Ecology 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.
Theoretical ecology is the scientific discipline devoted to the study of ecological systems using theoretical methods such as simple conceptual models, mathematical models, computational simulations, and advanced data analysis. Effective models improve understanding of the natural world by revealing how the dynamics of species populations are often based on fundamental biological conditions and processes. Further, the field aims to unify a diverse range of empirical observations by assuming that common, mechanistic processes generate observable phenomena across species and ecological environments. Based on biologically realistic assumptions, theoretical ecologists are able to uncover novel, non-intuitive insights about natural processes. Theoretical results are often verified by empirical and observational studies, revealing the power of theoretical methods in both predicting and understanding the noisy, diverse biological world.
In ecology, a niche is the match of a species to a specific environmental condition. It describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors and how it in turn alters those same factors. "The type and number of variables comprising the dimensions of an environmental niche vary from one species to another [and] the relative importance of particular environmental variables for a species may vary according to the geographic and biotic contexts".
Niche construction is the ecological process by which an organism alters its own local environment. These alterations can be a physical change to the organism’s environment, or it can encompass the active movement of an organism from one habitat to another where it then experiences different environmental pressures. Examples of niche construction include the building of nests and burrows by animals, the creation of shade, the influencing of wind speed, and alternations to nutrient cycling by plants. Although these modifications are often directly beneficial to the constructor, they are not necessarily always. For example, when organisms dump detritus, they can degrade their own local environments. Within some biological evolutionary frameworks, niche construction can actively beget processes pertaining to ecological inheritance whereby the organism in question “constructs” new or unique ecologic, and perhaps even sociologic environmental realities characterized by specific selective pressures.
The Cape bushbuck, also known as imbabala is a common, medium-sized bushland-dwelling, and a widespread species of antelope in sub-Saharan Africa. It is found in a wide range of habitats, such as rain forests, montane forests, forest-savanna mosaic, savanna, bushveld, and woodland. It stands around 90 cm (35 in) at the shoulder and weigh from 45 to 80 kg. They are generally solitary, territorial browsers.
Evolutionary ecology lies at the intersection of ecology and evolutionary biology. It approaches the study of ecology in a way that explicitly considers the evolutionary histories of species and the interactions between them. Conversely, it can be seen as an approach to the study of evolution that incorporates an understanding of the interactions between the species under consideration. The main subfields of evolutionary ecology are life history evolution, sociobiology, the evolution of interspecific interactions and the evolution of biodiversity and of ecological communities.
Daniel Hunt Janzen is an American evolutionary ecologist and conservationist. He divides his time between his professorship in biology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is the DiMaura Professor of Conservation Biology, and his research and field work in Costa Rica.
Gorongosa National Park is at the southern end of the Great African Rift Valley in the heart of central Mozambique, Southeast Africa. The more than 4,000 square kilometres (1,500 sq mi) park comprises the valley floor and parts of surrounding plateaus. Rivers originating on nearby Mount Gorongosa water the plain.
Robert Helmer MacArthur was a Canadian-born American ecologist who made a major impact on many areas of community and population ecology. He is considered to be one of the founders of ecology.
Simon Asher Levin is an American ecologist and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the director of the Center for BioComplexity at Princeton University. He specializes in using mathematical modeling and empirical studies in the understanding of macroscopic patterns of ecosystems and biological diversities.
In ecology, a community is a group or association of populations of two or more different species occupying the same geographical area at the same time, also known as a biocoenosis, biotic community, biological community, ecological community, or life assemblage. The term community has a variety of uses. In its simplest form it refers to groups of organisms in a specific place or time, for example, "the fish community of Lake Ontario before industrialization".
Limiting similarity is a concept in theoretical ecology and community ecology that proposes the existence of a maximum level of niche overlap between two given species that will allow continued coexistence.
Ecological inheritance occurs when an organism's offspring inhabit a modified environment that a previous generation created. Therefore, the selective pressures created from the modifications must remain for the next generation in order for it to be deemed ecological inheritance. It was first described in Odling-Smee (1988) and Odling-Smee et al. (1996) as a consequence of niche construction. Standard evolutionary theory focuses on the influence that natural selection and genetic inheritance has on biological evolution, when individuals that survive and reproduce also transmit genes to their offspring. If offspring do not live in a modified environment created by their parents, then niche construction activities of parents do not affect the selective pressures of their offspring. However, when niche construction affects multiple generations, ecological inheritance acts an inheritance system different than genetic inheritance which is also termed "legacy effects".
Anurag Agrawal is an American professor of ecology, evolutionary biology, and entomology who has written over a 150 peer-reviewed articles, which earned him an h-index of 92. He is the author of a popular science book, Monarchs and Milkweeds from Princeton University Press, and is currently the James Alfred Perkins Professor of Environmental Studies at Cornell University.
Brian Joseph Enquist is an American biologist and academic. Enquist is a professor of biology at the University of Arizona. He is also external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is a biologist, plant biologist and an ecologist. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2012 and the Ecological Society of America (ESA) in 2018.
Nancy Huntly is an American ecologist based at Utah State University, where she is a Professor in the Department of Biology and director of the USU Ecology Center. Her research has been on biodiversity, herbivory, and long-term human ecology. She started her position at USU in 2011, after serving as a Program Officer in the Division of Environmental Biology at the National Science Foundation. Prior to that she was a faculty member in the Department of Biological Sciences at Idaho State University (Pocatello).
Winifred Hallwachs is an American tropical ecologist who helped to establish and expand northwestern Costa Rica's Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG). The work of Hallwachs and her husband Daniel Janzen at ACG is considered an exemplar of inclusive conservation.
Tadashi Fukami is an associate Professor of Biology and community ecologist at Stanford University. He is currently the head of Fukami Lab which is a community ecology research group that focuses on "historical contingency in the assembly of ecological communities." Fukami is an elected Fellow of the Ecological Society of America.
Plant-animal interactions are important pathways for the transfer of energy within ecosystems, where both advantageous and unfavorable interactions support ecosystem health. Plant-animal interactions can take on important ecological functions and manifest in a variety of combinations of favorable and unfavorable associations, for example predation, frugivory and herbivory, parasitism, and mutualism. Without mutualistic relationships, some plants may not be able to complete their life cycles, and the animals may starve due to resource deficiency.
Corina Tarnița is a Romanian-American mathematician and theoretical biologist known for her work in mathematical biology and complex adaptive systems. She is currently a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Director of the Environmental Studies Program at Princeton University. Her research examines how living organisms organize themselves into patterns at different scales.
