Animal ecology is the scientific study of the relationships between animals, plants, and other organisms, and with their environment. The main topics are behaviour, eating habits, migration patterns, living conditions and interspecies relationships. Ecologists are trying to understand why some species are able to live relatively peacefully with each other in the same environment.
Ecology can also focus on the activities of human behavior. Intentional and unintentional human actions can have beneficial or harmful effects on the environment. Key topics include hazardous waste, species extinction, land use change and pollution.
Fundamentals of Animal Ecology: Ecosystems
Ecosystems are the main component of the general study of ecology, which includes the interaction of animals, plants, and microorganisms with their specific physical habitat. They are generally classified into three categories: aquatic, terrestrial and wetland. include desert, forest, prairie, tundra, steppe, and rainforest, there are also urban ecosystems that are heavily populated by humans. Their study is important for understanding how the ecology of the animal world as a whole works.
What is ecology?
Ecology is the study of the relationship between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. This science seeks to understand the vital connections between plants and animals and the world around them. Plant and animal ecology also provides information about the benefits of ecosystems and how we can use the earth's resources to keep the environment healthy for future generations.
Relationships between organisms and habitats are studied at a wide range of scales, from the study of microscopic bacteria growing in an aquarium to the complex interactions between thousands of plants, animals and other communities. Ecologists also study many types of environment, from a microbe living in the soil to animals and plants in a rainforest or in the ocean.
The role of ecology in our life
Many environmental specialties such as marine, plant and statistical ecology provide us with information to better understand the world around us. This information can also help us improve our environment, manage our natural resources, and protect people's health. The following examples illustrate just a few of the ways in which environmental knowledge has had a positive impact on our lives.
Ecology, or ecological science, is the branch of biology that studies the relationship of plants and animals with their physical and biological environment. The physical environment includes light and heat, solar radiation, moisture, wind, oxygen, carbon dioxide, soil nutrients, water, and the atmosphere. The biological environment includes organisms of the same species, as well as plants and animals of other species.
One of the newest sciences with a long history
Animal ecology is one of the newest sciences, which received increased attention in the second half of the 20th century, although populations and their habitats were studied long before that. So, the student of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, Theophrastus, described the relationship between the animals themselves and what surrounds them as early as the fourth century BC. e.
This field began to develop with the publication in 1850 by Charles Darwin of him and the work of his contemporary and competitor Alfred Russel Wallace. The last to be recognized was the interdependence of animal and plant species and their grouping into living communities, or biocenoses. In 1875, the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess coined the term biosphere to cover the various conditions that support life on Earth.
The basic principle of ecology
The main principle of ecology is that every living organism has a constant and regular relationship with any other element that makes up its environment. An ecosystem can be defined as a situation where there is an interaction between organisms and their environment. Within it, species link food chains and food webs. Energy from the sun, captured by primary producers (plants) through photosynthesis, moves up the chain of primary consumers (herbivores) and then secondary and tertiary consumers (carnivores or predators). The process also includes decomposers (fungi and bacteria) that decompose nutrients and return them back to the ecosystem.
Ecological problems
An ecological crisis can occur if the environment changes in such a way that it becomes unfavorable for survival. Animal ecology problems can be associated with climate change (temperature rise or decrease in precipitation), human factor (oil spills), increased activity of predators, population decline or, conversely, rapid population growth and, as a result, the inability to support them by the ecosystem. Over the past few centuries, human actions have seriously affected the environment. New agricultural areas appear due to forests, the construction of buildings and roads also contributes to the pollution of ecosystems.
Sections of ecology
The following types of animal ecology are distinguished:
- Physiological (behavioral), studying the processes of adaptation of an individual to the environment.
- Population, studying one species or group of species (for example, animal, plant or insect ecology).
- Community ecology focuses on the interactions between species within a biocoenosis.
- Ecology of an ecosystem, which studies the flows of energy and matter through the components of ecosystems.
As for ecology as a whole, they also distinguish landscape, which considers the processes and relationships of several ecosystems or very large geographical areas (for example, arctic, polar, marine, etc.), and human ecology.
Impact on animals
Ecology (from Greek oikos- house and logos Knowledge is the scientific study of how living beings interact with each other and with their natural environment. It examines complex and diverse relationships from different perspectives. The physiological processes studied are the regulation of temperature, nutrition and metabolism. Factors affecting animals may include disease, climate change and toxic effects.
Ecology is the scientific study of the distribution, abundance, and relationships of organisms and their interactions with their environment. Everything is being studied, from the role of tiny bacteria in nutrient recycling to the impact of tropical rainforests on Earth's atmosphere. Animal ecology is closely related to physiology, evolution, and genetics.
Every year, hundreds of species disappear in the world, it is difficult to imagine how large-scale this problem can be for humanity. The world of fauna is unique, and animals are an important part of the environment, as they regulate the number of plants, contribute to the distribution of pollen, fruits, seeds, are an integral part of the food chain, play an important role in the process of soil formation and landscape formation.
Conceptual understanding of ecology
Like many natural sciences, the conceptual understanding of ecology involves broader details of the study, including:
- Life processes explaining adaptation.
- Distribution and abundance of organisms.
- The movement of matter and energy through living communities.
- Consistent development of ecosystems.
- Abundance and distribution of biodiversity in the context of the environment.
Ecology is distinct from natural history, which is mainly concerned with the descriptive study of organisms. It is a sub-discipline of biology that is the study of life.
Animal protection
Animal ecology is an interdisciplinary science that was formed at the intersection of zoology, ecology and geography. It studies the life of various species of fauna depending on the environment. Since animals are part of ecosystems, they are of great importance for sustaining life on our planet. They have spread to all corners of the earth: they live in forests and deserts, in the steppe and in the water, in the Arctic latitudes, fly in the air and hide underground.
An important issue in ecology is the protection of animals. Many factors lead to changes in species diversity at very different scales. For example, some predators may be harmful to individual species, their presence may actually reduce or increase the number of species present in a community. Conservation biology aims to understand what factors predispose species to extinction and what humans can do to prevent extinction.
human intervention
Environmental problems that affect not only humans but also animals include air and water pollution, dirty soil, and acid rain. Deforestation, draining of swamps, changes in the course of rivers lead to the fact that entire ecosystems are under threat. Living organisms have to quickly adapt to changing conditions, change their habitat, and not everyone can cope with this successfully. The result is a reduction or complete extinction of populations. Animals are highly dependent on the state and environmental factors. The destructive human intervention in nature can destroy many species and forms of the animal world without the possibility of their restoration.