Who are some important contributors in the field?
Anton Van Leeuwenhoek first created idea of food chain (1)
Charles Darwin emerged the concept of evolution through natural selection, and studied phylogenetics (the evolutionary connections between organisms in their genetics and physically) (1)
Ernst Haeckel was the first to use the term ‘ecology’ (1,5,6)
Charles Elton wrote first book on animal ecology where he wrote about the pyramid of numbers (there needs to be more prey than predators), the food chain, and niches of animals. (6,8)
Alexander Von Humboldt is deemed the father of ecology ; He was the first to study organisms relation to their environment, and describe associations of plants and climate (1,5)
Georgy Gause created the Competitive
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Loss of biodiversity (variety of species in ecosystems), is becoming an increasingly large issue (2)
Humans overfishing / hunting, polluting habitats, land development, deforestation, climate change, etc, is causing many animals to go extinct or severely endangered (7,8)
When one animal goes extinct, it can cause a ripple effect, and disrupt the balance among the food chain (7,8)
Ecologists facing the problem of biodiversity study how species, habitats, and ecosystems are impinged (a typically negative impact) by human activity (3)
Ecologists work to figure out how to conserve the environment and create solutions for the issues humans have caused (3)
The Convention of Biological Diversity was developed in attempts to take action on the issue of the loss of biodiversity (7)
How has your field changed over time?
Before Sir Arthur Tansley, most ecologists studied organisms separately from and did not connect them to their environment, but Tansley changed that notion around