UNIT X ECOLOGY

UNIT X ECOLOGY

Diversity is not only a characteristic of living organisms but also of content in biology textbooks. Biology is presented either as botany, zoology and microbiology or as classical and modern. The latter is a euphemism for molecular aspects of biology. Luckily we have many threads which weave the different areas of biological information into a unifying principle. Ecology is one such thread which gives us a holistic perspective to biology. The essence of biological understanding is to know how organisms, while remaining an individual, interact with other organisms and physical habitats as a group and hence behave like organised wholes, i.e., population, community, ecosystem or even as the whole biosphere. Ecology explains to us all this. A particular aspect of this is the study of anthropogenic environmental degradation and the socio-political issues it has raised. This unit describes as well as takes a critical view of the above aspects.

Ramdeo Misra is revered as the Father of Ecology in India. Born on twenty-sixth August nineteen oh eight, Ramdeo Misra obtained Ph.D in Ecology nineteen thirty-seven under Professor W. H. Pearsall from Leeds University in U.K. He established teaching and research in ecology at the Department of Botany of the Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. His research laid the foundations for understanding of tropical communities and their succession, environmental responses of plant populations and productivity and nutrient cycling in tropical forest and grassland ecosystems. Misra formulated the first postgraduate course in ecology in India. Over fifty scholars obtained Ph.D degree under his supervision and moved on to other universities and research institutes to initiate ecology teaching and research across the country.

He was honoured with the Fellowships of the Indian National Science Academy and World Academy of Arts and Science, and the prestigious Sanjay Gandhi Award in Environment and Ecology. Due to his efforts, the Government of India established the National Committee for Environmental Planning and Coordination nineteen seventy-two which, in later years, paved the way for the establishment of the Ministry of Environment and Forests nineteen eighty-four.

CHAPTER ELEVEN ORGANISMS AND POPULATIONS

Eleven point one Populations

Our living world is fascinatingly diverse and amazingly complex. We can try to understand its complexity by investigating processes at various levels of biological organisation-macromolecules, cells, tissues, organs, individual organisms, population, communities, ecosystems and biomes. At any level of biological organisation we can ask two types of questions - for example, when we hear the bulbul singing early morning in the garden, we may ask - 'How does the bird sing?' Or, 'Why does the bird sing?' The 'how-type' questions seek the mechanism behind the process while the 'why-type' questions seek the significance of the process. For the first question in our example, the answer might be in terms of the operation of the voice box and the vibrating bone in the bird, whereas for the second question the answer may lie in the bird's need to communicate with its mate during breeding season. When you observe nature around you with a scientific frame of mind you will certainly come up with many interesting questions of both types - Why are night-blooming flowers generally white? How does the bee know which flower has nectar? Why does cactus have so many thorns? How does the chick spures recognise her own mother?, and so on.

You have already learnt in previous classes that Ecology is a subject which studies the interactions among organisms and between the organism and its physical abiotic environment.

Ecology is basically concerned with four levels of biological organisation - organisms, populations, communities and biomes. In this chapter we explore ecology at population levels.