BASIC ECOLOGY

1. Introduction
Pengertian ekologi? sinekologi vs autoekologi? Termologi? Entomologi?
2. The Scope of Ecology
a. Ecology-Its relation to other sciences and its relevance to civilization
b. Levels of organization hierarchy
Molekul-sel-jaringan-organ-sistem organ-individu-populasi-komunitas-ekosistem
c. The emergent property principle
d. About models
3. The Ecosystem
a. Concept of the ecosystem
Apa itu ekosistem dalam tingkatan hirarki?
Dalam ekologi?
b. The structure of the ecosystem
Komponen abiotik dan biotik?
c. The study of ecosystem
d. The biological control of the geochemical environment: the Gaia hypothesis
Hipotesis bumi gaia oleh Lovecock? Bumi = sendiri
e. Global production and decomposition
Produksi primer, produksi sekunder ?
Dekomposisi = perusakan sruktur kimia oeh detrivor
f. The cybernetic nature and the stability of ecosystem
Menurut Patten dan Odum (1981), ekosistem adalah sibernetic alam dimana
interaksi antara siklus materi dan aliran energi, di kendalikan oleh jaringan
informasi, yang bergerak secara individu. Dalam sistem sibernetik, pergerakan
informasi menjamin sebagian besar interaksi dan sambungan antar subsistem dan
lingkungan. Pergerakan ini berkontribusi terhadap kontruksi secara keseluruhan
dengan didasari oleh keterkaitannya (satu sama lain).
g. Examples of ecosystem
Ekosistem darat,
Ekosistem air : Lotik dan Lentik (litoral, limnetik, profundal)
Ekosistem buatan9
h. The classification of ecosystem
4. Energy in Ecological System
a. Review of fundamental concepts related to energy: the entropy law
b. Energy environment
c. Concept of productivity
d. Food chains, food webs, and trophic levels
e. Energy quality
f. Metabolism and size of individuals
g. Trophic structure and ecological pyramids
h. Complexity theory, the energetics of scale, law of diminishing returns, and concept of
i.
j.

carrying capacity
An energy-based classification of ecosystem
Energy, money, and civilization

5. Biogeochemical Cycles
a. Patterns and basic types of biogeochemical cycles
b. Quantitative study of biogeochemical cycles
c. Watershed biogeochemistry
d. The global cycling of carbon and water
e. The sedimentary cycle
f. Cycling of nonessential elements
g. Nutrient cycling in the tropics

h. Recycle pathways: the recycle index

6. Limiting Factors and The Physical Environment
a. Concept of limiting factors: Liebigs law of the minimum
b. Factor compensation and ecotypes
c. Condition of existence as regulatory factors
d. Brief review of physical factors of importance as limiting factors
e. Anthropogenic stress and toxic waste as a limiting factor for industrial societies
7. Population Dynamics
a. Properties of the population group
b. Basic concepts of rates
c. The intrinsic rate of natural increase
d. Population growth form
e. Population fluctuations and cyclic oscillations
f. Density-independent and density-dependent action in population control
g. Population structure: internal distribution pattern (dispersion)
h. Population structure: aggregation, Allees principle, and refuging
i. Population structure: isolation and territoriality
j. Energy partitioning and optimization: r- and K-selection
k. Integration: life history traits tactics
8. Populations in Communities
a. Types of interaction between two species
b. Interspecific competition and coexistence
c. Predation, herbivory, parasitism, and allelopathy (antibiosis)
d. Positive interactions: commensalism, cooperation, and mutualism
e. Concept of habitat, ecological niche, and guild
f. Species diversity, pattern diversity, and genetic diversity in communities
g. Populations and communities in geographical gradients; ecotones and concept of edge
effect
h. Paleoecology: community structure in past ages
i. From populations to communities to ecosystems
9. Development and Evolution in the Ecosystem
a. The strategy of ecosystem development
b. Concept of the climax
c. Evolution of the biosphere
d. Natural selection: allopatric and sympatric

speciation:

microevolution

versus

macroevolution
e. Coevolution
f. Evolution of cooperation and complexity: group selection
g. Relevance of the ecosystem development and biosphere evolution and human ecology

