What is ecology?

What Does ecology Mean

The ecology is the scientific specialty focused on the study and analysis of the link emerges between living things and their surroundings, understood as the combination of abiotic factors (among which may be mentioned climate and geology) and biotic factors (organisms that share the habitat). Ecology also analyzes the distribution and quantity of living organisms as a result of the aforementioned relationship.

Notably, Ökologie is a concept dating from the late 1860s and was coined by the German-born biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel . This word is made up of two Greek words: oikos (which means "house" , "residence" or "home" ) and logos (a term that, translated into Spanish, is understood as "study" ). That is why ecology is precisely defined as "the study of homes . "

Although the origin of the term is doubtful, the researcher Haeckel is recognized as one of its creators, who when beginning to develop his experiments, Haeckel, who defined it as that branch of science that revolves around the interaction of all beings I live with the surface around it. However, over time he extended the concept to include the analysis of the properties of the environment , including the displacement of matter and energy and its evolution as a result of the presence of biological assemblages.
At present and for several years, ecology is closely related to a heterogeneous political and social movement , which tries to act in defense of the environment. Ecologists make different social complaints, propose the need for legal reforms and promote social awareness to achieve their main objective, which is the preservation of human health without damaging or altering the balance of natural ecosystems.
For this reason, the environmental cause (also known as the green or environmental movement ) focuses on three major universal issues: the preservation and regeneration of natural resources; the protection of wildlife and the reduction of the level of pollution generated by humanity.
A fundamental element of ecology is homeostasis, which is that all species that inhabit a balanced natural environment tend to self-regulate and remain more or less constant in number of inhabitants, in this way the environment ensures an equitable distribution of the resources and you are never lacking. In an environment that has been modified by the hand of man, homeostasis is more difficult to find, and for this reason natural imbalances occur .
Ecology is currently considered to be a branch of biological sciences , and is responsible for studying the interactions between living organisms and the natural environment in which they inhabit. It is a multidisciplinary science that to develop as such it needs other sciences to understand the entire study of the environment. These other sciences include climatology, biology, ethics, and chemical engineering .

All biotic processes are characterized by the transfer of energy that is why they can be studied by physics and understood within its natural laws; chemistry deals with the metabolic and physiological processes of the subsystems because they depend on chemical reactions. The structure of biomes is studied by geology because it is closely related to the geological structure of the dream and living beings, when interacting with the environment, can modify their geology. With regard to calculations, statistics and projections to draw conclusions from specific and numerical information, those in charge of studying them are mathematics. To study each aspect of life in an ecosystem, ecology uses the other sciences , for this reason it is said to be multidisciplinary .
To study ecosystems, ecology establishes different levels of organization, which are: being (everything that exists, living or inert), individual (any living being whatever its species), species (group of individuals that share genome, with phenotypic characteristics), population (individuals of a species that share habitat), community (set of populations that share habitat), ecosystem (combination and interaction between biotic and abiotic factors in nature), biome (plant communities that share a geographic area ) and biosphere (A set of ecosystems that are part of the planet. It is an ecological unit that refers to the entire inhabited part of the planet).
Scientists who research and develop theories about ecology are called ecologists . There are two branches of ecology which are autoecology (individual species and their multiple relationships with the environment) and synecology (communities and their relationships with the environment). In turn, according to what ecologists investigate, they collaborate with a certain type of ecology, such as:
The ecology of behavior is what is responsible for studying the techniques of gathering food, adaptations to predation or natural disasters relations and reproduction.
La ecología de poblaciones es la encargada de estudiar los procesos que tienen que ver con la homeostasis, la distribución y abundancia de las poblaciones, tanto animales como vegetales. Las fluctuaciones en el número de individuos de cada especie, las relaciones depredador-presa y la genética de las poblaciones.
La ecología de comunidades es la encargada de estudiar el funcionamiento y las formas de organizarse de una comunidad, formadas por poblaciones interactuantes. Estos ecólogos investigan sobre los rangos de las especies, las razones que hacen que unas sean más numerosas que otras y los factores que afectan a la estabilidad de la comunidad.
La paleoecología, por su parte, es un área importante que estudia los organismos fósiles. A partir del estudio de las especies del pasado se pueden comprender las técnicas de recolección, reproducción y demás que poseen organismos actuales.