A term for the new science of ecology was proposed. Methods of social ecology

Definition of ecology as a science

Ecology (from ancient Greek οἶκος - abode, home, house, property and λόγος - concept, doctrine, science) is the science of the relationships of living organisms and their communities with each other and with the environment. The term was first proposed by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel in 1866 in his book “General Morphology of Organisms.”

Objectives: study the problems of survival of living organisms in the environment; Studying the basic patterns of interaction in the system: biosphere-society-technogenic environment and solving environmental problems. Ecological tasks vary depending on the level of organization of living matter being studied. Population ecology explores patterns of population dynamics and structure, as well as interaction processes (competition, predation) between populations of different species. To tasks community ecology (biocenology) includes the study of the patterns of organization of various communities, or biocenoses, their structure and functioning (the circulation of substances and the transformation of energy in food chains). The main theoretical and practical task of ecology is to reveal the general patterns of the organization of life and, on this basis, to develop principles for the rational use of natural resources in the conditions of the ever-increasing influence of man on the biosphere.

Objectives: 1. consider the general laws of interaction between liquids and o.s; 2. analysis of problems about anthropological interaction; 3.know the elements of skills; 4.legal basis of environmental protection.

Ecological methods are divided into field(study of the life of organisms and their communities in natural conditions, i.e. long-term observation in nature using various equipment) and experimental(experiments in stationary laboratories, where it is possible not only to vary, but also to strictly control the influence of any factors on living organisms according to a given program). At the same time, ecologists operate not only with biological, but also with modern physical and chemical methods, using modeling of biological phenomena, i.e. reproduction in artificial ecosystems various processes occurring in living nature. Through modeling, it is possible to study the behavior of any system in order to assess the possible consequences of applying various strategies and methods of resource management, i.e. for environmental forecasting.

Short story formation of environmental knowledge. Ecology is a relatively young science and is still in its infancy. This is due to the fact that it, to one degree or another, affects almost all spheres of life of living organisms (and their aggregates) and human activity.
The roots of ecology go deep into the ancient history; the entire history of the development of ecology can be divided into five stages.
Stage I - accumulation of environmental information about the interaction of plants and animals with the environment within the framework of botany and zoology. This stage lasted from ancient times until the end of the 18th century.
This stage of ecological development is the longest, and therefore it is divided into 3 periods.
1. The period of ancient Greek philosophers. During this period, accumulated environmental information was reflected in the works of ancient Greek philosophers.
2. The period of ancient Greek stagnation. During this period, the accumulation of environmental information did not occur, since the theological theory of the origin of life was dominant in science and species were considered unchanged, the influence of the environment was generally denied.
3. Renaissance period. During this era, great geographical discoveries served as an impetus for further development various sciences, including ecology.
Stage II – the formation of environmental directions within the framework of botanical and zoological geography. It lasted from the end of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th century. At this stage, the science of biogeography rapidly developed, which consisted of two sections: botanical geography and zoological geography, within the framework of which environmental information was analyzed and, on the basis of this, environmental directions were formed.
Stage III - the formation of plant ecology and animal ecology as sciences about the adaptation of organisms to their environment. This stage lasted from the mid-19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. It begins with the publication of I. Darwin’s book “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Breeds in the Struggle for Life” in 1859. At this time, E. Haeckel’s work “General Morphology of Organisms” was published.
Stage IV - the formation of ecology as a general biological science, which is the theoretical basis for nature conservation. It lasted from the beginning of the 20th century to the 60s. This stage is significant in that the pace of development of ecology has accelerated significantly and it has emerged as a general biological science. This was facilitated by the emergence and development of new scientific directions. In 1923-27 IN AND. Vernadsky created the doctrine of the biosphere as a global biological system of planet Earth.
Stage V - the development of global ecology with the emphasis within its framework of anthropoecology (human ecology). This stage began in the 60s of the 20th century and continues today. Ecology began to develop at such a powerful pace that it began to penetrate all spheres of human knowledge and human activity. Borderline sciences emerged: mathematical ecology, environmental biochemistry. Industrial ecology, agricultural ecology, medical ecology, economic ecology, social ecology, etc. have appeared.
The current stage of development of environmental science is characterized by the recognition that problems environment affect all countries of the world. Priority problems of a global nature have been identified, such as changes in the ozone layer of the atmosphere, increased accumulation of carbon dioxide, ocean pollution, which have no political boundaries, and the solution of which is possible only by combining the efforts of scientists from many countries.

Ecology sections

(A.) - a branch of ecology that studies the influence of environmental factors on individual organisms, populations and species (plants, animals, fungi, bacteria). A.'s task is to identify physiological, morphological and other adaptations of species to various environmental conditions: moisture regimes, high and low temperatures, soil salinity (for plants). In recent years, A. has had a new task - studying the mechanisms of organisms’ response to various options chemical and physical contamination (including radioactive contamination) of the environment.
The theoretical basis of A. is its laws.

The first law of A. is the law of optimum: for any environmental factor, any organism has certain limits of distribution (limits of tolerance). As a rule, in the center of a series of factor values, limited by tolerance limits, lies the area of the most favorable living conditions of the organism, under which the largest biomass and high population density are formed. On the contrary, at the boundaries of tolerance there are zones of oppression of organisms, when the density of their populations decreases and species become most vulnerable to the effects of unfavorable environmental factors, including human influence.
The second law of A. is the individuality of the ecology of species: each species is distributed differently for each environmental factor, the distribution curves of different species overlap, but their optimums differ. For this reason, when environmental conditions change in space (for example, from a dry hilltop to a wet ravine) or in time (when a lake dries up, when grazing increases, when rocks become overgrown), the composition of ecosystems changes gradually. The famous Russian ecologist L. G. Ramensky formulated this law figuratively:<Виды - это не рота солдат, марширующих в ногу>.
The third law of A. is the law of limiting (limiting) factors: the most important for the distribution of a species is the factor whose values are at a minimum or maximum. For example, in the steppe zone, the limiting factor for plant development is soil moisture (the value is at a minimum) or soil salinity (the value is at a maximum), and in the forest zone it is its supply of nutrients (the values are at a minimum).
A.'s laws are widely used in agricultural practice, for example, when choosing plant varieties and animal breeds that are most appropriate to grow or breed in a particular area.

Synecology is a branch of ecology that studies the relationships between organisms of various species within a community of organisms. Synecology is often considered as the science of the life of biocenoses, that is, multi-species communities of animals, plants and microorganisms.

