Everything about Ecology History totally explained
Ecology is generally spoken of as a new science, having only become prominent in the second half of the 20th Century. More precisely, there's agreement that ecology emerged as a distinct discipline at the turn of the 20th Century, and that it gained public prominence in the 1960s, due to widespread concern for the state of the environment. Nonetheless, ecological thinking at some level has been around for a long time, and the principles of ecology have developed gradually, closely intertwined with the development of other biological disciplines. Thus, one of the first ecologists may have been
Aristotle or perhaps his student,
Theophrastus, both of whom had interest in many species of animals. Theophrastus described interrelationships between animals and between animals and their environment as early as the 4th century BC (Ramalay, 1940).
18th and 19th century ~ Ecological murmurs
The botanical geography and 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. At the beginning of the
18th century, about twenty thousand plant species were known, versus forty thousand at the beginning of the
19th century, and almost 400,000 today.
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.
In
1804, for example, he reported an impressive number of species, particularly plants, for which he sought to explain their geographic distribution with respect to
geological data. One of Humboldt's famous works was "Idea for a Plant Geography" (
1805).
Other important botanists of the time included
Aimé Bonpland.
The notion of biocoenosis: Wallace and Möbius
Alfred Russel Wallace, contemporary and competitor to Darwin, was first to propose a "geography" of animal species. Several authors recognized at the time that species were not independent of each other, and grouped them into plant species, animal species, and later into communities of living beings or
biocoenosis. The first use of this term is usually attributed to
Karl Möbius in
1877, but already in
1825, the French naturalist
Adolphe Dureau de la Malle used the term
societé about an assemblage of plant individuals of different species.
Warming and the foundation of ecology as discipline
While
Darwin focussed exclusively on competition as a selective force,
Eugen Warming devised a new discipline that took abiotic factors, that's drought, fire, salt, cold etc., as seriously as biotic factors in the assembly of biotic communities. Biogeography before Warming was largely of descriptive nature - faunistic or floristic. Warming’s aim was, through the study of organism (plant) morphology and anatomy, for example adaptation, to explain why a species occurred under a certain set of environmental conditions. Moreover, the goal of the new discipline was to explain why species occupying similar habitats, experiencing similar hazards, would solve problems in similar ways, despite often being of widely different phylogenetic descent. Based on his personal observations in
Brazilian
cerrado, in
Denmark, Norwegian
Finnmark and
Greenland,
Warming gave the first university course in ecological plant geography. Based on his lectures, he wrote the book
‘Plantesamfund’, which was immediate translated to
German,
Polish and
Russian, later to
English as
‘Oecology of Plants’. Through its German edition, the book had immense effect on British and North American scientist like
Arthur Tansley,
Henry Chandler Cowles and
Frederic Clements.
Darwinism and the science ecology
It is often held that the roots of scientific ecology may be traced back to Darwin. This contention may look convincing at first glance inasmuch as
On the Origin of Species is full of observations and proposed mechanisms that clearly fit within the boundaries of modern ecology (for example the cat-to-clover chain – an ecological cascade) and because the term ecology was coined in 1866 by a strong proponent of Darwinism,
Ernst Haeckel. However, Darwin never used the word in his writings after this year, not even in his most “ecological” writings such as the foreword to the English edition of
Hermann Müller’s
The Fertilization of Flowers (1883) or in his own treatise of earthworms and mull formation in forest soils (
The formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms
, 1881). Moreover, the pioneers founding ecology as a scientific discipline, such as
Eugen Warming,
A. F. W. Schimper,
Gaston Bonnier,
F.A. Forel,
S.A. Forbes and
Karl Möbius, made almost no reference to Darwin’s ideas in their works. This was clearly not out of ignorance or because the works of Darwin were not widespread, but because ecology from the beginning was concerned with the relationship between organism morphology and physiology on one side and environment on the other, mainly abiotic environment, hence environmental selection. Darwin’s concept of natural selection on the other hand focussed solely on competition. Despite most portrayals of Darwin conveying him as a non-aggressive recluse who let others fight his battles, Darwin remained all his life a man nearly obsessed with the ideas of competition, struggle and conquest – with all forms of human contact as confrontation.
Early 20th century ~ Expansion of ecological thought
The biosphere - Eduard Suess, Henry Chandler Cowles, and Vladimir Vernadsky
By the
19th century, ecology blossomed due to new discoveries in
chemistry by
Lavoisier and
de Saussure, notably the
nitrogen cycle. After observing the fact that life developed only within strict limits of each compartment that makes up the
atmosphere,
hydrosphere, and
lithosphere, the Austrian geologist
Eduard Suess proposed the term
biosphere in
1875. Suess proposed the name biosphere for the conditions promoting life, such as those found on
Earth, which includes
flora,
fauna,
minerals,
matter cycles, et cetera.
In the
1920s Vladimir I. Vernadsky, a Russian geologist who had defected to France, detailed the idea of the biosphere in his work "The biosphere" (
1926), and described the fundamental principles of the
biogeochemical cycles. He thus redefined the biosphere as the sum of all
ecosystems.
