Portal:Ecology

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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 conservation biology, wetland management, natural resource management (agroecology, agriculture, forestry, agroforestry, fisheries, mining, tourism), urban planning (urban ecology), community health, economics, basic and applied science, and human social interaction (human ecology).

The word 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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Two bluestreak cleaner wrasses removing dead skin and external parasites from a potato grouper

Cleaner fish are fish that show a specialist feeding strategy by providing a service to other species, referred to as clients, by removing dead skin, ectoparasites, and infected tissue from the surface or gill chambers. This example of cleaning symbiosis represents mutualism and cooperation behaviour, an ecological interaction that benefits both parties involved. However, the cleaner fish may consume mucus or tissue, thus creating a form of parasitism called cheating. The client animals are typically fish of a different species, but can also be aquatic reptiles (sea turtles and marine iguana), mammals (manatees and whales), or octopuses. A wide variety of fish including wrasse, cichlids, catfish, pipefish, lumpsuckers, and gobies display cleaning behaviors across the globe in fresh, brackish, and marine waters but specifically concentrated in the tropics due to high parasite density. Similar behaviour is found in other groups of animals, such as cleaner shrimps.

There are two types of cleaner fish, obligate full time cleaners and facultative part time cleaners where different strategies occur based on resources and local abundance of fish. Cleaning behaviour takes place in pelagic waters as well as designated locations called cleaner stations. Cleaner fish interaction durations and memories of reoccurring clients are influenced by the neuroendocrine system of the fish, involving hormones arginine vasotocin, Isotocin and serotonin. (Full article...)

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Biodiversity

Credit: User: Lamiot

Plant biodiversity—"Green wall", in Lille, northern France

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

Image 1Twenty-five years after the devastating eruption at Mount St. Helens, United States, pioneer species have moved in. (from Habitat)
Image 2Global 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 3Spiny forest at Ifaty, Madagascar, featuring various Adansonia (baobab) species, Alluaudia procera (Madagascar ocotillo) and other vegetation (from Ecosystem)
Image 4Flora of Baja California desert, Cataviña region, Mexico (from Ecosystem)
Image 5An Antarctic rock split apart to show endolithic lifeforms showing as a green layer a few millimeters thick (from Habitat)
Image 6Wetland habitat types in Borneo (from Habitat)
Image 7Rich rainforest habitat in Dominica (from Habitat)
Image 8A bear with a salmon. Interspecific interactions such as predation are a key aspect of community ecology. (from Community (ecology))
Image 9Biological nitrogen cycling (from Ecosystem)
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 11Ibex in an alpine habitat (from Habitat)
Image 12Sequence of a decomposing pig carcass over time (from Ecosystem)
Image 13Rainforest ecosystems are rich in biodiversity. This is the Gambia River in Senegal's Niokolo-Koba National Park. (from Ecosystem)
Image 14A red-chested cuckoo chick being feed by a significantly smaller Cape robin-chat adult (from Community (ecology))
Image 15The leaves of an Alnus nepalensis tree provide a microhabitat for species like the leaf beetle Aulacophora indica. (from Habitat)
Image 16Dense mass of white crabs at a hydrothermal vent, with stalked barnacles on right (from Habitat)
Image 17Loch 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 18Desert scene in Egypt (from Habitat)
Image 19A 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 20
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 21This coral reef in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area provides habitat for numerous marine species. (from Habitat)
Image 22Few 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 23A generalised graph of a predator-prey population density cycle (from Community (ecology))
Image 24The 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 25Table visualising size-symmetric competition, using fish as consumers and crabs as resources. (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.

This coral reef in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area provides habitat for numerous marine species.

In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, physical and 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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Ramon Margalef

Ramon Margalef López (Barcelona 16 May 1919 - 23 May 2004) was a Spanish biologist and ecologist. He was Emeritus Professor of Ecology at the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona. Margalef, one of the most prominent scientists that Spain has produced, worked at the Institute of Applied Biology (1946–1951), and at the Fisheries Research Institute, which he directed during 1966–1967. He created the Department of Ecology of the University of Barcelona, from where he trained a huge number of ecologists, limnologists and oceanographers. In 1967 he became Spain's first professor of ecology. (Full article...)

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Did you know (auto-generated)

... that gynecologist Mary Lake Polan wrote a medical mystery novel to "demystify" the procedures behind in vitro fertilisation?
... that King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's "cli-fi" thrash metal album addresses a mix of current ecological threats and attempts to find another planet to live on?
... that Luxembourgian myrmecologist Robert Stumper also played as a goalkeeper for his nation's football team?
... 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 gynaecologist Oon Chiew Seng, who was diagnosed with dementia in 2013, was the founding chairperson of the first dementia home in Singapore?
... that scientist Adelaida K. Semesi was known as "mama mangroves" due to her specialist knowledge of their ecology?

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“

A forest ecology is a delicate one. If the forest perishes, its fauna may go with it. The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest.

”

—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World is Forest

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Ecology news

From the Wikinews Environment portal

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

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Koedoe, subtitled African Protected Area Conservation and Science, is a peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal covering biology, ecology, and biodiversity conservation in Africa. It was established in 1958. (Full article...)

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... molecular ecology is a field of evolutionary biology that is concerned with applying molecular population genetics, molecular phylogenetics, and more recently genomics to traditional ecological questions (e.g., species diagnosis, conservation and assessment of biodiversity, species-area relationships, and many questions in behavioral ecology)?

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