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Biology Program |
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General Ecology Background Information Ecology integrates much of what you have learned in previous biology courses while focusing on higher levels of organizations (populations, communities and ecosystems). Ecology is a rigorous scientific discipline that requires sophisticated experimental design as well as rigorous statistical and mathematical approaches to data analysis. The Ecological Society of America is one of the
largest scientific societies in the world with 7683 members at the end of
1999. The ESA publishes three journals and a bulletin. Its major
journal, Ecology, published over 3500 pages in 2000. Ecological
research takes place all over the world from the poles to the tropics and
from shallow estuaries to the bottom of the sea. Ecological societies
in Ecological research is
becoming increasingly important and prominent throughout the world. The
Smithsonian Institution administers active ecological research in sites as
nearby as Front Royal, Virginia and Because the science of
ecology is dedicated to an understanding of the relationships between
organisms and their environment, it is often at the center of public policy
disputes related to the environment. Familiar examples include the decline of
the fisheries and biodiversity of the One of the lessons we hope you will learn in this course is that ecological interactions are extremely complex and are often unpredictable. Therefore, policy makers, to their frustration and consternation, find that respected ecologists cannot and will not provide them with simple answers to complex environmental issues. |
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