Synecology, or the study of plant formations, is divided into the following sections: I. Physiognomic S. has the task of describing plant formations from the point of view of their composition and “physiognomy” (“life forms”). II. Geographical science studies the geographic distribution of formations across regions, across mountain belts, and across geological systems (formations, etc.), which constitute the substrate for vegetation. III. Ecological S. studies the living conditions of a given habitat; separate environmental groups, included in this formation; the origin of formations, the conditions for maintaining them in equilibrium and the changes undergone by formations. IV. Historical S. studies the floristic elements of individual formations and the history of their immigration.

Demecology (from the Greek demos - people) studies natural groups of individuals of the same species, i.e. populations are elementary supraorganismal macrosystems. Its most important task is to clarify the conditions under which populations are formed, as well as to study intrapopulation groups and their relationships, organization (structure), and dynamics of the number of populations

On the basis of these directions, new ones are being formed: global ecology, which studies the problems of the biosphere as a whole, and socioecology, which studies the problems of the relationship between nature and society. At the same time, the boundaries between directions and sections are quite blurry: directions arise at the junction of such branches of ecology as population ecology and biocenology, or physiological and population ecology. All these areas are closely related to the classical branches of biology: botany, zoology, physiology. At the same time, neglect of traditional naturalistic directions of ecology is rich in negative phenomena and gross methodological errors, which can lead to inhibition of the development of all other directions of ecology.

Thematic material

Ecology is usually considered a subfield of biology, the general science of living organisms. Living organisms can be studied at various levels, from individual atoms and molecules to populations, biocenoses and the biosphere as a whole. Ecology also studies the environment in which they live and its problems. Ecology is related to many other sciences precisely because it studies the organization of living organisms at a very high level and explores the connections between organisms and their environment. Ecology is closely related to such sciences as biology, chemistry, mathematics, geography, physics, epidemiology, and biogeochemistry.

Recently, interdisciplinary complex areas of research have been actively making themselves known. In particular, environmental ethics was formed at the intersection of ecology and classical ethics, and ethnoecology was formed at the intersection of the interests of ethnography, cultural studies and ecology.

In relation to the subjects of study, ecology is divided into the ecology of microorganisms (prokaryotes), fungi, plants, animals, humans, agricultural, industrial (engineering), and general ecology.
Based on environments and components, the ecology of land, fresh water bodies, and marine ecology is distinguished. Far North, high mountains, chemical (geochemical, biochemical). According to approaches to the subject, analytical and dynamic ecologies are distinguished.
From the point of view of the time factor, historical and evolutionary ecologies (including archaeology) are considered. In the system of human ecology, social ecology is distinguished (the relationship of social groups of society with their living environment), which differs from the ecology of the individual and the ecology of human populations at the functional-spatial level, equal to synecology, but having the peculiarity that communities of people, in connection with their environment, have a dominant social organization (social ecology is considered at levels from elementary social groups to humanity as a whole).

Currently, the problem of forming an ecological worldview is of particular importance. Gradually, an understanding of the role of environmental education as the basis of a new morality and support in solving numerous issues is emerging. practical life person. Man changes his environment. Nowadays, in the age of scientific and technological progress, when humans have unlimited opportunities to influence nature, ecology becomes especially important. Its achievements are successfully used in agriculture and hunting and fishing, medicine, veterinary medicine, in carrying out measures for nature conservation, and the rational use of its resources. The obvious role of ecology in the development of a number of theoretical problems, in particular those related to the general patterns of migration of matter and energy in the biosphere, to the mechanisms of the evolutionary process, to changes in the structure and organization of living matter. Today on the agenda is the problem of the formation of economic ecology, or ecological economics - the science of biological resources, the bioeconomy of the World Ocean and land. Engineering ecology (applied biogeocenology) is also developing successfully, addressing issues of eliminating the negative consequences of human intervention in natural communities. Current problems of relationships between man, society and nature in the era of scientific and technological progress are being developed by intensively developing social ecology (human ecology).
In the process of environmental management, certain, often contradictory relationships arise between citizens and industries. Therefore it is necessary legal support environmental management, subordination of industrial and economic, individual and social activities to legal norms - laws, rules, regulations. All this is the scope of environmental law. Before our eyes, ecology is becoming the theoretical basis for human behavior in an industrial society in nature.

Theory and practice have shown that the environmental component is an integral part of human development. From an environmental perspective, sustainable development must ensure the integrity of biological and physical natural systems. Sustainable development (English: sustainable development - supported development) is the development of society in which human living conditions are improved, and the impact on the environment remains within the economic capacity of the biosphere, so that the natural basis for the functioning of humanity is not destroyed. With sustainable development, needs are met without harm to future generations.

Of particular importance is the viability of ecosystems, on which the global stability of the entire biosphere depends. Moreover, the concept of “natural” systems and habitats can be understood broadly to include human-made environments such as cities. The focus is on preserving the self-healing abilities and dynamic adaptation of such systems to change, rather than maintaining them in some “ideal” static state. Degradation of natural resources, pollution and loss of biodiversity reduce the ability of ecological systems to heal themselves

The concept of sustainable development is based on three main principles:

1) Ensuring a balance between the economy and the environment, i.e. achieving such a degree of development when people in production or other economic activities stop destroying the environment.

2) Ensuring a balance between economic and social spheres taken in its human dimension, which means maximum use in the interests of the population of those resources that economic development provides.

Autecology

a branch of ecology that studies the influence of environmental factors on individual organisms, populations and species (plants, animals, fungi, bacteria). A.'s task is to identify physiological, morphological and other adaptations of species to various environmental conditions: moisture regimes, high and low temperatures, soil salinity (for plants). In recent years, A. has had a new task - studying the mechanisms of organisms' response to various types of chemical and physical pollution (including radioactive pollution) of the environment. The theoretical basis of A. is its laws.

The second law of A. is the individuality of the ecology of species: each species is distributed differently for each environmental factor, the distribution curves of different species overlap, but their optimums differ (Fig. 4). For this reason, when environmental conditions change in space (for example, from a dry hilltop to a wet ravine) or in time (when a lake dries up, when grazing increases, when rocks become overgrown, see Ecological succession), the composition of ecosystems changes gradually. The famous Russian ecologist L. G. Ramensky formulated this law figuratively: “Species are not a company of soldiers marching in step.”

The third law of A. is the law of limiting (limiting) factors: the most important for the distribution of a species is the factor whose values are at a minimum or maximum. For example, in the steppe zone, the limiting factor for plant development is soil moisture (the value is at a minimum) or soil salinity (the value is at a maximum), and in the forest zone it is its supply of nutrients (the values are at a minimum).