First ecological damages were reported in the
18th century, as the multiplication of colonies caused
deforestation. Since the
19th century, with the
industrial revolution, more and more pressing concerns have grown about the impact of human activity on
the environment. The term
ecologist has been in use since the end of the
19th century.
The ecosystem: Arthur Tansley
Over the
19th century, botanical geography and zoogeography combined to form the basis of
biogeography. This science, which deals with habitats of species, seeks to explain the reasons for the presence of certain species in a given location.
It was in
1935 that
Arthur Tansley, the British
ecologist, coined the term
ecosystem, the interactive system established between the
biocoenosis (the group of living creatures), and their
biotope, the environment in which they live. Ecology thus became the science of ecosystems.
Tansley's concept of the ecosystem was adopted by the energetic and influential biology educator
Eugene Odum. Along with his brother,
Howard Odum, Eugene P. Odum wrote a textbook which (starting in 1953) educated more than one generation of biologists and ecologists in North America.
Ecological Succession - Henry Chandler Cowles
At the turn of the
20th century,
Henry Chandler Cowles was one of the founders of the emerging study of "dynamic ecology", through his study of
ecological succession at the
Indiana Dunes, sand dunes at the southern end of
Lake Michigan. Here Cowles found evidence of
ecological succession in the
vegetation and the
soil with relation to age.
Cowles was very much aware of the roots of the concept and of his (primordial) predecessors. Thus, he attibutes the first use of the word to the French naturalist
Adolphe Dureau de la Malle, who had described the vegetation development after forest clear-felling, and the first comprehensive study of successional processes to the
Finnish botanist
Ragnar Hult (
1885).
Modern ecological theory and research
Ecology's influence in the social sciences and humanities
Human ecology
Human ecology began in the
1920s, through the study of changes in
vegetation succession in the city of
Chicago. It became a distinct field of study in the
1970s. This marked the first recognition that humans, who had colonized all of the Earth's
continents, were a major
ecological factor. Humans greatly modify the environment through the development of the habitat (in particular
urban planning), by intensive exploitation activities such as
logging and
fishing, and as side effects of
agriculture,
mining, and
industry. Besides ecology and biology, this discipline involved many other natural and social sciences, such as
anthropology and
ethnology,
economics,
demography,
architecture and
urban planning,
medicine and
psychology, and many more. The development of human ecology led to the increasing role of ecological science in the design and management of
cities.
In recent years human ecology has been a topic that has interested organizational researchers. Hannan and Freeman (
Population Ecology of Organizations (1977), American Journal of Sociology) argue that organizations don't only adapt to an environment. Instead it's also the environment that selects or rejects populations of
organizations. In any given environment (in
equilibrium) there will only be one form of organization (
isomorphism).
Organizational ecology has been a prominent theory in accounting for diversities of organizations and their changing composition over time.
James Lovelock and the Gaia hypothesis
The
Gaia theory, proposed by
James Lovelock, in his work
Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, advanced the view that the Earth should be regarded as a single living macro-organism. In particular, it argued that the ensemble of living organisms has jointly evolved an ability to control the global environment — by influencing major physical parameters as the composition of the atmosphere, the evaporation rate, the chemistry of soils and oceans — so as to maintain conditions favorable to life.
This vision was largely a sign of the times, in particular the growing perception after the
Second World War that human activities such as
nuclear energy,
industrialization,
pollution, and overexploitation of
natural resources, fueled by
exponential population growth, were threatening to create catastrophes on a planetary scale. Thus Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, while controversial among scientists, was embraced by many
environmental movements as an inspiring view: their
Earth-mother,
Gaia, was "becoming sick from humans and their activities".
Conservation and environmental movements
Since the 19th century,
environmentalists and other
conservationists have used ecology and other sciences (for example,
climatology) to support their
advocacy positions. Environmentalist views are often controversial for political or economic reasons. As a result, some scientific work in ecology directly influences policy and political debate; these in turn often direct ecological research.
Ecology and global policy
Ecology became a central part of the World's politics as early as
1971,
UNESCO launched a research program called
Man and Biosphere, with the objective of increasing knowledge about the mutual relationship between humans and nature. A few years later it defined the concept of
Biosphere Reserve.
In
1972, the
United Nations held the first international
Conference on the Human Environment in
Stockholm, prepared by
Rene Dubos and other experts. This conference was the origin of the phrase "
Think Globally, Act Locally". The next major events in ecology were the development of the concept of biosphere and the appearance of terms "biological diversity" -- or now more commonly
biodiversity -- in the
1980s. These terms were developed during the
Earth Summit in
Rio de Janeiro in
1992, where the concept of the biosphere was recognized by the major international organizations, and risks associated with reductions in biodiversity were publicly acknowledged.
Then, in
1997, the dangers the biosphere was facing were recognized from an international point of view at the conference leading to the
Kyoto Protocol. In particular, this conference highlighted the increasing dangers of the
greenhouse effect -- related to the increasing concentration of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to
global changes in climate. In
Kyoto, most of the world's nations recognized the importance of looking at ecology from a global point of view, on a worldwide scale, and to take into account the impact of humans on the Earth's environment.
Further Information
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