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THE HOUSE WE LIVE IN

THE HOUSE WE LIVE IN

The concept of ecology was first developed in the 19th century by Ernst Haeckel, who also created its name—eco from the Greek word for "house" and logy from the Greek word for "study." Thus, ecology literally means the study of one's house. Viewed from the standpoint of ecology, nature is something like a great estate in which the physical environ­ment and living organisms interact in an immense and complicated web of relationships. Ecology, then, is the study of the interactions among organ­isms and between organisms.

Mini-Glossary of Ecology Terms

Population: A groups of organisms of the same species that live together, Community:  All the living organisms found in a particular environment.  Include all the populations of different species that are living together. Ecosystem: A community and its environment. Include all the interactions between living things and their physical environment. Biosphere: All of the Earth's living organisms. Include, all the Ecosphere; the largest, worldwide ecosystem. It encompasses each other, the land, the water, and the atmosphere.

How does the field of ecology fit into the orga­nization of the biological world? As you may know, one of the characteristics of life is its high degree of organization. Atoms are organized into molecules, which are organized into cells. In multicellular organisms, cells are organized into tis­sues, tissues into organs (such as the brain and stomach), organs into organ systems (such as the nervous system and digestive system), and organ systems into individual organisms (dogs, humans, cacti, ferns, and so on).

The levels of biological organization that inter­est geologists are those above the level of the indi­vidual organism. Organisms are arranged into pop­ulations, members of the same species¹ that live together in the same area at the same time. A pop­ulation ecologist might study a population of polar bears or a population of marsh grass.

Populations are organized into communities. A community consists of all the populations of differ­ent species that live and interact within an area. A community ecologist might study how organisms interact with one another—including who eats whom—in a coral reef community or more inclusive term than "community" because an ecosystem is a community together with its envi­ronment. Thus, an ecosystem includes not only all the interactions among the living organisms of a community but also the interactions between or system ecologist might examine how temperature, light, precipitation, and soil affect the organisms living in a desert community or a coastal hay com­munity.

All the communities of living things on the Earth are organized into the biosphere. The organ­isms of the biosphere depend on one another and on the other divisions of the Earth's physical envi­ronment: the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and litho-sphere. The atmosphere is the gaseous envelope surrounding the Earth; the hydrosphere is the Earth's supply of water (liquid and frozen, fresh and salty); and the lithosphere is the soil and rock of Earth's crust. The term "ecosphere" encompasses the biosphere and its interactions with the atmos­phere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere. Ecologists who study the biosphere or ecosphere examine the atmosphere, land, water, and living things.

Ecology is the broadest field within the biologi­cal sciences, and it is linked to every other biologi­cal discipline. The universality of ecology also brings subjects into views that are not traditionally part of biology. Geology and earth science are ex­tremely important to ecologists. Because humans are biological organisms, all of our activities have a bearing on ecology—even economics and politics have profound ecological implications.