History of ecology Flashcards
Ecology in Ancient Greece
Ecology had no firm beginnings. It evolved from the natural history of the ancient Greeks, particularly Theophrastus, a friend and associate of Aristotle. Theophrastus first described the interrelationships between organisms and between organisms and their nonliving environment.
Arcadian ecology
Advocates for a “simple, humble life for man” and a harmonious relationship with humans and nature. Based on the idea that humans are a species among species and need to find coexistence rules with other living species. Arcadian ecology is a school of thought that advocates for a harmonious relationship between humans and nature. It is named for the mountainous Arcady region of Greece. Gilbert White’s seminal piece “Natural History of Selborne” promotes a benign attitude towards nature and advocates for a peaceful coexistence between organisms. It was an individual realization of ancient arcadian ideas of harmonious interactions between humans and nature. The Arcadian standpoint ha its roots in several historical and cultural traditions which have shaped the study of ecology. One of these cultural traditions was the Renaissance, which cultivated the appreciation of landscape, wilderness, and nature. Environmental sociologist Kris van Koppen underscores this point by arguing: “The social theories that belong to the arcadian approach are particularly orientated to the recognition, elaboration and extension of the intrinsic values of nature, as well as to the social organization of their preservation.”
Imperial ecology
works to “to establish through the exercise of reason and by hard work, man’s dominance over nature”. Humans should manage nature because it exists for human expansion. Rooted in the cultural context of the 18-19 century, a period in which the expansion of European countries around the world was taking place. Europeans discover new species and bring them back for museums. Imperial ecology was the winner of the competition with Arcadian ecology. Donald Worster in his book, “Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas”, uses Imperial ecology as a counterpoint to Arcadian ecology (moving from Francis Bacon’s ideology). Imperial ecology takes a different approach, and suggests that humans should attempt to manage nature, because nature exists for man’s benefit (utilitarianism). This contradiction is representative of the ecologists’ struggle to explain humanity’s relationship with nature while considering popular theological views of the time period.
Carl Linneaus
A Swedish naturalist, is well known for his work with taxonomy but his ideas helped to lay the groundwork for modern ecology. He developed a two-part naming system for classifying plants and animals. Binomial Nomenclature was used to classify, describe, and name different genera and species. The compiled editions of Systema Naturae developed and popularized the naming system for plants and animals in modern biology. Linnaeus can fairly be regarded as the originator of systematic and ecological studies in biodiversity, due to his naming and classifying of thousands of plant and animal species. Linnaeus also influenced the foundations of Darwinian evolution, he believed that there could be change in or between different species within fixed genera. Linnaeus was also one of the first naturalists to place men in the same category as primates.
Alexander Von Humboldt
Throughout the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, the great maritime powers such as Britain, Spain, and Portugal launched many world exploratory expeditions to develop maritime commerce with other countries, and to discover new natural resources, as well as to catalog them. These expeditions were joined by many scientists, including botanists, such as the German explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Humboldt is often considered a father of ecology. He was the first to take on the study of the relationship between organisms and their environment. He exposed the existing relationships between observed plant species and climate, and described vegetation zones using latitude and altitude, a discipline now known as geobotany.
Alfred Russel Wallace
contemporary and colleague of Darwin, was first to propose a “geography” of animal species. He independently proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection. A great admirer of Charles Darwin, Wallace produced scientific papers with Darwin in 1858, which prompted Darwin to publish ‘On the Origin of Species’ the following year. Though Wallace’s contributions to the study of evolution were considerable, they are often forgotten. English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. His proposition that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors is now widely accepted and considered a foundational concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.
Thomas Robert Malthus
was an influential writer on the subject of population and population limits in the early 19th century. His works were very important in shaping the ways in which Darwin saw the world worked. Malthus wrote:
- that the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence
- that population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and,
- that the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice.
