Title:	From Populations to Ecosystems
Authors:	MICHEL L OREAU
Keywords:	Ecology
Issue Date:	2010
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Description:	The vigorous growth of ecology from its origins in the late 19th century and early 20th century has been accompanied by its gradual fi ssion into several distinct subdisciplines. The unifi ed view of ecology that was present in a book like Lotka’s Elements of Physical Biology (1925), which introduced many of the theoretical approaches that are still followed today, has given way to more specialized research programs. Although specialization is to some extent inevitable to make science more precise and predictive, it also creates problems. The conceptual frameworks of the various areas tend to become increasingly divergent over time, hampering communication across the discipline as a whole. This divergence is nowhere more apparent than between two of the major subdisciplines of ecology, i.e., community ecology and ecosystem ecology. These two subdisciplines have grown largely independently, each having its own concepts, theories, and methodologies. Community ecology is to a large extent an outgrowth of population ecology. It is mainly concerned with the dynamics, evolution, diversity, and complexity of the biological components of ecosystems; its starting point is the population and its interactions with other populations. Ecosystem ecology is mainly concerned with the functioning of the overall system composed of biological organisms and their abiotic environment; its starting point is the fl ow of matter or energy among functional compartments
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/56216
ISBN:	978-0-691-12269-4
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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