Ecology is the scientific study of the relationships between living organisms and their physical environment. An ecosystem is a community of interacting organisms and their physical environment, and represents a subset of the overall field of ecology. Ecology examines relationships at multiple levels, from individual organisms to populations, communities, and entire ecosystems.

1. ECOLOGY AND ECOSYSTEM
Introduction to Ecology:
The meaning of the word ecology was given German
biologist Hackle in 1869. The word ecology was
derived from Greek words “Oikos” meaning House,
Habitat or Place of living and “logos” meaning to
study.

2. Definition of Ecology
Ecology is a branch of biology which deals with the
relationships of organisms to one another and to their
physical environment.
OR
The scientific study of relationship of living organisms with
each other and with their environment.
Ecosystem:
Ecosystem is a community of interacting organisms and their
physical environment. An ecosystem is a subpart of ecology.
Community:
A community is a group of organisms living in a particular
environment with several common characteristics.

3. • All organisms must interact with both living and non living
things that surround them.
Relationship B/W Ecology and Ecosystem
• Ecology includes the relationship b/w living organisms and
their environment.
• While Ecosystem is a place like a forest, grassland, desert,
river or a stream.
• Correspondence (similarity or Correlation or
comparison)
• Ecology: study of all the ecosystems in a vast area.
• Ecosystem: subset of ecology that focuses on a particular
environment and its ecosystems.

4. Scope of Ecology
Identify the scope of ecology
• Ecology is the study of the interactions of living
organisms with their environment. One core goal of
ecology is to understand the distribution and
abundance of living things in the physical environment.
Attainment (Achievement) of this goal requires the
integration (combination) of scientific disciplines inside
and outside of biology, such as biochemistry,
physiology, evolution, biodiversity, molecular biology,
geology, and climatology. Some ecological research also
applies aspects of chemistry and physics, and it
frequently uses mathematical models.

5. What is Ecology…..?
• Ecology:
is the study of the interactions of living things with their environment. Ecologists ask
questions across four levels of biological organization—organismal, population,
community, and ecosystem. At the organismal level, ecologists study individual
organisms and how they interact with their environments. At the population and
community levels, ecologists explore, respectively, how a population of organisms
changes over time and the ways in which that population interacts with other
species in the community. Ecologists studying an ecosystem examine the living
species (the biotic components) of the ecosystem as well as the nonliving portions
(the abiotic components), such as air, water, and soil, of the environment.

6. • A career in ecology contributes to many facets of human
society. Understanding ecological issues can help society meet
the basic human needs of food, shelter, and health care.
Ecologists can conduct their research in the laboratory and
outside in natural environments. These natural environments
can be as close to home as the stream running through your
campus or as far away as the hydrothermal vents at the
bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Ecologists manage natural

7. resources.
Ecologists also work as educators who teach children and
adults at various institutions including universities, high
schools, museums, and nature centers. Ecologists may also
work in advisory positions assisting local, state, and federal
policymakers to develop laws that are ecologically sound, or
they may develop those policies and legislation themselves.

8. • To become an ecologist requires an
undergraduate degree, usually in a natural
science. The undergraduate degree is often
followed by specialized training or an
advanced degree, depending on the area of
ecology selected. Ecologists should also have a
broad background in the physical sciences, as
well as a sound foundation in mathematics
and statistics.

9. Levels of Ecological Research
• When a discipline such as biology is studied, it is
often helpful to subdivide it into smaller, related
areas. For instance, cell biologists interested in cell
signaling need to understand the chemistry of the
signal molecules (which are usually proteins) as well
as the result of cell signaling.

10. • Ecologists interested in the factors that
influence the survival of an endangered
species might use mathematical models to
predict how current conservation efforts
affect endangered organisms. To produce a
sound set of management options, a
conservation biologist needs to collect
accurate data, including current population
size,

11. factors affecting reproduction (like physiology
and behavior), habitat requirements (such as
plants and soils), and potential human
influences on the endangered population and its
habitat (which might be derived through studies
in sociology and urban ecology).

