Ecosystem question! Urgent!?

Question

Imagine that you have been chosen as the biologist for thedesign team for a self-contained habitat, Space Station ECOS, to be assembled in orbit. It will be stocked with organisms you choose to form a self-sustaining ecosystem that will support you and five other people for two years. Describe the main functions you expect the organism to perform. List the types of organisms you would select, and explain why you chose them.

Please help!

Thank you very much!

Answer 1

cool hwip

Answer 2

You need to have the ecosystem do four things: (1) metabolize your waste into a form usable by other organisms (catabolism), (2) convert energy from whatever source you have into the chemical energy of your food (anabolism), (3) provide a balance of all the various nutrients, and (4) remain stable rather than getting taken over by any undesired organisms you bring unintentionally, or just having a key component die off.

To break down your waste, you would want a fairly wide variety of bacteria and fungi. Note that it's not only your own waste, but the waste from whatever processes you have going on in your ecosystem. Practically, you might be better off with just one or two kinds, and anything they can't break down you just jettison and replace. But the question wants a self-sustaining ecosystem, so let's have a bunch.

To capture energy, the obvious choice is plants. Both land plants and algae have been studied for this type of use. However, there are also chemosynthetic bacteria. So if your energy source is something other than sunlight you may be better off with those. But reconstituting food components includes fixing nitrogen. That can be done either by bacteria such as those found in the root nodules of legumes, or by non-living chemical manuracturing processes as part of how you provide the energy to make your ecosystem run.

To provide a balance of nutrients, you're probably best off selecting a wide variety of plants: beans for protein, vegetables for vitamins A and C, grains for carbohydrate and B vitamins, and some kind of oilseed for essential fatty acids. If you have the budget for it, you can put yourself at the top of a longer food chain by including fish, crustaceans, mollusks, fowl for eggs, or (in a larger system) cattle for milk. You want animals that won't spend too much of the energy on their own metabolism, so birds and mammals for meat aren't a good choice. The cattle should be limited to what will be sustained by the parts of plants that would otherwise be waste, since they have microbes in their gut that can digest cellulose. Termites can also fill this role, if you're adventurous enough to try eating grubs.

To ensure that the ecosystem is stable, on this scale you're better off just keeping rooms isolated from each other, and having spare seed to start over with if necessary (and stored food to tide you over while you do). In a much larger system, you would inevitably get insects in your greenhouses and such. So you would have predators to keep pests in check, and alternate prey for the predators so that you can sustain a good predator population when you don't have an infestation.

Edit, after seeing earlier replies: You don't have to have bees. Many plants are pollinated by wind, or will self-pollinate, or are propagated vegetatively instead of bearing fruit like peppers or tomatoes. Bee-pollinated plants can be pollinated by hand. But it's a good idea for a larger space station, and worth mentioning in your selection of which plants to bring.

Answer 3

You want plants, especially vegetables. They'll provide oxygen and food.
You'll want pollinating insects (ie bees). They'll ensure that seeds are produced so that you can have more plants.
You want decomposers, like fungi, which will get rid of waste matter and help maintain the soil.
And your five colleagues will have to be vegan, so for bonus points, look for the sorts of foods that vegans have to eat to have a balanced diet and include them.
Or you could just cheat and include chickens! (and chicken feed, obviously)
Surely they teach you this stuff at school?

Answer 4

I'm not the one to ask

I like Earth and diversity in plants and animals

ask someone who has kept an aquarium for awhile

Answer 5

Think of what you need:

-- food from ...
-- water from ...
-- oxygen from ...
-- carbon dioxide removal by ...
-- decomposers for ...