Ecology Facts
Ecology Facts
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Interesting Ecology Facts: |
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Due to the way its disciplines intersect, it's hard to pinpoint when the study of ecology began. |
The individual biology and Earth science disciplines all have individual time lines, some of which date back to ancient civilizations like the Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans. |
Hippocrates and Aristotle were among the first recorded scientists to write down their observations on what would be considered ecology. |
Herodotus recorded observations on the topics like balance in nature and regulation of what we know to be ecosystems, putting him at the forefront of early ecological research. |
Some of the most important understandings of ecology came about as late as the 1700s, when scientists began to understand concepts like food chains, population management, and heredity. |
Later researchers began to observe and theorize on the planet's impact on living organisms with concepts like adaptation and evolution. |
The term ecology was first coined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866. |
Ecology focuses on life processes and adaptations, energy in living communities, the eventual growth and development of entire ecosystems, and how biodiversity manifests itself in an environment. |
The human element cannot be removed from ecology, as human behaviors are understood to make a tremendous and irreparable impact on ecosystems. |
Ecology encompasses all living things, from single-cellular and acellular organisms, through to the most complex of all living creatures. |
Ecologists must understand an area's biodiversity, its habitats and niches, biomes and biospheres, and more in order to understand how an ecosystem builds itself. |
Human ecology is broad enough to nearly be a field all to itself, and investigates people's impacts on the physical environment, our interconnectedness with animal and plant species, and various factors that influence the human condition. |
While living things are predominantly the focus of ecology, soil ecology is a related field that studies the microbial inhabitants of soil, how plant life is impacted, and the overall geological health of an environment by seeking out components in the soil. |
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