13. Organismal Ecology
• Researchers studying ecology at the
organismal level are interested in the
adaptations that enable individuals to live in
specific habitats. These adaptations can be
morphological, physiological, and behavioral.
For instance, the Karner blue butterfly
(Lycaeides melissa samuelis) is a rare butterfly
that lives only in open areas with few trees or
shrubs, such as pine barrens and oak
savannas.

14. Population Ecology
• A population is a group of interbreeding
organisms that are members of the same
species living in the same area at the same
time. (Organisms that are all members of the
same species are called conspecifics.) A
population is identified, in part, by where it
lives, and its area of population may have
natural or artificial boundaries: natural
boundaries might be rivers, mountains, or
deserts,

15. • while examples of artificial boundaries include
mowed grass, manmade structures, or roads. The
study of population ecology focuses on the
number of individuals in an area and how and
why population size changes over time.
• Community Ecology:
A biological community consists of the different
species within an area, typically a three-
dimensional space, and the interactions within and
among these species.

16. • Community ecologists are interested in the processes
driving these interactions and their consequences.
Questions about conspecific interactions often focus
on competition among members of the same species
for a limited resource. Ecologists also study interactions
among various species; members of different species
are called heterospecifics. Examples of heterospecific
interactions include predation, parasitism, herbivory,
competition, and pollination.

17. • These interactions can have regulating effects on
population sizes and can impact ecological and
evolutionary processes affecting diversity.
• Ecosystem Ecology:
• Ecosystem ecology is an extension of organismal,
population, and community ecology. The ecosystem is
composed of all the biotic components (living things)
in an area along with the abiotic components (non-
living things) of that area. Some of the abiotic
components include air, water, and soil.

18. Ecosystem biologists ask questions about how
nutrients and energy are stored and how they
move among organisms and the surrounding
atmosphere, soil, and water.

19. Branches of Ecology
• Ecology alone is a large discipline as it covers all
organisms on Earth. Back then, the focus of the
first ecologists are only on either plants or
animals (thus only plant ecology and animal
ecology exist).
But later on, due to newly discovered knowledge
and the advancement of technology, this division of
ecology was no longer used. Instead, the study of
ecology was again divided into two major
subdivisions: autoecology and synecology.

20. Autecology:
The study of interrelationships of individual organisms or
simply the ecology of individual organisms.
→It is the study of life history and the response to its
environment of a single individual. e.g the life history of
an eagle, the food requirements of venus fly trap, or the
temperature tolerance of the seedlings of a tree species.
Synecology:
The study of interrelationships between groups of
organisms (populations or communities) to the
environment.

21. → if the study involves the abundance, distribution,
productivity, and or dynamics of a group of organisms of
the same species is known as population ecology. e.g the
investigation of competition for nutrients of trees in a
plantation, the role of disease in controlling the numbers
of animals in an area, or the rate of growth and death of
individuals in a fish population. Because of the still
broad categories, ecology is further divided into several
specialized branches that focus on a wide variety of
topics. Listed below are the branches of ecology.

22. . Terrestrial Ecology (Dry Land Ecology)
Terrestrial ecology is a branch of ecology that deals with
the study of land organisms and how they interact with
each other and adapt to their environment. Aside from
that, the diversity and distribution of different organisms
in various terrestrial habitats are also being focused on.

23. – Terrestrial ecology has a wide variety of applications
like resources management, and in the long run, be
effective for conservation measures.
– Additionally, soil properties like moisture, pH, nutrient
and chemical content, and soil type may be studied.
– Forest ecology, grassland ecology, mountain ecology, wild
life ecology are the branches of terrestrial ecology.

24. • Aquatic Ecology (Water Ecology)
Basically the opposite of terrestrial ecology, aquatic
ecology deals with the study of the ecosystems
found in bodies of water. Classified mainly into
freshwater ecology and marine ecology.

