BIO355

Mondays and Wednesdays 9:15-10:05am

Dr. Chester

Natural World

•    Nature

•    Set of:

–   All living things

–   Physical conditions

–   Interactions

•   Among living things

•   Between living things and their physical environment

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

•     Natural Selection

•     Organisms have great capacity to reproduce

–   Offspring vary in form and function

•     Resources are limited

•     Some traits give individuals a better chance of surviving to reproduction

•     Individuals with such traits are more likely to survive

Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919)

–   First to use the term ecology

–   Oikos = house

–   Defined in explicitly evolutionary terms

–   Haeckel wrote:

–    “By ecology we mean the body of knowledge concerning the economy of nature - the investigation of the total relations of the animal both to its inorganic and its inorganic environments; including, above all, its friendly and inimical relations with those animals and plants with which it comes directly or indirectly into contact -in a word, ecology is the study of all those complex interrelationships referred to by Darwin as the conditions of the struggle for existance”

Ecology

•    Study of the relations of organisms to one another and to their surroundings

•    Seek to understand  the order of the natural world

–   Can we describe patterns and connections between organisms and their physical environment?

–   Can we find underlying mechanisms?

–   Can we predict these patterns?

Ecological Questions

•    “Ecology starts with a question”

•    “What” Questions

•    Proximate Questions

–   Questions about underlying mechanisms or functions

•    Ultimate Questions

–   Questions about evolutionary change

Diversity

•    Natural world contains a diversity of living things

Complexity

•    Natural world contains a complex array of physical environments

Interconnections

•    Species are dependant on one another for their survival

Natural World is Dynamic

•    Constant tension between change and equilibrium

–   Removal of organisms by death

–   Replacement by birth

•    Disturbance

•    Renewal and Replenishing

•    Stable and self-replenishing

Organization of Nature

•    Organized by physical and biological processes

•    Predictability

•    Patterns and predictability

–   Observation

–   Elucidating the underlying mechanism

Natural History

•    Ecologists understand nature by:

–   Asking questions

–   Discovering connections

–   And developing a detailed story of a natural phenomenon

•    Natural History forms the basis of ecology