South Carolina Coastal Wetlands

Introduction

The South Carolina coastal Wetlands through the animals, the plants, and the other factors make these Wetlands unique as any human being in the world. The biodiversity of plants and animals that call this incredibly ecosystem home are as incredibly as the ecosystem itself. Something as strong and powerful as an ecosystem that can be out of balance because the lack of an animal is amazing and can only be a way of life.

Abiotic factors

The abiotic Factors are the physical features of that environment such and topography, climate, and water. Being at the coast the land is very level and very close to sea level. The climate is also very stable because the ocean keep the temperatures very moderated both night and day keeping the balance

The ones that eat other organisms for energy, the animals. The three animals that I chose are red drum, spotted seatrout, and white shrimp.

The first animal that I want to talk about is the red drum, or sciaenops ocellatus to scientists.( ) This is the sports fish of south carolina that many people try to catch. They get their name from the color of their back that is a copper and iridescent silver on there back. they have a large dorsal fin and black dots on either side of their tail. Red drum can live in a wide range of habitats as long as they are near the shore. the main places to find them are tidal creeks, oyster reefs, and beaches where there is a lot of silt.

The next fish is a cynoscion nebulosus non to sport fisherman and most people in that case as the spotted seatrout. They get there name the same way that the red drum does, from there color pattern. they have spots down there back and have a greenish color to them.( ) They like bottom habitat that are silty like rivers and shallow bays. Most of the spotted seatrout don’t reach more than 15 inches in length most of the

it go through how energy transfers from the sun then to the plants and on to the animals. It is more complicated than that but a simple explanation is this. All energy starts from the sun in the form of white light. Then autotrophs being primary producers of an ecosystem through the process of, photosynthesis, turns that sunlight into energy. Then herbivores eat that plant turning the energy in the form of glucose into there own energy through cellular respiration. The next level of predation, the secondary consumers consist of mostly carnivores but a few are omnivores meaning they eat both plants and animals. Finally the tertiary consumers are the highest level of the food chain meaning they are rarely preyed upon in the ecosystem. There is no definitive point of this because there will always be something bigger but the risk of die from predation is very low. Other problem that these animals run into when they reach this stage is aging. Eventually everything dies and when that happens detritivores will be there to break down the body and return the nutrients to the primary producer making the energy cycle restart. one of the other thing that is important to the energy flow is the energy pyramid which show how much energy intake it take to feed that animal and why there are so many primary producer and consumers but not nearly as many tertiary