Portal:Ecology

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

Ecology

Ecology (from Ancient Greek οἶκος (oîkos) 'house' and -λογία (-logía) 'study of') 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.

Ecology is a branch of biology, and is the study of abundance, biomass, and distribution of organisms in the context of the environment. It encompasses life processes, interactions, and adaptations; movement of materials and energy through living communities; successional development of ecosystems; cooperation, competition, and predation within and between species; and patterns of biodiversity and its effect on ecosystem processes.

Ecology has practical applications in conservation biology, wetland management, natural resource management (agroecology, agriculture, forestry, agroforestry, fisheries, mining, tourism), urban planning (urban ecology), community health, economics, basic and applied science, and human social interaction (human ecology).

The word ecology (German: Ökologie) was coined in 1866 by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel. The science of ecology as we know it today began with a group of American botanists in the 1890s. Evolutionary concepts relating to adaptation and natural selection are cornerstones of modern ecological theory.

Ecosystems are dynamically interacting systems of organisms, the communities they make up, and the non-living (abiotic) components of their environment. Ecosystem processes, such as primary production, nutrient cycling, and niche construction, regulate the flux of energy and matter through an environment. Ecosystems have biophysical feedback mechanisms that moderate processes acting on living (biotic) and abiotic components of the planet. Ecosystems sustain life-supporting functions and provide ecosystem services like biomass production (food, fuel, fiber, and medicine), the regulation of climate, global biogeochemical cycles, water filtration, soil formation, erosion control, flood protection, and many other natural features of scientific, historical, economic, or intrinsic value. (Full article...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected article - show another

An ecosystem (or ecological system) is a system formed by organisms in interaction with their environment. The biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows.

Ecosystems are controlled by external and internal factors. External factors such as climate, parent material which forms the soil and topography, control the overall structure of an ecosystem but are not themselves influenced by the ecosystem. Internal factors are controlled, for example, by decomposition, root competition, shading, disturbance, succession, and the types of species present. While the resource inputs are generally controlled by external processes, the availability of these resources within the ecosystem is controlled by internal factors. Therefore, internal factors not only control ecosystem processes but are also controlled by them. (Full article...)

List of selected articles

Selected image - show another

Hydrothermal vent

Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

Some Hydrothermal vents support peculiar ecosystems, based on dissolved minerals. Hydrothermal vent communities are able to sustain such vast amounts of life because vent organisms depend on chemosynthetic bacteria for food. The water that comes out of the hydrothermal vent is rich in dissolved minerals and supports a large population of chemo-autotrophic bacteria.

More selected pictures

General images

The following are images from various ecology-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Desert scene in Egypt (from Habitat)
Image 2A generalised graph of a predator-prey population density cycle (from Community (ecology))
Image 3A simple trophic cascade diagram. On the right shows when wolves are absent, showing an increase in elks and reduction in vegetation growth. The left one shows when wolves are present and controlling the elk population. (from Community (ecology))
Image 4Spiny forest at Ifaty, Madagascar, featuring various Adansonia (baobab) species, Alluaudia procera (Madagascar ocotillo) and other vegetation (from Ecosystem)
Image 5A bear with a salmon. Interspecific interactions such as predation are a key aspect of community ecology. (from Community (ecology))
Image 6Loch Lomond in Scotland forms a relatively isolated ecosystem. The fish community of this lake has remained stable over a long period until a number of introductions in the 1970s restructured its food web. (from Ecosystem)
Image 7a) A trophic pyramid showing the different trophic levels in a community. b) A food web of the same community (from Community (ecology))
Image 8Sequence of a decomposing pig carcass over time (from Ecosystem)
Image 9Dense mass of white crabs at a hydrothermal vent, with stalked barnacles on right (from Habitat)
Image 10Table visualising size-symmetric competition, using fish as consumers and crabs as resources. (from Community (ecology))
Image 11The leaves of an Alnus nepalensis tree provide a microhabitat for species like the leaf beetle Aulacophora indica. (from Habitat)
Image 12Rich rainforest habitat in Dominica (from Habitat)
Image 13Biological nitrogen cycling (from Ecosystem)
Image 14The High Peaks Wilderness Area in the 6,000,000-acre (2,400,000 ha) Adirondack Park is an example of a diverse ecosystem. (from Ecosystem)
Image 15Twenty-five years after the devastating eruption at Mount St. Helens, United States, pioneer species have moved in. (from Habitat)
Image 16
A freshwater lake in Gran Canaria, an island of the Canary Islands. Clear boundaries make lakes convenient to study using an ecosystem approach.
(from Ecosystem)
Image 17An Antarctic rock split apart to show endolithic lifeforms showing as a green layer a few millimeters thick (from Habitat)
Image 18Flora of Baja California desert, Cataviña region, Mexico (from Ecosystem)
Image 19Global oceanic and terrestrial phototroph abundance, from September 1997 to August 2000. As an estimate of autotroph biomass, it is only a rough indicator of primary production potential and not an actual estimate of it. (from Ecosystem)
Image 20Ibex in an alpine habitat (from Habitat)
Image 21Rainforest ecosystems are rich in biodiversity. This is the Gambia River in Senegal's Niokolo-Koba National Park. (from Ecosystem)
Image 22This coral reef in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area provides habitat for numerous marine species. (from Habitat)
Image 23Few creatures make the ice shelves of Antarctica their habitat, but water beneath the ice can provide habitat for multiple species. Animals such as penguins have adapted to live in very cold conditions. (from Habitat)
Image 24A red-chested cuckoo chick being feed by a significantly smaller Cape robin-chat adult (from Community (ecology))
Image 25Wetland habitat types in Borneo (from Habitat)

