Portal:Ecology

Ecology

Ecology (from Ancient Greek οἶκος (oîkos) 'house' and -λογία (-logía) 'study of') is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere levels. Ecology overlaps with the closely related sciences of biogeography, evolutionary biology, genetics, ethology, and natural history.

Ecology is a branch of biology, and is the study of abundance, biomass, and distribution of organisms in the context of the environment. It encompasses life processes, interactions, and adaptations; movement of materials and energy through living communities; successional development of ecosystems; cooperation, competition, and predation within and between species; and patterns of biodiversity and its effect on ecosystem processes.

Ecology has practical applications in fields such as conservation biology, wetland management, natural resource management, and human ecology.

The term ecology (German: Ökologie) was coined in 1866 by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel. The science of ecology as we know it today began with a group of American botanists in the 1890s. Evolutionary concepts relating to adaptation and natural selection are cornerstones of modern ecological theory.

Ecosystems are dynamically interacting systems of organisms, the communities they make up, and the non-living (abiotic) components of their environment. Ecosystem processes, such as primary production, nutrient cycling, and niche construction, regulate the flux of energy and matter through an environment. Ecosystems have biophysical feedback mechanisms that moderate processes acting on living (biotic) and abiotic components of the planet. Ecosystems sustain life-supporting functions and provide ecosystem services like biomass production (food, fuel, fiber, and medicine), the regulation of climate, global biogeochemical cycles, water filtration, soil formation, erosion control, flood protection, and many other natural features of scientific, historical, economic, or intrinsic value. (Full article...)

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Landscape ecology is the science of studying and improving relationships between ecological processes in the environment and particular ecosystems. This is done within a variety of landscape scales, development spatial patterns, and organizational levels of research and policy. Landscape ecology can be described as the science of "landscape diversity" as the synergetic result of biodiversity and geodiversity.

As a highly interdisciplinary field in systems science, landscape ecology integrates biophysical and analytical approaches with humanistic and holistic perspectives across the natural sciences and social sciences. Landscapes are spatially heterogeneous geographic areas characterized by diverse interacting patches or ecosystems, ranging from relatively natural terrestrial and aquatic systems such as forests, grasslands, and lakes to human-dominated environments including agricultural and urban settings. (Full article...)

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Species

Credit: Composite image created by User:Medeis

There are many diverse animal species on the planet.

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General images

The following are images from various ecology-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1The High Peaks Wilderness Area in the 6,000,000-acre (2,400,000 ha) Adirondack Park is an example of a diverse ecosystem. (from Ecosystem)
Image 2A simple trophic cascade diagram. On the right shows when wolves are absent, showing an increase in elks and reduction in vegetation growth. The left one shows when wolves are present and controlling the elk population. (from Community (ecology))
Image 3Biological nitrogen cycling (from Ecosystem)
Image 4A generalised graph of a predator-prey population density cycle (from Community (ecology))
Image 5Global oceanic and terrestrial phototroph abundance, from September 1997 to August 2000. As an estimate of autotroph biomass, it is only a rough indicator of primary production potential and not an actual estimate of it. (from Ecosystem)
Image 6Ibex in an alpine habitat (from Habitat)
Image 7Desert scene in Egypt (from Habitat)
Image 8Twenty-five years after the devastating eruption at Mount St. Helens, United States, pioneer species have moved in. (from Habitat)
Image 9Wetland habitat types in Borneo (from Habitat)
Image 10a) A trophic pyramid showing the different trophic levels in a community. b) A food web of the same community (from Community (ecology))
Image 11Loch Lomond in Scotland forms a relatively isolated ecosystem. The fish community of this lake has remained stable over a long period until a number of introductions in the 1970s restructured its food web. (from Ecosystem)
Image 12Spiny forest at Ifaty, Madagascar, featuring various Adansonia (baobab) species, Alluaudia procera (Madagascar ocotillo) and other vegetation (from Ecosystem)
Image 13Rich rainforest habitat in Dominica (from Habitat)
Image 14Rainforest ecosystems are rich in biodiversity. This is the Gambia River in Senegal's Niokolo-Koba National Park. (from Ecosystem)
Image 15
A freshwater lake in Gran Canaria, an island of the Canary Islands. Clear boundaries make lakes convenient to study using an ecosystem approach.
(from Ecosystem)
Image 16This coral reef in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area provides habitat for numerous marine species. (from Habitat)
Image 17Few creatures make the ice shelves of Antarctica their habitat, but water beneath the ice can provide habitat for multiple species. Animals such as penguins have adapted to live in very cold conditions. (from Habitat)
Image 18Sequence of a decomposing pig carcass over time (from Ecosystem)
Image 19Table visualising size-symmetric competition, using fish as consumers and crabs as resources. (from Community (ecology))
Image 20Flora of Baja California desert, Cataviña region, Mexico (from Ecosystem)
Image 21A red-chested cuckoo chick being fed by a significantly smaller Cape robin-chat adult (from Community (ecology))
Image 22Dense mass of white crabs at a hydrothermal vent, with stalked barnacles on right (from Habitat)
Image 23The leaves of an Alnus nepalensis tree provide a microhabitat for species like the leaf beetle Aulacophora indica. (from Habitat)
Image 24An Antarctic rock split apart to show endolithic lifeforms showing as a green layer a few millimeters thick (from Habitat)
Image 25A bear with a salmon. Interspecific interactions such as predation are a key aspect of community ecology. (from Community (ecology))

