Author: Herbert Osborn

Publisher:

Published: 2016-06-26

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 9781332940707

Excerpt from Annals of the Entomological Society of America, Vol. 8: 1915 At this point I shall have to appeal to your courteous patience for permission to present a few elementary definitions, a rehearsal of which seems to me necessary to avoid possible ambiguity, uncertainty, or misunderstanding; especially so as the animal ecologists themselves are not by any means in exact accord as to the scope, description, subdivision, and nomenclature of their subject. Let us agree, then, that, for the purposes of this discussion at any rate, the subject matter of ecology may be defined as the relation of organisms to their environment, and that this means the whole environment, organic and in organic, and any and all organisms, man included - man, in deed, as by far the most important living factor, from whatever point of View. And let us also understand that the relations meant are, first, relations of interaction - dynamic relations, of efficient cause, and effect produced upon the organism by its environment and upon the environment by the organism; second, space relations, of distribution, position, juxtaposition, and association - static relations, we may call these, since they Show the status of an individual or a group at a given time with reference to the various objects of its environment; and third, successional relations, time relations, sometimes called genetic because, in showing the static relations of a group in successive periods, they trace the genesis of the present status. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.