A.'s laws are widely used in agricultural practice, for example, when choosing plant varieties and animal breeds that are most appropriate to grow or breed in a particular area

Levels of organization of living systems (levels of organization of living matter) - structural organization of biosystems, reflecting their level hierarchy depending on the degree of complexity. There are six main structural levels of life: molecular, cellular, organismal, population-species, biogeocenotic and biosphere.

1. Molecular, the most ancient level of the structure of living nature, bordering on inanimate nature. The study of the chemical composition and structure of molecules of complex organic substances that make up the cell (proteins, nucleic acids, etc.). Identification of the role of nucleic acids in the storage of hereditary information, proteins - in the formation of cellular structures, in the life processes of the cell.

The cellular level of life, which includes the molecular level. The complex structure of the cell, the presence of a membrane, plasma membrane, nucleus, cytoplasm and other organelles; the various vital processes inherent in it: growth, development, division, metabolism. Similar structure and activity of cells of organisms of plants, animals, fungi and bacteria.

Organismal level, including molecular and cellular. The similarity of organisms from different kingdoms of living nature - their cellular structure, similar structure of cells and vital processes occurring in them. Differences between plants and animals in structure and feeding methods. The connection of organisms with their environment, their adaptability to it.

Population-species - a supra-organismal level of life, which includes the organismal level. Nutritional, territorial and family connections between individuals of a species, their connection with factors of inanimate nature. Confinement of ecological patterns and evolutionary processes to this level.

Biocenotic level of life, which is a community of individuals of different species in a certain territory, connected by various intraspecific and interspecific relationships, as well as factors of inanimate nature. Manifestation of ecological patterns and evolutionary processes at this level

6.Biosphere - the highest level of organization of life. The biosphere is the biological shell of the Earth, the totality of the entire living population. The circulation of substances and the transformation of energy in the biosphere is the basis of its integrity, the role of living organisms in it. Role solar energy in the storage of hereditary information, proteins - in the formation of cellular structures, in the life processes of the cell.

The organism and its living conditions. Organism (Late Lat. organismus from Late Latin organizo- arrange, impart a slender appearance, from ancient Greek. ὄργανον - tool) - a living body that has a set of properties that distinguish it from inanimate matter.

Habitat is a part of nature that surrounds living organisms and has a direct or indirect impact on them. From the environment, organisms receive everything they need for life and secrete metabolic products into it. The environment of each organism is composed of many elements of inorganic and organic nature and elements introduced by man and his production activities. Moreover, some elements may be partially or completely indifferent to the body, others are necessary, and others have a negative effect.

Anthropogenic (anthropogenic) factors are all forms of activity of human society that change nature as the habitat of living organisms or directly affect their lives. The separation of anthropogenic factors into a separate group is due to the fact that at present the fate vegetation cover Earth and everyone now existing species organisms are practically in the hands of human society. It is also possible to distinguish the following components of the habitat: natural bodies of the habitat, hydroenvironment, air space of the environment, anthropogenic bodies, radiation and gravitational fields of the environment.

An environmental factor is any, further indivisible, environmental condition that affects the organism, at least during one stage of ontogenesis. The environment includes all bodies and phenomena with which the organism is in direct or indirect relationships.

Environmental factors - temperature, humidity, wind, competitors, etc. - are characterized by significant variability in time and space. The degree of variability of each of these factors depends on the characteristics of the habitat. For example, temperatures vary greatly at the land surface but are nearly constant at the ocean floor or deep in caves.

The same environmental factor has different significance in the life of co-living organisms. For example, the salt regime of the soil plays a primary role in the mineral nutrition of plants, but is indifferent to most terrestrial animals. The intensity of illumination and the spectral composition of light are extremely important in the life of phototrophic plants, and in the life of heterotrophic organisms (fungi and aquatic animals), light does not have a noticeable effect on their life activity.

Environmental factors affect organisms in different ways. They can act as irritants that cause adaptive changes in physiological functions; as limiters that make it impossible for certain organisms to exist under given conditions; as modifiers that determine morphological and anatomical changes in organisms.

Types of anthropogenic factors

Chemical - the use of mineral fertilizers and pesticides, pollution of the Earth's shells with industrial and transport waste; smoking, drinking alcohol and drugs, excessive use of medications.

If in an environment that is a set of interacting factors, there is a factor whose value is less than a certain minimum or greater than a certain maximum, then the manifestation of the active life of the organism in this environment is impossible.

TEMPERATURE

Most species of plants and animals are adapted to a fairly narrow range of temperatures. Some organisms, especially in a state of rest or suspended animation, are able to withstand fairly low temperatures. Temperature fluctuations in water are usually less than on land, so the limits of temperature tolerance of aquatic organisms are worse than those of terrestrial organisms. The intensity of metabolism depends on temperature. Basically, organisms live at temperatures from 0 to +50 on the surface of sand in the desert and up to -70 in some areas of Eastern Siberia. The average temperature range is from +50 to –50 in terrestrial habitats and from +2 to +27 in the oceans. For example, microorganisms can withstand cooling down to –200, certain types of bacteria and algae can live and reproduce in hot springs at temperatures of + 80, +88.

LIGHT

Light provides all life processes occurring on Earth. For organisms, the wavelength of the perceived radiation, its duration and intensity of exposure are important. For example, in plants, a decrease in day length and light intensity leads to autumn leaf fall.

In relation to light, plants are divided into:

Photophilous - have small leaves, highly branched shoots, a lot of pigment - cereals. But increasing the light intensity beyond the optimum suppresses photosynthesis, so it is difficult to obtain good harvests in the tropics.

In addition to seasonal changes, there are also daily changes in lighting conditions; the change of day and night determines the daily rhythm of the physiological activity of organisms. An important adaptation that ensures the survival of an individual is a kind of “biological clock”, the ability to sense time.

HUMIDITY

Water is a necessary component of the cell, therefore its quantity in certain habitats is a limiting factor for plants and animals and determines the nature of the flora and fauna of a given area.

Excess moisture in the soil leads to waterlogging and the appearance of marsh vegetation. Depending on soil moisture (amount of precipitation), the species composition of vegetation changes. Broad-leaved forests give way to small-leaved, then forest-steppe vegetation. Next is low grass, and at 250 ml per year - desert. Precipitation may not fall evenly throughout the year; living organisms have to endure long-term droughts. For example, plants and animals of savannas, where the intensity of vegetation cover, as well as the intensive nutrition of ungulates, depends on the rainy season.

