How Can We Help?
< Back

  Portal   Topics and categories   WikiProject
Ecology

Ecology (from Ancient Greek οἶκος (oîkos) 'house', and -λογία (-logía) 'study of') is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms, including humans, and their physical 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...)

Selected article - show another

Temperate lake and Mulga woodland
Lake and Mulga ecosystems with alternative stable states

In ecology, resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a perturbation or disturbance by resisting damage and subsequently recovering. Such perturbations and disturbances can include stochastic events such as fires, flooding, windstorms, insect population explosions, and human activities such as deforestation, fracking of the ground for oil extraction, pesticide sprayed in soil, and the introduction of exotic plant or animal species. Disturbances of sufficient magnitude or duration can profoundly affect an ecosystem and may force an ecosystem to reach a threshold beyond which a different regime of processes and structures predominates. When such thresholds are associated with a critical or bifurcation point, these regime shifts may also be referred to as critical transitions.

Human activities that adversely affect ecological resilience such as reduction of biodiversity, exploitation of natural resources, pollution, land use, and anthropogenic climate change are increasingly causing regime shifts in ecosystems, often to less desirable and degraded conditions. Interdisciplinary discourse on resilience now includes consideration of the interactions of humans and ecosystems via socio-ecological systems, and the need for shift from the maximum sustainable yield paradigm to environmental resource management and ecosystem management, which aim to build ecological resilience through "resilience analysis, adaptive resource management, and adaptive governance". Ecological resilience has inspired other fields and continues to challenge the way they interpret resilience, e.g. supply chain resilience. (Full article...)
List of selected articles

Selected image - show another

Ocellaris clownfish often live symbiotically with the Heteractis magnifica sea anemone, using them for shelter and protection.

General images

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

Related WikiProjects

Things you can do


Here are some tasks awaiting attention:
 – 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.

A parasitoid wasp (Trioxys complanatus, Aphidiinae) ovipositing into the body of a spotted alfalfa aphid (Therioaphis maculata, Calaphidinae), a behaviour that is used in biological pest control

In evolutionary ecology, a parasitoid is an organism that lives in close association with its host at the host's expense, eventually resulting in the death of the host. Parasitoidism is one of six major evolutionary strategies within parasitism, distinguished by the fatal prognosis for the host, which makes the strategy close to predation.

Among parasitoids, strategies range from living inside the host (endoparasitism), allowing it to continue growing before emerging as an adult, to paralysing the host and living outside it (ectoparasitism). Hosts can include other parasitoids, resulting in hyperparasitism; in the case of oak galls, up to five levels of parasitism are possible. Some parasitoids influence their host's behaviour in ways that favour the propagation of the parasitoid. (Full article...)

Selected biography - show another

Joan Roughgarden (born 13 March 1946) is an American ecologist and evolutionary biologist. She has engaged in theory and observation of coevolution and competition in Anolis lizards of the Caribbean, and recruitment limitation in the rocky intertidal zones of California and Oregon. She has more recently become known for her rejection of sexual selection, her theistic evolutionism, and her work on holobiont evolution. (Full article...)

Did you know (auto-generated)

Selected quote - show another

U.S. consumers and industry dispose of enough aluminum to rebuild the commercial air fleet every three months; enough iron and steel to continuously supply all automakers; enough glass to fill New York's World Trade Center every two weeks.


Environmental Defense Fund advertisement, The Christian Science Monitor, 1990

Ecology news

Read and edit Wikinews

Additional News Highlights

Selected publication - show another

Ecology and Society (formerly Conservation Ecology) is an open access interdisciplinary scientific journal published by the Resilience Alliance. The journal covers an array of disciplines from the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities concerned with the relationship between society and the life-supporting ecosystems on which human well-being ultimately depends. (Full article...)

Related portals

More did you know - show another

... in the United States, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems account for 30% (4.65 EJ) of the energy used in commercial buildings and nearly 50% (10.1 EJ) of the energy used in residential buildings? Solar-powered heating, cooling and ventilation technologies can be used to offset a portion of this energy.

(Pictured left: Part of the Nellis Solar Power Plant, a 14 megawatt power plant installed in 2007, in Nevada)

Other "Did you know" facts... Read more...

Related articles

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

  • Commons
    Free media repository
  • Wikibooks
    Free textbooks and manuals
  • Wikidata
    Free knowledge base
  • Wikinews
    Free-content news
  • Wikiquote
    Collection of quotations
  • Wikisource
    Free-content library
  • Wikiversity
    Free learning tools
  • Wiktionary
    Dictionary and thesaurus

Web resources

Discover Wikipedia using portals
Categories
Table of Contents