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The term ecology was introduced by Haeckel in 1869. His purpose was to focus attention on relationships, especially relationships with the environment, rather than on organisms and species. The coinage was taken from the Greek for household (oikos) and suggested a broader inter-disciplinary perspective on phenomena in context. In practice, it has proved very difficult to cover the structure of the house, as well as the relationships of all the occupants with it and with each other, in one analysis.
Ecology has, by and large, been natural ecology at its broadest. Where human activities have been included in the subject matter of ecological studies (for the most part a recent development), they have been studied naturalistically, or as though they were a function of natural processes, rather than an integral part of a larger universe. The variation of the living nature on the planet earth the biodiversity or diversity of life is still overwhelming.
Our planet supports between 3 and 30 million species of plants, animals, fungi, single-celled prokaryotes such as bacteria, and single “ celled eukaryotes such as protozoan. Of this total, only about 1.4 million species have been named so far, and fewer that one percent has been studied for their role in ecosystems. A little more than half the named species are insects, which dominate terrestrial and freshwater communities worldwide; the laboratories of systematizes are filled with insect species yet to be named and described. Hence, the relationships of organisms to their environments and the roles that species play in the biosphere are only beginning to be understood. This book gives some answers to these questions.
ISBN 8189645064
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Pages : 258
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