Blackwell Reference Online

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Ecology generally refers to the scientific study of an organism or community of organisms and their relationship to each other as well as to the environment. The ecological framework is used in biological sciences, social sciences, botany, zoological sciences, and other research areas and is applied to myriad subareas including human ecology, cultural ecology, organizational ecology, plant ecology, population ecology, spatial ecology, and more. Early writings on ecology were influenced by the works of Malthus and Darwin. This can be seen in ecology's use of natural selection and the presence of other competing species in the race for survival. The concept was developed by famous phytogeographers such as Humboldt and Grisebach in the first half of the nineteenth century. However, many acknowledge that the term's modern meaning became fixed in a publication by Häckel in 1865, in which he coined the term “oekologie” and defined it as the relation of an animal to its organic and inorganic environment. Despite the widespread credit given to Häckel for coining the term, there are sufficient claims that the term ecology was in use at the same time by at least seven other biological researchers. One researcher on the topic credits the very first use of the term to Henry David Thoreau in 1858. Many early studies in botany and biology employed the term “plant geography” and ecology. Early ... log in or subscribe to read full text