Biotopes and Habitats
Marine Aquarium Hobbyists Research Biotope Tanks
Reef aquaria benefit from the natural filtering offered by refugia.
Life on Earth contributes to the way the whole planet works. Biologists restrict themselves to living things, but other scientists are now trying to come to grips with ‘Earth System Science’ as a whole.
The Biosphere
Only a small part of our planet sustains life – those places on, or just above or below the surface. Conditions vary from place to place so it is normal to restrict study to particular habitats and ecosystems.
Habitats and Ecosystems
Each part of the biosphere has its own peculiar set of physical characteristics, often known as a habitat, and each of these habitats supports its own characteristic species. In fact the organisms that live in each habitat will modify their environment, so they are often a crucial part of it. Coral Reefs are a good example of where the physical environment and the species that live there work together to form a recognisable set of conditions. If the term ‘habitat’ refers mainly to physical parameters then the term ‘community’ describes the plants and animals that live there – together they make up the ‘ecosystem’ of that part of the biosphere.
Biotopes
Even within one habitat conditions can vary from place to place, so the term ‘biotope’ has been introduced to describe the many small communities that can be found there. These two terms, habitat and biotope, are almost identical, but it is probably true to say that each habitat contains many biotopes. Coral Reefs might be described as habitats, and seagrass beds nearby might be thought of as biotopes which play an important part in maintaining the reef ecosystem.
Marine Aquaria
Hobbyists try to replicate complex aquatic systems in small tanks and must intervene periodically to maintain suitable conditions. Recently people have begun to enlist ‘the help of nature’ to control water quality, running the water from the ‘display tank’ through another ‘refugium’ (or biotope tank) where a small community of filtering organisms are kept. The creatures in this ‘biotope tank’ would not survive in the ‘display tank’ – they would be eaten by the specimens – but if are kept safely out of harm’s way they can go about their business of cleaning up the water. In addition to this cleaning role they can also provide natural food in the form of their eggs and larvae (to the delight of some of the inhabitants of the display tank), and can become interesting ‘specimens’ in their own right.
Research Opportunity for Hobbyists
This whole idea of effectively extending the number of organisms kept in a single system of tanks (a reef tank linked with a seagrass/mangrove tank as examples of the 'display' and 'biotope' tanks) opens up many research opportunities. This year is International Year of the Reef, and experimenting on a small scale by hobbyists can help work out how the many biotopes associated with coral reefs actually function.Read the blog and join in the discussion about this article.
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