Related WikiProjects

WikiProject Ecology

edit

Things you can do

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : Create any of the missing articles listed on the WikiProject Ecology page, Alkali bee (Pollinator decline), Ecosystem function (presently a redirect), Nutrient flow (Synecology), Seed crop (Pollinator decline)
Verify : Agroecosystem, Biologist, Botany, Ecological pyramid, Ecological selection, Ecological succession, Ecotone, Functional ecology, Macroecology, Microbial ecology, Molecular biology, Uncontacted peoples
Wikify : Add {{Portal|Ecology}} to the See also sections of ecology-related articles.
Other : For additional tasks, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Ecology/to do

– When a task is completed, please remove it from the list.

Recognized content - show another

Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.

Many animals, such as this grey reef shark, are countershaded.

Countershading, or Thayer's law, is a method of camouflage in which an animal's coloration is darker on the top or upper side and lighter on the underside of the body. This pattern is found in many species of mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, and insects, both in predators and in prey.

When light falls from above on a uniformly coloured three-dimensional object such as a sphere, it makes the upper side appear lighter and the underside darker, grading from one to the other. This pattern of light and shade makes the object appear solid, and therefore easier to detect. The classical form of countershading, discovered in 1909 by the artist Abbott Handerson Thayer, works by counterbalancing the effects of self-shadowing, again typically with grading from dark to light. In theory this could be useful for military camouflage, but in practice it has rarely been applied, despite the best efforts of Thayer and, later, in the Second World War, of the zoologist Hugh Cott. (Full article...)

List of recognized articles

Selected biography - show another

Dansereau, circa 1942–43

Pierre Dansereau CC GOQ FRSC (October 5, 1911 – September 28, 2011) was a Canadian ecologist from Quebec known as one of the "fathers of ecology". (Full article...)

List of selected biographies

Did you know (auto-generated)

... that one of the founders of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party, Andrius Domaševičius, had his own private gynecology practice, treating poor women free of charge?
... that Luxembourgian myrmecologist Robert Stumper also played as a goalkeeper for his nation's football team?
... that scientist Adelaida K. Semesi was known as "mama mangroves" due to her specialist knowledge of their ecology?
... that the British political theorist Chris Armstrong has called for a "blue new deal" to secure ecological resilience for the ocean and a just blue economy?
... that gynaecologist Oon Chiew Seng, who was diagnosed with dementia in 2013, was the founding chairperson of the first dementia home in Singapore?
... that PlantSims, human–plant hybrids in The Sims 2: Seasons, have been studied as examples of ecofeminism and deep ecology?

Selected quote - show another

“

A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.

”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

More selected quotes

Ecology news

From the Wikinews Environment portal

Additional News Highlights

November 5, 2009: "New ocean forming in African desert."

More ecology news on Wikinews

Selected publication - show another

Oikos is an international scientific journal published monthly by the Nordic Society Oikos in the field of ecology. It was previously known as Acta Oecologica Scandinavica. Oikos is published in collaboration with Ecography, Lindbergia, the Journal of Avian Biology, and with the monograph series Ecological Bulletins. (Full article...)

More selected publications

Related portals

More did you know - show another

... molecular ecology is a field of evolutionary biology that is concerned with applying molecular population genetics, molecular phylogenetics, and more recently genomics to traditional ecological questions (e.g., species diagnosis, conservation and assessment of biodiversity, species-area relationships, and many questions in behavioral ecology)?

Other "Did you know" facts...

Read more...