Ecology & environment

SCIENCE IN ACTION

By MICHAEL JOHN UGLO
HELLO everyone.This is our very first lecture in the series of lectures on the Sciences of Organisms.
You see, suddenly something seemingly mysterious happens to the lives of a plant and an animals including human beings and the not-so-well-versed scientific person can draw his or her conclusion about that event. Is that not so scholarly person saying the right thing(s)? Hope not because he or she cannot scientifically prove what he or she is saying is true, probably true, possibly true, possibly false, probably false or false in the well developed technology and scientific world.
Some values can be assigned in this so termed as a modal logic whereby the conclusions can be tested for validity and degrees of significance and accuracy can be computed. Hence the hypothesis is null and void and cannot be taken as true until the tests of accuracy for that event are determined with a standard deviation or at least a variance or degrees of freedom.

Ecology and environment
Ecology is the study of the living things in a particular community that includes the non-living component of its surroundings as well referred to as its environment. The study of ecology looks at the organisms at the individual, the population, community, ecosystems and the biosphere levels.
Ecology relates to the other sciences as evolutionary biology, biogeographic studies, natural history and genetics. It looks at energy and material flow through the process. Also it focuses on the ecosystems and how they sustain life.
The practical application of the study of ecology looks at the wetland management, conservation biology, community health, natural resource management such as fisheries, agriculture, forestry with community health, human ecology and applied science.
The study of ecology directly relates to the evolutionary concept of biology in adaptations and the principle of the natural selections. That is, organisms survive through the adaptation mechanisms such as colorations to camouflage and mimic from predators.
Animals have developed structures such as lungs to move from water to dry land to survive. Plants such as cacti develop thick fleshy tissues to conserve water in arid environments. The thorns from a cactus prevent predators from eating them.
Also shedding leaves to conserve water or producing diuretic secretions as urine in diuresis to conserve water for dry climate animals such as rats. Also, adaptive mechanisms involve development of limbs as bipedal and wings as well as multi-legged creatures like centipedes and millipedes for survival.
Ecology also looks at the production of food from the producers concerning the biomass and energy and material flow from the environment. It is the total composition of the living environment called biotic factors such as the predator prey relationships, parasitism, mutualism, commensalism and symbiotic relationships known as the feeding relationships as well as the non-living component of the environment called the abiotic factors and these include sunlight, water, temperatures, edaphic (soil) factors, the salinity, the acidity and alkalinity (pH) scale or measurements.
The different trophic levels with the primary production at the base involving photosynthesis with capture of sunlight by the plant green leaves’ chlorophyll with the absorption of carbon dioxide from the air and nutrients with water from the soil to make glucose. The necessary macronutrients include carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus. Others are the micronutrients that include the vitamins and the minerals that are produced by the plants. Here is the primary production source that is synthesized to be absorbed by the organisms at the different trophic levels.
The biomass is in abundance at the base and increases as you proceed to the very top. The producers’ population is the biggest and are in plentiful supply and these are the green plants that photosynthesize to produce the simple sugar or the single sugar called the glucose. Then we have the plant eaters called the herbivores which have the second largest population in the trophic level or the food pyramid.
The third largest population are the carnivores which feed on the herbivores. The animals which eat the carnivores are called the top carnivores and their biomass is fewer. An animal like an eagle is a top carnivore because it can prey on a snaked which can in turn eat a rat. A rat here is a herbivore and the snake is a carnivore while the eagle is a top carnivore. This is called a food chain in feeding or nutrition. Many food chains intertwined make up a food web.

Feeding levels
The feeding levels in an ecosystem like a pond or a patch of gallery forest may not be very complex as shown in any food web. It can be very simple with a few food chains. Hence, food web is only an overall picture. There are also a special group of organisms called the omnivores. These group of organisms can eat plants as well as animals. Humans are a good example of omnivores.
The next group of organisms are the decomposers composed of bacteria, viruses and fungi. They decompose all organic matter into the basic simple organic elements and compounds that make them up. They basically recycle the nutrients and particularly the macronutrients as the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus. Their decomposers are called detritivores because they feed on the dead organic matter or the detritus.
The level and the scope of the arrangement and organisation on the study of ecology begins from the levels of the genes to cells, then to tissues, to organisms, populations, the ecosystems, the biomes and the biosphere.
Each organism is of its own kind that can reproduce new individuals called species. One species are different from another species because they cannot interbreed. The total number of the species added together give their number of populations.
Populations and communities
The population can include the number of plants and animals as well as microbes. Each of these organisms live in a particular environment. In that environment they obtain their food, water, protection, shelter, mates for mating and reproduction. Their livelihood base on that environment and it is called their habitat. The habitat forms the basis for the survival of any organism or population in any environment because it has all the necessities for the survival of the organism as well as its population.

Habitats and niches
The organisms are known for what they do best. It can be recycling of nutrients in the case of the microbes and worms or it can be a relationship in commensalism whereby one population specialises in utilising one particular resource while the other specialises in the other that may not be needed by the first one.
This is a particular role that suits a particular organism. This is called their ecological niche. This is a job they are specialized in doing to uphold the niche construction.
With the habitats and the niches then a biome specific to the particular region can be seen. It can be a low montane forest, a tropical forest, a desert biome or a taiga and tundra or a deciduous forest. With the many biomes seen together on the planet earth that compose the biodiversity all put together is known as the biosphere. Biosphere contains all organisms and lives in and on the land, in and on the water and in the air on the planet earth.
The ecology can be seen in two major categories known as the population or the community ecology and the ecosystem ecology study. The community or population ecology looks at the population of organism in a particular community in its distribution and amount that are there in its abundance. The ecology ecosystems look at it in the flow of its material and energy. The fluxes of its energy and material are the biomass presence in each feeding or trophic level as given in the food pyramid.
This physically represents the physical presence of the enthalpy and the disorientation of energy that is not considered in its entropy.
The ecology study looks an ever-changing interaction of the study of organisms that attain the present status over time considering biotic and abiotic factors that affect them.
The biodiversity seen in the ecosystems and the biomes cannot be singled out to determine any final study. Hence, the biodiversity is all an interacting flux of the entire life forms seen on the biosphere to reflect the diversity seen in those life forms known as biodiversity.
My Prayer for PNG today is: “Misunderstood, the Saviour of sinners. Hung on the cross. He was Gods only Son. Oh hear Him call His Father in Heav’n. Not My will, but Thine be done…”
Next week: Living things and microscopes

• Michael Uglo is a science textbook author and a lecturer in Avionics, Auto-piloting and Aircraft Engineering. Please email comments to: [email protected]