INRODUCTION
1. Ecology-Its Relation to Others Sciences and Its Relevance to Civilization
The word ecology is derived from the Greek oikos, meaning household,
and logos, meaning study. Thus, the study of the environmental house
includes all the organisms in it and all of the functional processes that make the
house habitable. Literally, then, ecology is the study of life at home with

emphasis on the totality or pattern of relations between organisms and their

environment, to the city one of the definitions in Websters Unabridged
Dictionary.
The word economics is also derived from the Greek root oikos. Since nomics
means management, economics translates as the management of the
household, and accordingly, ecology and economic should be companion
disciplines. Unfortunately, many people view ecologists and economists as
adversaries

with

antithetical

visions.

Later,

this

text

will

consider

the

confrontation that results because each discipline takes too narrow a view of its
subject and the special effort made to bridge the gap between them.
Ecology was of practical interest early in human history. To survive in
primitive society, all individuals needed to know their environment, i.e., the
forces of nature and the plants and animals around them. Civilization, in fact,
began coincidentally with the use of fire and other tools to modify the
environment. because of technological achievements, we seems to depend less
on the natural environment for our daily needs; we forget our continuing
dependence on nature.
Also, economics systems of whatever political ideology value things made by
human beings that primarily benefit the individual, but place little value on the
goods and services of nature that benefit us as a society. Until there is a crisis,
we tend to take for granted natural goods and services; we assume they are
unlimited or somehow

replaceable by technological innovations,

despite

evidence to the contrary.

2. Level of Organizations Hierarchy
Perhaps the best way to delimit modern ecology is to consider the concept of
level of organization, visualized as a sort of biological spectrum, as shown in
Figure 1-1. Community, population, organism, organ, cell, and gene are widely
used terms for major biotic levels shown in hierarchical arrangement from large
to small. Actually, the level spectrum, like a radiation spectrum or a
logarithmic scale, theoretically can be extended infinitely in both directions.
Hierarchy means an arrangement into a grade series (Websters Collegiate
Dictionary). Interaction with the physical environment (energy and matter) at
each level produces characteristic functional system. A system consist of
regularly interacting and interdependent component forming a unified whole

(Webster Collegiate Dictionary) or, from a different point of view, a set of mutual
relationship constituting an identifiable entity, real or postulational (Laszlo and
Margenau, 1972). Systems containing living components any level, as illustrated
in Figure 1-1, or at any intermediate position convenient or practical for analysis.
For example, host-parasite systems or two-system of mutually linked organisms
(such as the fungi-algae partnership that constitutes the lichen) are intermediate
levels between population and community.
Ecology is largely concerned with the right-hand portion of this spectrum, that
is, the system levels beyond that of the organism. In ecology, the term
population, originally coined to denote a group of people, is broadened to include
groups of individuals of any one kind of organism. Likewise, community, in the
ecological sense (sometimes designated as biotic community), includes all the
populations occupying a given area. The community and nonliving environment
function together as an ecological system or ecosystem. Biocoenosis and
biogeocoenosis (literally, life and earth functioning together), terms frequently
used in the European and Russian literature, are roughly equivalent to
community and ecosystem, respectively. Biome is a convenient term in wide use
for a large regional or subcontinental biosystem characterized by major a
vegetation types or other identifying landscape aspect, as, for example, the
temperate deciduous forest biome. The largest and most nearly self-sufficient
biological system is often designated the biosphere and ecosphere, which
includes

all

the

earths

living

organisms

interacting

with

the

physical

environment as a whole to maintain a steady-state system intermediate in the

flow of energy between the input of the sun and the thermal sink of space. By
steady state, we mean a self-adjusting equilibrium or balanced condition
relatively immune to at least small-scale disturbances.
3. The Emergent Property Principle
4. About Models