In nature, daily fluctuations in air humidity occur, which affect the activity of organisms. There is a close relationship between humidity and temperature. Temperature has a greater effect on the body when humidity is high or low. Plants and animals have developed adaptations to different humidity levels. For example, in plants, a powerful root system is developed, the leaf cuticle is thickened, the leaf blade is reduced or turned into needles and spines. In saxaul, photosynthesis occurs in the green part of the stem. Plant growth stops during drought. Cacti store moisture in the expanded part of the stem; needles instead of leaves reduce evaporation.

Animals have also developed adaptations that allow them to tolerate a lack of moisture. Small animals - rodents, snakes, turtles, arthropods - obtain moisture from food. The source of water can be a fat-like substance, for example in a camel. In hot weather, some animals - rodents, turtles - hibernate, which lasts for several months. By the beginning of summer, after a short flowering, ephemeral plants can shed their leaves, the above-ground parts die off, and thus experience a period of drought. At the same time, the bulbs and rhizomes are preserved until the next season.

In relation to water, plants are divided:

aquatic plants with high humidity;

semi-aquatic plants, terrestrial-aquatic;

land plants;

plants of dry and very dry places, live in places with insufficient moisture, can tolerate short-term drought;

Dry-loving animals.

Types of adaptations of organisms to fluctuations in temperature, humidity and light:

warm-bloodedness – maintaining a constant body temperature by the body;

hibernation - prolonged sleep of animals during the winter season;

anabiosis is a temporary state of the body in which life processes are slowed down to a minimum and all visible signs of life are absent (observed in cold-blooded animals and animals in winter and during hot periods);

frost resistance - the ability of organisms to tolerate negative temperatures;

state of rest - adaptive property perennial plant, which is characterized by the cessation of visible growth and vital activity, the death of ground shoots in herbaceous plant forms and the fall of leaves in woody forms;

summer dormancy is an adaptive property of early flowering plants (tulip, saffron) in tropical regions, deserts, and semi-deserts.

ENVIRONMENT CAPACITY - 1) the number of individuals or their communities whose needs can be satisfied by the resources of a given habitat without noticeable damage to its further well-being; 2) the ability of the natural environment to include (absorb) various (pollutants) substances while maintaining stability.

Loads on nature within the limits of its capabilities mean its ecological capacity, and loads beyond its capabilities (capacity) lead to a violation of the natural law of ecological balance. The Law "On Environmental Protection" is devoted to the establishment and compliance with maximum permissible standards of load on the environment, taking into account its potential (maximum permissible emissions and discharges, maximum permissible concentrations, maximum permissible levels). Non-compliance or violation of these norms leads to bringing the perpetrators to justice and possible limitation, suspension and termination of the activities of enterprises, production and other activities

15. Demecology (from ancient Greek δῆμος - people), population ecology- a section of general ecology that studies population dynamics, intrapopulation groups and their relationships. Within the framework of demecology, the conditions under which populations are formed are determined. Demecology describes fluctuations in the numbers of various species under the influence of environmental factors and establishes their causes; it considers an individual not in isolation, but as part of a group of similar individuals occupying a certain territory and belonging to the same species.

A population is a part of a species (individuals of the same species), occupying a relatively homogeneous space and capable of self-regulation and maintaining a certain number. Each species within the occupied territory is divided into populations.

Basic characteristics of populations:

Number - the total number of individuals in the allocated territory; 2.population density - the average number of individuals per unit of area or volume of space occupied by a population; 3.birth rate - the number of new individuals that appeared per unit of time as a result of reproduction; 4.mortality is an indicator reflecting the number of individuals who died in a population over a certain period of time; 6. growth rate - average increase per unit of time

16. A population is a part of a species (individuals of the same species), occupying a relatively homogeneous space and capable of self-regulation and maintaining a certain number. Each species within the occupied territory is distributed into populations.

Population size is the total number of individuals of the nth species present in a particular territory. For example, the population of the Usuri tiger numbers about 300 individuals, the Ladoga seal - about 10 thousand, the Asiatic lion - about 70 individuals, and the bison - about 2 thousand.

population density - the average number of individuals per unit of area or volume of space occupied by a population;

Biomass is the total mass of individuals of one species, groups of species or the community as a whole (plants, animals, microorganisms), which is per unit surface (volume) or location. accommodation (wet or dry). Biomass is expressed in kilograms per hectare, grams per square or cubic meter, or in joules (units of energy). Invertebrates and soil microorganisms have the greatest biomass on land among heterotrophs (the biomass of earthworms can reach 1000-1200 kg/ha); about 90% of the biomass of the biosphere accounts for the biomass of terrestrial plants, which, with the help. photosynthesis - a biosphere process - absorb free energy and ensure the existence of all living things.

(V.s.p.) - the ratio in a population of individuals of different ages. A rapidly growing population usually has a large proportion of juveniles, while a declining population usually has a large proportion of adults and aging individuals.
If the population grows according to an exponential law (in geometric progression), it establishes a constant age composition or, in other words, a stable age structure. V.s.p. is the most important characteristic of the human population.

09/24/2017 article

As you know, ecology is a fairly young science that emerged as a separate discipline at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Actually, it began to be considered a science only closer to the 60s of the 20th century, when the state of the environment caused serious concern among people. But the prehistory of ecology began much earlier: not everyone knows that perhaps the first ecologist on Earth was... Aristotle!

Aristotle's History of Animals - the world's first ecology textbook

Aristotle's treatise “History of Animals” was the first attempt to systematize representatives of the animal world in accordance with their structure, habitat, method of reproduction, etc. Nowadays, some of the names used by the philosopher seem childishly naive. For example, Aristotle divided animals into “blooded” (dog, horse) and bloodless (this includes insects). However, one should not underestimate the importance of this work, consisting of 10 books, for the development of modern science ecology. For centuries, from the Middle Ages to the 18th century, the History of Animals was used as the most important source of systematic information about animals and nature.

Authors of the Ancient World and the Topic of Ecology

Aristotle was not the only one among his contemporaries who was concerned about environmental issues. In particular, Hippocrates (460 - 356 BC), called the father of medicine, is the author of many works devoted to healing and human anatomy, as well as topics directly related to ecology.

Speaking about works devoted to the study of nature in those days, one cannot fail to mention Heraclitus, who is considered the founder of dialectics. Unfortunately, of all the works of Heraclitus, only the work “On Nature” has been partially preserved, and even then in the form of several tiny passages and quotes.

