Ecology

Ecology, was, until recently, a term used only by a few of our more sophisticated citizens. Then, with the dawning awareness that air pollution, water pollution, chemical pollutants, and overpopulation may be even more menacing to survival than racial conflict, riots, or even war, the word ECOLOGY crept into everyone’s lexicon. Conservation and the quality of environment became important political issues.

The mass media- radio, television, and the press- are now giving much greater coverage to conservation news. People turned a concerned eye on the environment. «What’s it all about?» they asked themselves. «And what can I do about it?» But what we are really talking about when we use words like environment and ecology.

In the broadest sense, our environment can be defined as our surroundings; it’s made up of all the physical, social, and cultural aspects of our world that affects our growth, our being, and our way of living. Humans share environment with plants and animals. Just as humans interact with their environment, so do the other animals and plants.

Ecology, or ecological science, is the scientific study of the distribution and abundance of living organisms and how these properties are affected by interactions between the organisms and their environment. The term «ecology» was coined in 1866 by the German biologist, Ernst Haeckel, from the Greek «oikos» meaning «household» and «logos» meaning «study»; hence, the «study of the household of nature».

Ecology is usually considered a branch of biology, the general science that studies living beings. Organisms can be studied at many different levels, from proteins and nucleic acids (in biochemistry and molecular biology), to cells (in cellular biology), to individuals (in botany, zoology, and other similar disciplines), and finally at the level of populations, communities, and ecosystems, to the biosphere as a whole. Ecology is a multi-disciplinary science. Because of its focus on the higher levels of the organization of life on earth and on the interrelations between organisms and their environment, ecology draws heavily on many other branches of science, especially geology and geography, meteorology, chemistry, and physics.

As a broad science, ecology can be subdivided into major and minor sub-disciplines. The major sub-disciplines include:

– Physiological ecology (or ecophysiology), which studies the influence of the biotic and abiotic environment on the physiology of the individual, and the adaptation of the individual to its environment;

– Behavioral ecology, which studies the ecological and evolutionary basis for animal behavior, and the roles of behavior in enabling animals to adapt to their ecological niches;

– Population ecology, which deals with the dynamics of populations within species, and the interactions of these populations with environmental factors;

– Ecosystem ecology, which studies the flows of energy and matter through ecosystems;

– Global ecology, which looks at ecological questions at the global level.