AbstractsBiology & Animal Science

In its development from the unorganized data of Natural History, the youthful science of Ecology has evolved along two rather divergent lines. The first of these, called by Chapman, "Autecology·, deals with some single species of plant or animal 1n relation to its environment or to some restricted part of its environment. This approach has the obv1ous advantage of limiting the field and eliminating many complexities. Its disadvantages l1e in the fact that it tends to over emphasize some isolated part of what ought to be a broad and complexly interrelated structure. The other aspect of Ecology, called ·Synecology' by way of contrast, takes as its material some complete community of organisms, treating it as a whole composed of integrated units, the species present. Such an undertaking is extremely difficult due to the interplay of so many factors, both physical and biotic. It makes use of all of the available information of Autecology and adds to it a vast amount of other data peculiar to its broader outlook. It is this latter aspect of Ecology which must finally establish the major principles of the science. [...]