Littoral Marine Communities

Abstract

use of terms relating to ecology, particularly ecology, impresses me as being somewhat in a state of confusion. I suppose that in a conference of ecologists one could get as many definitions of the term as there are ecoldgists present. same would be almost as true of the term itself. Elton's definition (1927) (which is one of theshortest): Ecology is scientific natural history, though good, I think is open to criticism, because natural history statements, if true, are scientific facts,. for they are capable of being incorporated in the science of biology, and thesubscience of ecology. If they are not facts, then they are not natural history. Shelford's definition (1929), Ecology is the sociology of organisms, emphasizes too much the interrelationship of organisms and not their environmentat adaptations. definition that one sometimes hears, Ecology is the study of animals in relation to their gives somewhat the opposite impression -that the environment is the important phase. A combination of the two, that ecology is the study of the social life of animals and their relation to their envoronment, would seem to be much more correct and to thLe point, yet, to me, it seems that this definition still leaves out a very important part of ecology, as I will attempt to show later in this paper, that of the individual life history. individual organism is the unit of ecology, and, therefore, a study of the unit is just as much a part of ecology as the study of a: particular cell may be to the study of physiology or morphology. If we keep' this fact in mind, that a knowledge of the social activities of community is not known until the individual life histories are known, then our definition, Ecology is the study of the sociology of animals and their relation to their satisfies the objective to be obtained by the study of ecology. King and Russell (1909) give what I consider the best definition I have seen in print: The study of the relations between animals and their environment, both animate and Some consider environment to be inorganic or at least inanimate. Webster says that it is the sum total of alt external factors.which affect the organism. term animal communities is often used synonymously with animat associations. Webster's dictionary defines ecological association as an assemblage of plants, so suppose for now we leave associations as a term to, be used by the plant ecologists, and turn to the definition for community,1