Ecology :: essays research papers

In the original Greek "oikos" means, "house". So ecology is "the study of the house" the place where you live, or the environment which technically includes all those factors, both nonliving and living, that affect an organism. Ecology then is the study of the interactions of organisms in their environment includes both the living (biotic) and physical (abiotic) factors of the environment. It's also the science, which formulates and tests hypotheses about environment. Ecology is the relationships, identification and analysis of problems common to all areas. Ecology studies the population and the community, evaluates cause and effects of the responses of populations and communities to environmental change. POPULATIONS The population is defined as an assemblage of individuals of a single species that live in the same place at the same time. Also, biologists add an additional condition: the individuals in a population must interact with each other to the point of being able to interbreed. Population is important to understanding many important ecological and evolutionary phenomena. Ecologists can use information from population ecology to predict the success of a given species or assemblage of species. One attribute of populations that is observed in nature is their dispersion, or the way in which individuals are distributed in a given area. Typically, biologists refer to three types of dispersion: - Clustered (aggregated), Regular (evenly spaced), Random (irregularly spaced) Populations showing a clustered pattern are common in nature and are found among many different types of organisms. Clustered dispersion patterns are often due to environment heterogeneity. Regular dispersion patterns are relatively rare in nature and occur when a resource is scarce. A good example of regular spacing occurs in animals that exhibit territoriality, a phenomenon in which animals establish an area for themselves and fight off all other individual seeking to invade that area. Regular dispersion patterns can also be observed in plants. Random patterns can be found in a variety of organisms (trout in lake or maple trees in a forest). Regardless of which organisms, the number of births almost always has the potential to be greater than the number of deaths. In other words populations of all species have the capacity to grow. That property is crucial importance to the success of all species. However, all species will not increase under all circumstance, but instead they can, given appropriate conditions. There are two models of population growth: the exponential model and the logistic model. One of the most basic models of population biology is the exponential growth equation, which is: )N/)t = rmaxN This equation states that, in a growing population, the rate of change in population size is determined by the maximal intrinsic rate of increase (rmax) multiplied by the number of individuals in that population (N). Ecology :: essays research papers In the original Greek "oikos" means, "house". So ecology is "the study of the house" the place where you live, or the environment which technically includes all those factors, both nonliving and living, that affect an organism. Ecology then is the study of the interactions of organisms in their environment includes both the living (biotic) and physical (abiotic) factors of the environment. It's also the science, which formulates and tests hypotheses about environment. Ecology is the relationships, identification and analysis of problems common to all areas. Ecology studies the population and the community, evaluates cause and effects of the responses of populations and communities to environmental change. POPULATIONS The population is defined as an assemblage of individuals of a single species that live in the same place at the same time. Also, biologists add an additional condition: the individuals in a population must interact with each other to the point of being able to interbreed. Population is important to understanding many important ecological and evolutionary phenomena. Ecologists can use information from population ecology to predict the success of a given species or assemblage of species. One attribute of populations that is observed in nature is their dispersion, or the way in which individuals are distributed in a given area. Typically, biologists refer to three types of dispersion: - Clustered (aggregated), Regular (evenly spaced), Random (irregularly spaced) Populations showing a clustered pattern are common in nature and are found among many different types of organisms. Clustered dispersion patterns are often due to environment heterogeneity. Regular dispersion patterns are relatively rare in nature and occur when a resource is scarce. A good example of regular spacing occurs in animals that exhibit territoriality, a phenomenon in which animals establish an area for themselves and fight off all other individual seeking to invade that area. Regular dispersion patterns can also be observed in plants. Random patterns can be found in a variety of organisms (trout in lake or maple trees in a forest). Regardless of which organisms, the number of births almost always has the potential to be greater than the number of deaths. In other words populations of all species have the capacity to grow. That property is crucial importance to the success of all species. However, all species will not increase under all circumstance, but instead they can, given appropriate conditions. There are two models of population growth: the exponential model and the logistic model. One of the most basic models of population biology is the exponential growth equation, which is: )N/)t = rmaxN This equation states that, in a growing population, the rate of change in population size is determined by the maximal intrinsic rate of increase (rmax) multiplied by the number of individuals in that population (N).