Introduction to Ecology

Lecture 1
 What Is Ecology?
• LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Define ecology.
2. Distinguish among the following ecological levels: population,
community, ecosystem, landscape, and biosphere.
 Evolution of Definitions of Ecology
• Ecology = from the Greek root OIKOS, “at home”, and OLOGY, “the study of”
• Haeckle (1866): “By ecology we mean the body of knowledge concerning the economy of
Nature - the investigation of the total relations of the animal to its inorganic and organic
environment.”
• Burdon-Sanderson (1890s): Elevated Ecology to one of the three natural divisions of
Biology: Physiology - Morphology - Ecology
• Elton (1927): “Scientific natural history”
• Andrewartha (1961): “The scientific study of the distribution and abundance of organisms”
• Odum (1963): “The structure and function of Nature”
 OUR Definition
“Ecology is the scientific study of the processes regulating the distribution and
abundance of organisms and the interactions among them, and the study of how
these organisms in turn mediate the transport and transformation of energy and
matter in the biosphere (i.e., the study of the design of ecosystem structure and
function
Ecology Is the Scientific Study of the Relationship between
Organisms and Their Environment
Ecology literally means “the study of one’s
house.”
• The environment— one’s house—consists of two parts:
 the biotic (living) environment, which includes all organisms, and
 the abiotic (nonliving, or physical) environment, which includes living space,
temperature, sunlight, soil, wind, and precipitation.

• Ecologists study the vast complex web of relationships among living

organisms and their physical environment
 Ecological systems Form a Hierarchy
• Population. A group of organisms of the same species that live together in the same
area at the same time. Individuals of the same species occur in populations.
 “A species is a group of similar organisms whose members freely interbreed with
one another in the wild to produce fertile offspring.”
• Populations are organized into communities.
 community A natural association that consists of all the populations of different
species that live and interact together within an area at the same time.
 A community
ecologist might
study how
organisms interact
with one another—
including feeding
relationships
(who eats whom)

A tidal pool community • Figure 1 a. Sea stars, starfish, and anemones cling to a rock above a
tidal pool at low tide. b. Organisms in the tidal pool are adapted to life attached to rocks, and to
the conditions resulting from changing tides. Photographed at Clallam Bay, Sekiu, Washington.
 Ecosystem
• ecosystem A community and its physical environment.
• includes all the biotic interactions of a community as well as the interactions
between organisms and their abiotic environment.
• all the biological, physical, and chemical components of an area form an extremely
complicated interacting network of energy flow and materials cycling.
“An ecosystem ecologist – understand how ecosystem function ; examine how
energy, nutrient composition, or water affects the organisms living in a desert
community or a coastal bay ecosystem. “
 Ecosystem
• consisting of the biotic community and the abiotic environment, has many
levels
Figure 2. Example of the components
and interactions that define a forest
ecosystem.
The abiotic components of the
ecosystem, including the (a) climate
and (b) soil, directly influence the
forest trees. (c) Herbivores feed on
the canopy, (d) while predators such
as this warbler feed upon insects. (e)
The forest canopy intercepts light,
modifying its availability for
understory plants. (f) A variety of
decomposers, both large and small,
feed on dead organic matter on the
forest floor, and in doing so, release
nutrients to the soil that provide for
the growth of plants.
 Ecology- Sustainability
• As humans increasingly alter ecosystems for their own uses, the natural
functioning of ecosystems is changed, and ecosystem ecologists seek to
determine whether these changes will affect the sustainability of our life-
support system.
 Landscape Ecology
• landscape A region that includes several interacting ecosystems.
• Landscape Ecology is a subdiscipline in ecology that studies ecological
processes that operate over larger areas that include several ecosystems
 Example: a landscape consisting of a forest ecosystem and a pond ecosystem
located adjacent to the forest: connection between these two ecosystems is the great
blue heron, which eats fish, frogs, insects, crustaceans, and snakes along the
shallow water of the pond but often builds nests and raises its young in the secluded
treetops of the nearby forest.
 Biosphere
• biosphere The parts of Earth’s atmosphere, ocean, land surface, and soil
that contain all living organisms.
• The Earth’s physical environment:
 atmosphere is the gaseous envelope surrounding Earth;
 hydrosphere is Earth’s supply of water—liquid and frozen, fresh and salty,
groundwater and surface water; and
 lithosphere is the soil and rock of Earth’s crust.
 Energy to organisms
• The biosphere teems with life.
• Where do these organisms get the energy to live?
• And how do they harness this energy?
• We next examine the importance of energy to organisms, which survive
only as long as the environment continuously supplies them with energy.