Ecology Abbreviations

What is Ecology?

Ecology is a branch of Biology that studies the relationships between living beings and the environment in which they live, as well as the influence that each has on the other.

The word “Ökologie” derives from the junction of the Greek terms “ oikos ”, meaning “house” and “ logos ”, meaning “study”. It was created by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel to designate the science that studies the relationships between living beings and the environment. At first a scientific term of restricted use, it fell into common language in the 1960s, with movements of an environmentalist nature.

The main branches of study and research into which Ecology is divided are: Autoecology, Demoecology (Population Dynamics), Synecology (Community Ecology), Agroecology, Ecophysiology (Environmental Ecology) and Macroecology.

The concept of Human Ecology designates the scientific study of the relationships between humans and the environment, including natural conditions, interactions and economic, psychological, social and cultural aspects.

The preservation and conservation of the natural environment of different species are concepts of great importance when it involves the relations between man and the biosphere.

Ecological interactions

In the discipline of Ecology, the processes, dynamics and interactions between all living beings in an ecosystem are studied. Ecological interactions are characterized by the benefit of both living beings (harmonic) or by the harm of one of them (disharmonic) and can occur between beings of the same species (intraspecific) or different species (interspecific).

Harmonic intraspecific relationships: society (organization of individuals of the same species) and colony (grouping of individuals of the same species with degrees of dependence on each other);

Disharmonious intraspecific relationships: cannibalism and intra- and interspecific competitions (natural selection). They are relationships between equal species, but there is a detriment to at least one side.

Harmonic interspecific relationships: mutualism (or symbiosis), protocooperation, inquilinism (or epibiosis) and commensalism;

Disharmonious interspecific relationships: amensalism (or antibiosis), herbivorism, predatism, parasitism and intra- and interspecific slavery.

List of Acronyms Related to Ecology