The collection of epic works "Mahabharata", which became one of the largest literary collections of Ancient India, contains information about the habits and characteristics of more than 50 animals, the description of which is given no less importance than texts on theological, legal and political topics.

Theophrastus of Eresia (371 - 280 BC), a student of Aristotle, continued the work of his teacher in exploring the natural world and devoted a lot of time to studying the varieties and forms of plants, as well as their dependence on living conditions. The result of many years of hard work was the books “History of Plants” and “Causes of Plants,” which made the philosopher “the father of botany” in the eyes of the whole world.

Medieval science ecology

Interest in ecology in the Middle Ages noticeably waned in comparison with the Ancient world. The attention of society, focused on theology, was simply not enough to study nature and its laws. All interest in nature was limited to the study of the healing properties of herbs, and what was happening around was considered to be the providence of God and accepted as inevitable.

However, there was also a manifestation of interest in the nature of nature in foreign, unexplored countries. In the 13th century, a significant role in the development of ecology was played by the travels of the fearless Marco Polo and his book, written under the impression of visiting distant lands unprecedented in those days - “The Book of the Diversity of the World”.

Significant changes in terms of interest in ecology occurred only in the 13th century.

Albert the Great (Albert von Bolstedt)

Albert of Cologne, elevated to the rank of saint in 1931, was a highly remarkable personality.

Born at the end of the 12th century, the future philosopher around 1212 became a student at the University of Padua, where he showed remarkable abilities in the natural sciences, which at that time were not particularly popular among young people.

Carefully studying the works of Aristotle, Albert became the author of several books, in which the main attention was paid to the basic principles of botany and the laws of plant life. It was he who first emphasized the relationship between plant reproduction and nutrition and the presence of “solar heat”, and paid special attention to the reasons for their winter “sleep”.

Vincent de Beauvais (1190 ―1264)

A Dominican monk who lived in France in the 13th century made his contribution to the development of ecology as a science in the form of a huge encyclopedia “The Great Mirror”, one of the parts of which is devoted to the natural sciences - astronomy, alchemy, biology - and is called “The Natural Mirror”.

As an example of works aimed at studying nature in the Middle Ages, one can also cite “The Teachings of Vladimir Monomakh,” which became widespread in the 11th century, and the work of the Dominican monk John of Siena, “On the Teachings and Similarities of Things,” written at the beginning of the 14th century.

However, it should be noted that the attitude towards nature in those days was exclusively consumer, and the main goal of research was to find ways to enrich and maximize the use of natural resources along with the application of minimal effort.

Ecological Science of the Renaissance

During this period, there is a turning point in all spheres of human life - from the emergence of economic relations to more high level to the rapid and diversified development of sciences.

The prerequisites for such metamorphoses were the political processes occurring in society in the 14th - early 17th centuries: the formation of bourgeois society forced its members to take a fresh look at nature and at man itself as its integral part.

The time has come to systematize the knowledge that has spontaneously accumulated over centuries and divide it into independent branches, without mixing together discoveries from the fields of physics, geography, chemistry and botany. The features of biology as a science began to clearly emerge in the public consciousness.

Of course, the sciences of those centuries were far from ecology in the modern sense of the word, but one cannot but agree that in comparison with the Middle Ages, it was a breakthrough...

Names that went down in the history of Renaissance ecology

If the development of ecology as a science in the Middle Ages was associated with the accumulation of knowledge, then it is quite natural that the main feature of the Renaissance period was the systematization and analysis of available data.

The first taxonomists were:

Andrea Caesalpin or Cesalpino (1519-1603), who opened the period of artificial systems in botany and systematized plants according to the structure of their seeds, flowers and fruits, based on the works of Aristotle;
John Ray (1623-1705), who created the scientific natural history society in England, author of the book “Catalogue de la flore de Cambridge” and other scientific works on botany;
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708) - member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, who created the original classification of plants based on the structure of the corolla of a flower.

You can name many more names, whose activities were united by one common idea: the condition and abundance of plants directly depends on their growing conditions, soil quality, weather conditions and other factors.

First environmental experiments

The first environmental experiment in human history became a kind of harbinger of the emergence of ecology as a science. Robert Boyle (1627-1691) - a famous English chemist - proved through experiment the influence of atmospheric pressure on animals.

Interestingly, experiments related to plants began to be carried out much earlier than with animals.

Ecology and travel

Travelers of the 17th-18th centuries also made a significant contribution to the development of ecology, paying attention to the way of life of animals in different countries ah, migrations and interspecific relationships, drawing parallels and making logical conclusions about the dependence of these facts on living conditions.

Among them is Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, a naturalist from the Netherlands. French biologist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, whose work became the basis for the teachings of Darwin and Lamarck.

Science and gossip

The path to the development of ecology cannot be called smooth and systematic - the medieval absurdities that existed in the world continued to be proclaimed as scientific axioms.

For example, the idea of the spontaneous origin of life on Earth, which dominated society, was completely defeated by the Italian biologist Francesco Redi at the end of the 17th century, but continued to exist until the 19th century.

Pundits firmly believed that birds and insects could be born from tree branches, and growing a homunculus (humanoid creature) in a flask was considered a very real task, although illegal. The creation of the mouse supposedly required human sweat, so the role was best material a dirty shirt was intended for such purposes.

The formation of ecology in Russia

Russian naturalists of the 18th century, like geographers, paid serious attention to the relationship between flora and fauna and climate. The most famous names scientists who devoted their works to this issue are I.I. Lepyokhin and S.P. Krashennikov, M. Lomonosov and S. Pallas.

Simon Pallas (1767 – 1810)

A real masterpiece was the work of Peter Simon Pallas, a German scientist who was in Russian service, entitled “Zoography”. The book contained detailed descriptions of 151 species of mammals and 425 species of birds, including their ecology and even the economic importance they represented to the country. Pallas is in it Special attention focuses on migrations and develops the idea of dispersing animals throughout Russia in order to increase populations. Thanks to this work, Pallas is deservedly considered the founder of zoogeography.

Mikhail Lomonosov (1711 – 1765)

The famous Russian scientist attached great importance the influence of the environment on living organisms and made attempts to find out the peculiarities of the existence of ancient mollusks and insects by studying their remains. His work “The Lay of the Earth” became one of the first treatises devoted to geological issues.

The Birth of Modern Ecology

If previously ecology as a science was at the inception stage, manifesting itself in related forms of botanical geography, zoogeography, etc., then the 19th century can rightfully be considered the century of the emergence of the science of ecology as a biological discipline.

