Ecology
Ecology (from Greek meaning "study of the home" and logos "science") is the science of the habitat. The term was invented in 1866 by Ernst Haeckel, a German pro-darwinist biologist. Ecology is the study of the interactions between living things and the environment. The environment includes both the abiotic environment — non-living things like climate and geology — and the biotic environment — living things like plants and animals. Much of ecological research is concerned with the distribution and abundance of organisms and how distributions are influenced by characteristics of the environment. Organisms influence their environment and the environment influences organisms.
A quite frequent definition consists in defining ecology (or scientific ecology, or natural ecology) as the science of the following triangular relationship :
- relationship between organisms of a species (for example, study of a rabbit, and how it relates to other rabbits, e.g. high reproductive rate result in increasing number of rabbits);
- the organized activity of this species (i.e., the effect the increasing food uptake by rabbits has on their environement, e.g., eating all the food result in no more food)
- and the environment of this activity (i.e., the resulting consequences of the environment evolution on the rabbit, e.g. no more food to eat result in rabbit death); the environment is at the same time the product and the condition of this activity and thus of the survival of the species.
The term ecology holds different meanings depending on who use it. For many scientists, ecology belongs to basic biological sciences. However, most ecologists would argue that ecology is a science on its own. For many, ecology is before anything "nature protection", as if there was on one side humans and on the other side a virgin Nature, to protect from human activity. Other people estimate that ecology is much more than just biology, but rather a certain vision of the world, which would consist in living in harmony with the other living beings, in not seing the other organisms which surrounds us as mere objects to be used, but rather as organisations, entities belonging to a larger coherent system. According to Serge Moscovisci for example, there are three approaches to define ecology:
- an emotional organic orientation : this refers to what a human being feels, a feeling of love toward Earth, a desire of living a quiet and simple life, to breath pure air, to drink clean water, to preserve an certain environment
- a technical orientation : seeking to understand the way ecosystems are working, relations of cooperation/competition between organisms...and to find ways to solve the problems arising (pollution , extinction, accumulation of waste)
- a political orientation : these relate to society choices, such as choice of research directions, decision over use of certain technologies, or use of natural resources, waste management.
From an ecological point of view, the Earth consists of a hydrosphere, a lithosphere, a geosphere and a biosphere. An assemblage of natural communities and species, within areas of ecological potential based on soil, climate and topography parameters are called ecoregions, and constitute a basic element in ecology.
Ecology includes many sub-disciplines including theoretical ecology, applied ecology, behavioral ecology, macroecology, systems ecology, ecosystems ecology, community ecology, social ecology, population ecology, landscape ecology, conservation ecology, soil ecology, paleoecology, microbial ecology, ecoevolution and agroecology. Ecology also plays important roles in the inter-disciplinary fields of ecological economics, ecological health, ecological design and ecological engineering.
An interesting, but somewhat controversial idea in ecology is the Gaia theory (science).
