Animal ecology is a scientific study.relations between animals, plants and other organisms, as well as with their environment. The main topics are behavior, food habits, migration patterns, living conditions and interspecific relationships. Environmentalists seek to understand why some species are able to live relatively peacefully with each other in the same environment.
Ecology can also focus onhuman behavior. Intentional and unintentional actions of people can have beneficial or harmful effects on the environment. The main topics include hazardous waste, extermination of species, land use change and pollution.
Basics of animal ecology: ecosystems
Ecosystems are a major component of the overallstudying ecology, which includes the interaction of animals, plants and microorganisms with their specific physical habitat. As a rule, they are divided into three categories: aquatic, terrestrial, and wetland. Examples of ecosystems include desert, forest, prairie, tundra, coral reef, steppe and rainforest, there are also urban ecosystems that are largely inhabited by people. 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 the livingorganisms, 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 contains information about the benefits of ecosystems and how we can use the resources of the earth in order to keep the environment healthy for future generations.
Relations between organisms and places are studied.habitats on a wide variety of scales: from studying microscopic bacteria growing in an aquarium to complex interactions between thousands of plants, animals and other communities. Environmentalists also explore many types of environments, from the microbes that live in the soil, to animals and plants in the rainforest or in the ocean.
The role of ecology in our lives
Many specialties in the field of ecology, suchas a marine, plant and statistical ecology, provide us with information for a better understanding of the world around us. This information can also help us improve our environment, manage our natural resources, and protect human health. The following examples illustrate only some of the ways in which environmental knowledge has a positive impact on our lives.
Ecology, or environmental science, is a branchbiology, which 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, nutrients in the soil, water and the atmosphere. Biological environment includes organisms of the same species, as well as plants and animals of other species.
One of the newest sciences with long histories
Animal ecology is one of the newestSciences, attention to which was riveted in the second half of the 20th century, although the studies of populations and their habitats were engaged long before that. Thus, the student of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, Theophrastus, described the relationship between the animals themselves and what surrounds them in the fourth century BC. er
This area began to develop from the publication in 1850year, Charles Darwin, his "Origin of Species" and the works of his contemporary and rival Alfred Russel Wallace. The last was the interdependence of animal and plant species and their grouping into living communities, or biocenoses. In 1875, the Austrian geologist Edward Süss proposed the term biosphere to encompass various conditions that contribute to the existence of life on Earth.
The basic principle of ecology
The main principle of ecology is thatevery living organism has a constant and regular connection with any other element that constitutes its environment. An ecosystem can be defined as a situation where there is an interaction between organisms and their environment. Within it, the 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), which decompose nutrients and return them back to the ecosystem.
Ecological problems
An environmental crisis can occur ifthe environment changes in such a way that it becomes unfavorable for survival. Animal ecology problems can be associated with climate change (temperature increase or decrease in precipitation), human factors (oil spills), increased predator activity, reduction in numbers or, conversely, rapid population growth and, as a result, inability to maintain their ecosystem. Over the past few centuries, human actions have seriously affected the environment. At the expense of forests, new agricultural areas are emerging, and the construction of buildings and roads also contributes to the pollution of ecosystems.
Sections of ecology
There are the following types of animal ecology:
- Physiological (behavioral), studying the processes of adaptation of the individual to the environment.
- Population that studies the dynamics of populations of one species or group of species (for example, an animal, a plant, or the ecology of insects).
- The ecology of communities focuses on interactions between species within the framework of a biocenosis.
- Ecology of an ecosystem that studies the flow of energy and matter through components of ecosystems.
As for ecology as a whole, it is also distinguishedlandscape, which examines the processes and relationships of several ecosystems or very large geographic zones (eg, arctic, polar, marine, etc.), and human ecology.
Effects on animals
Ecology (from Greek oikos - house and logos - knowledge) is a scientific study of howliving beings interact with each other and with their natural environment. She considers complex and diverse relationships from different points of view. The studied physiological processes are the regulation of temperature, nutrition and metabolism. Factors affecting animals can include disease, climate change and toxic effects.
Ecology is a scientific study.distribution, abundance and relationships of organisms and their interaction with the environment. Everything is being studied: from the role of tiny bacteria in the recycling of nutrients to the effects of tropical rain forests on the Earth’s atmosphere. Animal ecology is closely related to physiology, evolution, and genetics.
Ежегодно в мире изчезают сотни видов, трудно себе Present how big this problem can be for humanity. The world of the fauna is unique, and animals are an important part of the environment, as they regulate the number of plants, contribute to the spread of pollen, fruits, seeds, are an integral part of the food chain, play an important role in the process of formation of landscape formation soil.
Conceptual understanding of ecology
Like many natural sciences, a conceptual understanding of ecology involves broader research details, 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 differs from natural history, which mainly concerns the descriptive study of organisms. This is the subdiscipline of biology, which is the study of life.
Animal protection
Animal ecology is an interdisciplinary sciencewhich was formed at the junction of zoology, ecology and geography. She studies the life of different types of fauna depending on the environment. Since animals are part of ecosystems, they are of great importance for the maintenance of life on our planet. They spread to all corners of the earth: they live in forests and deserts, in the steppes and in the water, in arctic latitudes, fly in the air and hide under the ground.
An important issue in the environment - the protection of animals.Many factors lead to a change in the diversity of species at very different scales. For example, some predators can be harmful to certain species, their presence can actually reduce or increase the number of species present in the community. Conservation biology aims to understand what factors predispose to the extinction of species and what people can do to prevent extinction.
Human intervention
Environmental problems that do not sufferonly humans, but also animals, include air and water pollution, muddy soil, acid rain. Deforestation, drainage of wetlands, changes in the river bed lead to the fact that entire ecosystems are threatened. 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. Disastrous human intervention in nature can destroy many types and forms of the animal world without the possibility of their recovery.