The theory of natural selection, the idea of which belonged simultaneously to several scientists (C. Darwin, A. Wallace, E. Blythe, W. Wells, P. Matthew), as well as the works of the Danish botanist and first ecologist Johannes Eugenius Warming, became the basis of the new science.

At the end of the century (1896), the first book on the topic of ecology was published, where the environmental term was used in the title: “Ecological Geography of Plants.” The author of the book is J.E. Warming - created the concept of ecology and for the first time taught a course in ecology at the university, for which he acquired the well-deserved name of the founder of this science, which first existed in the form of a branch of biology

The author of the term “ecology” is Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, a naturalist and philosopher who lived in Germany at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. In addition to this name of the new science, Haeckel owned such terms as “pithecanthropus”, “ontogenesis” and “phylogeny”.

The original meaning of the term differed markedly from the modern understanding of the word. Haeckel saw ecology as “...the science of the relationships of organisms with the environment, where we include, in a broad sense, all conditions of existence” (E. Haeckel, “General Morphology of Organisms”). Thus, the scientist saw the purpose of ecology in the study of the relationships of individual species, which corresponds to the modern understanding of autecology.

The transformation of the meaning put into the term occurred gradually, as environmental issues arose before humanity.

Ecology became an independent science only in the first half of the 20th century, when humanity came close to the issue of the need to protect nature and the environment. Only by the middle of the century, the experience painstakingly accumulated over the centuries by humanity was brought together, like the smallest fragments of a complex mosaic, to give life to science, whose goal is to preserve the life of the entire planet.

Lecture 1. Ecology as a science.

Stages of development of ecology as a natural science discipline.

“Ecology” is the science of “home” (from the Greek “oikos” - dwelling, habitat).

The term “ecology” was proposed by the German zoologist E. Haeckel in 1866, but ecology as a science arose at the beginning of the twentieth century, and this word came into wide use in the 1960s, when they began to talk about the ecological crisis as a crisis in the relationship between man and his habitat.

General ecology is the science of the relationships of living beings among themselves and with the environment.

Ecology studies the organization and functioning of supraorganismal systems at various levels up to the global level, i.e. to the biosphere as a whole.

Ecology, rapidly developing in the twentieth century, went through several stages that have survived to this day as branches of ecology:

1. Autecology is the ecology of individual species, the subject of which is the study of nutrition, reproduction, migration, and habitats of individual species of animals and plants.

2. Population ecology (emerged in the 1930s at the intersection with genetics) studies the causes of changes in population sizes.

A population (from the Latin “populus” - people) is a group of organisms belonging to the same species and occupying a certain area called a range. Each species may consist of one or more populations, i.e. be a homogeneous or heterogeneous species.

3. Synecology, or community ecology, arose in the mid-twentieth century based on the synthesis of ecology with thermodynamics and a systems approach. Synecology introduced into use such ecological concepts as community (biocenosis), ecosystem (biogeocenosis), ecological niche and others.

A community, or biocenosis, is a collection of different species of plants and animals inhabiting a habitat area. The combination of community and environment is called an ecological system, or biogeocenosis.

The term ecosystem was introduced by the English ecologist A. Tansley in 1935.

In 1944 V.N. Sukachev proposed the term biogeocenosis, and V.I. Vernadsky had previously used the concept of “bio-inert body”.

The main significance of these concepts is that they emphasize the mandatory presence of relationships, interdependence and cause-and-effect relationships, in other words, the unification of components into a functional whole.

Social ecology as a science about the interaction of society with the natural environment.

Many new names of sciences have been proposed, the subject of which is the study of the relationship between man and the natural environment in their integrity.

Currently, we can speak more or less confidently about three directions:

1. Modern social ecology (R. Carson’s book “Silent Spring” (1961), dedicated to the negative environmental consequences of the use of DDT.

The subject of social ecology is interaction in the “society – nature” system and it is at the intersection with the humanities.

2. Monograph by M.I. Budyko “Global Ecology” (1977), which determined the beginning of a new direction with the same name.

It examines the global aspects of the environmental problem: climate, the amount of resources, global indicators of environmental pollution, the “greenhouse” effect, global circulation of chemical elements in their interaction, the influence of space on the Earth, the state of the ozone shield in the atmosphere, the functioning of the Earth as a whole, etc. P.

Research in this direction requires, of course, intensive international cooperation.

3. The subject of the third direction - human ecology - is the system of relations between man as an individual and the natural environment. She studies the medical and demographic aspects of the impact of altered nature on human health. Human ecology includes genetic-anatomical-physiological and medical-biological blocks that are absent in social ecology.

Problems of general ecology.

In the theoretical field, ecology tries to find general patterns of life organization by:

1) development of the theory of ecosystem sustainability;

2) studying the ecological mechanisms of adaptation to the environment;

3) studies of population regulation;

4) studying biological diversity and the mechanisms of its maintenance;

5) research of production processes;

6) modeling the state of ecosystems and global biosphere processes.

The main applied problems related to the impact of society on the natural environment are solved by social ecology:

1) forecasting and assessing possible negative consequences of human activity;

2) improvement of environmental quality;

3) conservation, reproduction and rational use of natural resources;

4) optimization of society’s activities to transform nature in various directions to ensure its sustainable development.

Anthropogenic factors.

Anthropogenic factors are caused by human activity. They are always (or almost always) unfavorable for ecosystems and are therefore called pollution:

1. ingredient pollution - the introduction of chemicals alien to communities;

2. parametric pollution – thermal and electromagnetic fields, noise, etc.;

3. biocenotic pollution - interference in communities, for example, the introduction of new species, overfishing, etc.;

4. stationary-destructive pollution - changing landscapes: mining, construction of cities, roads, etc.

Lecture 3. Functioning of ecosystems.

Food chain and types of nutrition.

In nature, there are two main types of nutrition - autotrophic and heterotrophic.

Autotrophs (plants and some types of bacteria) create the organic matter of their body from inorganic as a result of the processes of photosynthesis or chemosynthesis (less commonly).

Heterotrophs use foreign organic matter, which they obtain during feeding.

Thanks to a system of interactions (ecological factors), ecosystems acquire new properties, the main one of which is the ability to self-sustain, which is achieved through the circulation of substances and the flow of energy in food (trophic) chains.

The food chain includes producers, photosynthetic plants and bacteria capable of creating organic matter from inorganic matter using the energy of the Sun; consumers - consumers of organic matter created by producers; decomposers - decomposers of dead organic matter.

There are two types of food chains – grazing and detritus.

The pasture food chain begins with producers and ends with high-order consumers.

