Ecology

Ecology was initially linked with Darwinian evolution. These ideas persist in evolutionary ecology, which explores the distribution and abundance of organisms and the control of their numbers, as in the interest in invasive species. Conservation biology is a following, overlapping discipline which focuses on the preservation of species incorporating genetic diversity. No feature of the earth is more striking than its enormous number of species. In ecological parlance number of species is called richness, number of species weighted by their proportionate abundance (number of individuals) is called diversity, and an amalgamation of all biological qualities is called biodiversity. In much ecological and common usage, however, biodiversity is simple number of species. Biodiversity has long charmed naturalists but in recent decades it has been considered a key ecological concept or paradigm and entered into environmental and political discourse as concerns grow about declining biodiversity. The emerging concern about loss of biodiversity has created urgency about its putative relation to stability and functioning of ecosystems.

Increasing recognition of the complexity of ecological systems called forth new mathematical considerations of fractals, chaos, and complexity. It led to the formation of a National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) on the West Coast of the United States. The NCEAS funds studies of large areas using meta-analysis of existing data and has had substantial impact on recent ecology.