leaf canopy of the tree is removed, providing a rapid response to fire events and allowing the tree to resume photosynthesising within days. Thick bark also provides a natural defence from the heat of the fire.