25. – Aquatic ecology focuses on the interactions
among living organisms in a particular aquatic
habitat which can directly affect various factors in
the ecosystem. Such factors include competition
for food and predation, temperature, nutrient
concentration, and oxygen demand.

26. • Microbial Ecology
Microbial ecology focuses on the study of how
communities of microorganisms establish
themselves on abiotic substrates and how such
organizations enable them to interact with each
other.

27. • The scope of microbial ecology is quite huge as it can
cover the vast micro-flora in animal guts, the
seemingly simple yet actually genotypically
complicated bacterial communities called
the biofilms, and the complex relationship between
prokaryotes and eukaryotes that somehow led to
their divergence.

28. • System Ecology
• System ecology is a branch of ecology that
tackles various abiotic factors like energy
budget allocation and physical processes such
as carbon cycle and biogeochemical cycles.

29. • This branch of ecology is distinctive because it
integrates other scientific disciplines like
applied mathematics and computer systems
to study and predict structures and function in
a given ecosystem.

30. • Taxonomic Ecology
• The next branch of ecology might be new to
some as it incorporates two field of studies
that may not appear to work often. Basically,
taxonomic ecology is a new concept in this
field.

31. The use of taxonomic data is highly important as it
improves the study of the ecosystems by helping
identify key organisms present in that area. Aside from
that, this branch of ecology helps in the
easier classification of organisms, whether each act
accordingly or antagonistically with each other in the
community level.

32. • Evolutionary Ecology
• Evolutionary ecology merges the two
scientific studies of evolution and ecology and
focuses on the physical and genetic changes that
occurred among organisms and how such
modifications were affected by ecological factors.

33. Basically, it also considers the effect of forces like
competition, predation, parasitism, and mutualism in
the evolution of individual species, in a population, or
in the entire community.

34. • Population Ecology
• As its name suggests, population ecology
deals with the study of population structures
and dynamics, rather than looking at the
individual behavioral patterns of living
organisms.

35. – Population ecology studies the various factors that
affect population size, density, dispersion modes,
and growth rate and mortality rate.

36. • Behavioral Ecology
• It integrates the study of the interaction
between survival value to the behavior of
organisms and their offspring. Interestingly, it
somehow related to evolutionary as it
examines how an organism changes its
behavior to ensure survival and perpetuation.

37. • At present, this branch of ecology attempts to find
the link between an animal’s behavior to its
environmental adaptation and reproductive success.
• OR
• It examines the roles of behavior an enabling in
animal to adapt to its environment.

38. • Conservation Ecology
• The applications of diverse fields and
disciplines to the conservation of biological
diversity.
• It studies the management of biodiversity
through conservation and restoration
methods.

39. • This branch is interdisciplinary and utilizes principles
from genetics, biogeography, population biology,
environmental ethics, and law to help in ensuring the
conservation of species and their habitats.

40. • Applied Ecology
• Bringing together all the concepts and
principles of ecology, applied ecology aims to
apply these significant knowledge, findings,
and technological advances to understand real
world situations and to address practical
human problems.

41. – Applied ecology includes applications like
management of wildlife and natural resources,
epidemiology, and even natural disaster risk reduction
and management.
– The scope of applied ecology is huge and
encompasses the fields of biotechnology, ecology, to
study how anthropogenic activities affect not only
micro-systems but the biosphere as well.

42. • Habitat:
• The place where an organism lives is called
habitat.
• Habitat explains the place of residence of an
organism and the environmental factors which
are present there.

43. • Niche:
• Niche explains the role of organism in the area
where it lives.
• Niche describes the functional role of the
organism in the community.

44. Maintain a healthier and more productive biosphere

45. Importance of Ecology:
→ Maintain a healthier and a more productive biosphere for the
life of humans and other living organisms.
→ Provide principles for rational use of natural resources often
referred to as conservation.
→ Provide a basis for the formulation of good conservation
policy especially if those interested with natural resources have
ecological knowledge in such fields: agriculture, forestry, wildlife,
fisheries etc.

59. MATERIALS AND METHODS

62. DISCUSSION