The detrital chain begins with dead organic matter (detritus), transforms through first-order detritivores (bacteria) to second-order detritivores (worms, insect larvae, etc.), and then passes to consumers, where it forms a single system with the pasture chain.

Ecological pyramids.

Food chains can be written in another form - as pyramids.

The ecological pyramid, which is a trophic structure, the base of which is the level of producers, and subsequent levels form the floors and the top of the pyramid, can be of three main types:

1) a pyramid of numbers reflecting the number of individual organisms;

2) biomass pyramid, characterizing the total dry weight, calorie content or other measure of the total amount of living matter;

3) an energy pyramid showing the magnitude of energy flow and (or) “productivity” at successive trophic levels.”

If the pyramids of numbers and biomass can be inverted (the next level is wider than the previous one), then the energy pyramid always narrows upward, since energy is lost at each subsequent level.

Ecosystem productivity.

The most important characteristic An ecosystem is its productivity, which refers to both the growth of organisms and the creation of organic matter. From 1 to 2% of solar energy absorbed by plants is converted into a product of photosynthesis.

Among the products produced during the process of photosynthesis, primary productivity is distinguished, which is defined as the rate at which radiant energy is absorbed by producing organisms, mainly green plants.

It is divided into gross primary production (GPP), including the organic matter that was spent on respiration, and net primary production (NPP), minus that used during plant respiration (40-70%).

Net productivity of a community is the rate of accumulation of organic matter not consumed by heterotrophs. The rate of energy accumulation at the level of consumers is called secondary productivity. In accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, the flow of energy decreases with each step, since when one form of energy is converted into another, part of the energy is lost in the form of heat.

In stable communities, virtually all production is spent in food chains, and the biomass of the community remains constant.

The efficiency of natural systems is much lower than the efficiency of electric motors and other engines. In living systems, a lot of “fuel” is spent on “repairs” (which, by the way, is not taken into account when calculating the efficiency of engines).

Any increase in the efficiency of biological systems results in an increase in the costs of their maintenance. An ecological system is a machine from which you cannot “squeeze” more than it is capable of delivering. There always comes a limit, after which the gains from increased efficiency are negated by rising costs and the risk of system destruction.

Law of succession.

Over time scales, ecosystems do not remain unchanged, they change according to certain laws and these changes are called succession.

Succession is a sequential change of communities that successively arises in the same territory (biotope) under the influence of internal causes.

Succession occurs as a result of changes in the physical environment under the influence of the community, i.e. controlled by him.

Replacement of species in ecosystems is caused by the fact that populations, seeking to modify the environment, create conditions favorable to other populations; this continues until an equilibrium is reached between the biotic and abiotic components. Such an equilibrium community is called mature, or climax.

Succession in the energetic sense is associated with a fundamental shift in the flow of energy towards an increase in the amount of energy aimed at maintaining the system.

Succession consists of the stages of growth, stabilization and climax. They can be distinguished based on the productivity criterion: at the first stage, production grows to a maximum, at the second it remains constant, at the third it decreases to zero as the system degrades.

The ecosystem strategy is “greatest protection”, the human strategy is “maximum production”.

Natural succession, which was discussed at the beginning of this lecture, is primary succession. It occurs on a primarily free substrate.

Secondary (anthropogenic) succession is a consequence of human activity and occurs faster than primary succession. It occurs in clearings and after fires in forests, during reclamation in mining sites, on pastures during overgrazing, in recreational areas, and also as blooms in fresh water bodies due to excess runoff of fertilizers from fields.

Successions are of different scales and hierarchical: they occur not only over vast areas of land, but on tree trunks and stumps, not only in oceans, but in puddles and ponds.

Coevolution in ecosystems.

Coevolution, or “coupled evolution,” is a type of community evolution (i.e., evolutionary interactions between organisms in which the exchange of genetic information between components is minimal or absent), consisting of mutual selective influences on each other of two large groups of organisms that are in close ecological interdependence."

Y. Odum emphasizes two important principles underlying coevolution:

1) during the development of ecosystems, there is a tendency to reduce the role of negative interactions (competition and exploitation) at the expense of positive ones that increase the survival of interacting species;

2) in recently formed or new associations, the likelihood of strong negative interactions occurring is greater than in old associations.

Socio-natural ecosystems.

There are two main types of socio-natural systems created by man - agricultural systems and urban systems.

From an ecological point of view, the main difference from natural ecosystems is that the agricultural system needs constant management, and the urban system is anomalous, since it completely depends on the supply of matter and energy from the surrounding ecosystems.

Lecture 7. The concept of the biosphere.

Section 2. Social ecology. Contents and causes of global problems of our time.

Methods of social ecology.

Since social ecology is a transitional science between the natural sciences and the humanities, in its methodology it must use the methods of both the natural and human sciences, as well as those methodologies that represent the unity of the natural science and humanitarian approaches. As for general scientific methods, familiarization with the history of social ecology shows that initially the observation method (monitoring) was primarily used, later the modeling method came to the fore. Modeling is a way of long-term and comprehensive vision of the world. In its modern understanding, this is a universal procedure for comprehending and transforming the world. There is no one “rigid” world model. The model, once it emerges, is constantly criticized and updated with data as it can be better understood. The value of the model is determined only by the point on each of the graphs that corresponds to the cessation of growth and the beginning of the catastrophe.

Laws of social ecology.

The concept of law is interpreted by most methodologists in the sense of an unambiguous cause-and-effect relationship. Cybernetics gives a broader interpretation of the concept of law as a limitation on diversity, and it is more suitable for social ecology, which reveals the fundamental limitations of human activity.

The adaptive capabilities of the biosphere, which make it possible to compensate for violations of environmental patterns before reaching a certain threshold, make environmental imperatives necessary.

The main one can be formulated as follows: the transformation of nature must correspond to its adaptive capabilities. Most laws of social ecology are of the type limiting diversity, i.e. impose restrictions on human nature-transforming activities.

They are:

1. The rule of historical growth of production due to successional rejuvenation of ecosystems, this rule follows from the basic law of ecology, but now it ceases to work, since man has taken everything he could from nature.

2. The boomerang law: everything that is extracted from the biosphere by human labor must be returned to it.

3. The law of the irreplaceability of the biosphere: the biosphere cannot be replaced by an artificial environment, just as, say, new types of life cannot be created.

4. Law of diminishing natural fertility;

5. The law of “shagreen skin”: the global initial natural resource potential is continuously depleted in the course of historical development. This follows from the fact that there are no fundamentally new resources that could appear at the present time.