In An Essay on the Principle of Population Malthus argued for the reining in of rising population through 2 checks: Positive and Preventive checks. The first raises death rates, the later lowers birthing rates. Malthus also brings forth the idea that the world population will move past the sustainable number of people. The essay had a major influence on Charles Darwin and helped him to develop his theory of Natural Selection. This struggle proposed by Malthusian thought not only influenced the ecological work of Charles Darwin, but helped bring about an economic theory of world of ecology
Ernst Heinrich Haeckel
Germany: In 1870, he gave definition and substance to the term, which he had first used in 1886, as follows: “By ecology we mean the body of knowledge concerning the economy of nature…. Ecology is the study of all the complex interrelations referred to by Darwin as the conditions of the struggle for existence.”
Although the term ecology was coined in 1886, it was not widely used until the end of the 19th century, but by 1913, the term became institutionalized with the formation of the British Ecological Society and, in 1915, with the formation of the Ecological Society of America. However, this institutionalization of the term did not mean a consensus on ecology’s purview. For example, British ecologist Charles Elton (1927) defined ecology as “scientific natural history” concerned with “sociology and economics of animals”; American plant ecologist Frederick Clements (1905) considered ecology as “the science of the community”; American animal ecologist Victor Shelford (1937) regarded it as “that branch of general physiology which deals with the organism as a whole…”; and German ecologist Karl Friederichs (1958) regarded ecology as “the science of the environment”.
Eugene P. Odum
It was American ecologist Eugene P. Odum (1953) who had the most influence in defining the parameters of the discipline as “the study of the structure and function of ecosystems.” His textbook ‘Fundamentals of Ecology’ was first published in 1953 but remained influential for nearly twenty years. Unlike earlier texts, Odum emphasized the ecosystem and biogeochemical cycles.
Interestingly, the term ecosystem had been introduced much earlier by the British ecologist Arthur Tansley (1935) as the whole system (in the sense of physics) including not only the organism-complex, but also the whole complex of physical factors forming what we call the environment of the biome – the habitat factors in the widest sense.
Frederick Clements
The ecological succession is a linear process towards the climax; the biological community can be considered as a living organism.
Arthus Tansley
He supported the Clements ideas, but criticized his
holistic excesses; disagreed with him about emergent properties of the biological community and focalized the attention on the ecosystem level.
G. Evelyn Hutchinson
worked on biogeochemical cycles and population dynamics, with the idea of the self-regulation capability of natural systems. Suggested the concept of ecological niche as a multidimensional space.
Raymond Lindeman
influenced by Clements, Tansley, Elton and Hutchinson, realizes the importance of the energy flows as a descriptor of ecological processes.
Philosophical determinism
Pierre-Simon de Laplace (French mathematician, physicist and astronomer) in his book of 1814 “A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities“
According to this founding text, philosophical determinism asserts that:
- the future is completely determined by the present;
- the future is completely predictable given perfect knowledge of the present;
perfect knowledge of the present suffices to mentally reconstruct all of the past;
- For each present situation there is a single causal chain (of events or situations) that starts infinitely far in the past and extends infinitely far in the future.
International Fisheries Exhibition
In London, a conference called to discuss commercial and scientific aspects of the fishing industry. In his inaugural address Huxley repeated the views of the royal commission by discounting reports of declines in fish catches. Thomas Huxley was known as the Darwin bulldog: one of the first scientists that embraced the natural selection theory and defended it in all circumstances. Important naturalist of the time. “With existing methods of fishing,” he said, “it is inconceivable that the great sea fisheries, such as those for cod, herring and mackerel, could ever be exhausted.” “It is a mistake to suppose that the place of fish removed on a particular fishing ground is immediately taken by some grand total of fish, which are so numerous in comparison with man’s depredations as to make his operations in this respect insignificant,” said Lankester. “If man removes a large proportion of these fish from the areas which they inhabit, the natural balance is upset.”
The idea was to analyze the capability of the natural environment to supply food in different conditions but mainly looking at aquatic environments.