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WikiProject Ecology

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Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.

In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ecological niche. Thus "habitat" is a species-specific term, fundamentally different from concepts such as environment or vegetation assemblages, for which the term "habitat-type" is more appropriate.

The physical factors may include (for example): soil, moisture, range of temperature, and light intensity. Biotic factors include the availability of food and the presence or absence of predators. Every species has particular habitat requirements, habitat generalist species are able to thrive in a wide array of environmental conditions while habitat specialist species require a very limited set of factors to survive. The habitat of a species is not necessarily found in a geographical area, it can be the interior of a stem, a rotten log, a rock or a clump of moss; a parasitic organism has as its habitat the body of its host, part of the host's body (such as the digestive tract), or a single cell within the host's body. (Full article...)

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Ann Fowler Rhoads (born 1938) is an American botanist who worked as a plant pathologist at Morris Arboretum for 36 years, retiring in 2013. She is the co-founder (with Timothy A. Block) of the Pennsylvania Flora Project of Morris Arboretum. In addition, Rhoads is a former adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a former Research Associate at the Academy of Natural Sciences.

Rhoads has written and edited 6 books. Her most important work is The Plants of Pennsylvania: An Illustrated Manual, which she coauthored with Timothy Block. It has been called the "Bible of our state's plant life". It is particularly significant “because most states simply don’t have such a comprehensive work on regional flora. Relevant to plant life found in much of the Northeast, the book has also been requested in neighboring states." A second edition was published in 2007. (Full article...)

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Did you know (auto-generated)

... that one of the founders of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party, Andrius Domaševičius, had his own private gynecology practice, treating poor women free of charge?
... that the British political theorist Chris Armstrong has called for a "blue new deal" to secure ecological resilience for the ocean and a just blue economy?
... that PlantSims, human–plant hybrids in The Sims 2: Seasons, have been studied as examples of ecofeminism and deep ecology?
... that Enriqueta Medellín, a Mexican surgeon, has an ecological center and environmental prize named after her in the state of Aguascalientes?
... that Luxembourgian myrmecologist Robert Stumper also played as a goalkeeper for his nation's football team?
... that gynecologist Mary Lake Polan wrote a medical mystery novel to "demystify" the procedures behind in vitro fertilisation?

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“

The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realize about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams the flow, order collapses. The untrained miss the collapse until too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.

”

— Frank Herbert
Dune (novel) ("Appendix I: The Ecology of Dune")

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Ecology news

From the Wikinews Environment portal

Additional News Highlights

November 5, 2009: "New ocean forming in African desert."

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Ibis, subtitled the International Journal of Avian Science, is the peer-reviewed scientific journal of the British Ornithologists' Union. Topics covered include ecology, conservation, behaviour, palaeontology, and taxonomy of birds. It's available for free on the internet for institutions in the developing world through the OARE scheme (Online Access to Research in the Environment). (Full article...)