6. The principle of incomplete information: information when carrying out actions for transformation and, in general, any change in nature is always insufficient for an a priori judgment about all possible results of such actions, especially in the long term, when all natural chain reactions develop.

7. The principle of deceptive well-being: the first successes in achieving the goal for which the project was conceived create an atmosphere of complacency and make you forget about possible negative consequences that no one expects.

8. The principle of remoteness of an event: descendants will come up with something to prevent possible negative consequences.

Laws formulated as environmental imperatives were proposed by the American ecologist B. Commoner: “Everything is connected to everything”, “Everything must go somewhere”, “You must pay for everything”, “Nature knows best”

Energy problem.

Energy resources differ from other resources of the Earth in that they are consumed irrevocably.

The energy problem is currently seen as consisting of three problems: depletion of energy resources, creation of conservation technologies and alternative energy.

The estimated total oil reserves on Earth are 1,800 gigabarrels, humanity has consumed a little more than half of the reserve, and by 2023 it will consume 80%.

Increasing the efficiency of energy use in industry and housing and communal services is a top priority in our country.

Alternative energy is gradually gaining positions in the structure of energy consumption: wind energy has become widespread; solar energy.

Acid rain problem.

Determination of sediment pH in the mid-19th century. gave an unexpected result - the medium of raindrops turned out to be slightly acidic, not neutral. Later an explanation was found: some gases, combining with water in the upper layers of the atmosphere, form acids.

The reason for the sharp increase in sulfur dioxide concentrations is the burning of energy resources.

The negative effects of acid rain are manifold: soil acidification; damage to tissue and foliage leading to disease; acidification of water bodies.

Global modeling.

The first attempts to create global models of the future development of mankind were carried out by J. Forrester and D. Meadows’ group based on the system dynamics method developed by Forrester, which allows one to study the behavior of a complex structure of interrelated variables. The world models consisted of five sectors (levels): population, industrial production, agricultural production, natural resources, and the state of the natural environment.

Computer modeling carried out at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) showed that in the absence of socio-political changes in the world and the continuation of its technical and economic trends, the rapid depletion of natural resources will cause a slowdown in the growth of industry and agriculture around 2030 and, as a result, a sharp decline population size. If we assume that the achievements of science and technology will provide the possibility of obtaining an unlimited amount of resources, disaster comes from excessive environmental pollution. Assuming that society can solve the problem of nature conservation, population and output growth will continue until the reserves of arable land are exhausted, and then, as in all previous options, collapse occurs. A catastrophe is inevitable, because all five trends dangerous to humanity are growing exponentially, and trouble can creep up unnoticed and become actual when it is too late to do anything.

Based on their results, the modelers considered it necessary to create a global equilibrium and made the following recommendations in the last chapter of their book “The Limits to Growth” to prevent the impending danger:

1) stabilize the planet’s population;

2) preserve industrial and agricultural production at the modern level (1970s);

3) 10% of profits from oil production should be spent on research in the field of alternative technologies.

Global equilibrium, according to Meadows and his colleagues, will not mean stagnation, because human activity that does not require a large expenditure of non-renewable resources and does not lead to degradation of the natural environment can develop without limit.

The concept of “limits to growth” has positive meaning in socio-political terms, since it is aimed at criticizing the fundamental principle of capitalism - orientation towards the unbridled growth of material production and consumption.

We can talk about limits to growth in certain directions, but not about absolute limits. The task is to anticipate the dangers of growth in any direction and choose ways of flexible reorientation of development. Methodologically, the high level of averaging of variables characterizing the processes occurring in the world was criticized.

The authors of The Limits to Growth acknowledge that the volume of human knowledge, like the world's population and economy, may be growing exponentially, but this does not, in their opinion, mean that the technological application of knowledge is also growing exponentially.

Models of the world do not provide the possibility of purposeful influence on the socio-economic system in the event of its development in an undesirable direction: the behavior of society is programmed as unchanged. Lack of social feedback in the model did not allow us to represent it defense mechanisms preventing a catastrophe. A critical analysis of the Forrester and Meadows models revealed positive and negative sides their work, which in general should be assessed as a negative modeling that showed what threatens humanity if some negative trends in technical and economic development persist and develop in the absence of fundamental scientific, technical and sociocultural changes in the world.

However, Forrester and Meadows lack what can be called the most important methodological principle of positive modeling - the constructive transformative aspect. It was also not taken into account that the model should be constructed in such a way that it takes into account not only the probability of a given development of events (more precisely, the possibility of implementing several options with varying degrees of probability), but also, so to speak, the desirability of a given reconstruction of the natural environment.

Despite serious criticism of world models, attempts at global modeling continued. M. Mesarovic and E. Pestel, based on the methodology of “hierarchical systems,” built a regionalized model in which the world is divided into 10 regions. Each of these regions, in turn, is divided into interacting hierarchical spheres or strata: environmental; technological; demo-economic; socio-political; individual.

The results of their modeling showed that we can expect not one global, but several regional disasters. Mesarovic and Pestel note that the main cause of environmental dangers is the desire for quantitative exponential growth without qualitative transformations of the economic system. The authors believe that the world system should be considered as a single whole, in which all processes are so interconnected that the industrial growth of any regions without taking into account changes in other regions can lead the world economic system out of a stable state.

The global models of Mesarovich and Pestel showed that the threat of environmental catastrophe is pushed aside with the organic balanced growth of the entire world system. The most acceptable were model options for interaction between regions, in which the action developed according to cooperation scenarios.

Mesarovic and Pestel contrasted the concept of “limits to growth” with the concept of “organic growth”, believing that environmental difficulties can be overcome without abandoning the growth of the world economic system if growth is balanced and organic, like, say, the growth of a tree. These concepts are not diametrically opposed. There are limits to growth, but its possibilities increase if it is balanced, and this requires qualitative changes.

Global models such as the organic growth model, being largely positive, led to the formation of the concept of sustainable development, which was formulated at the UN Environment Conference held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

Population health.

What and how much can be removed from the biosphere, and what cannot, is determined using modeling. Withdrawal of the maximum quantity leads not only to the depletion of the resource, but also to a deterioration in the quality of the product.

The concept of health was formulated back in antiquity: “This is a state of mental and physical well-being that gives a person the opportunity to endure any hardships of life steadfastly and without losing composure” (Pericles, 5th century BC).

Population or public health, which is characterized by such indicators as average duration life, natural increase, infant mortality, etc.

Their impact has changed in the history of human relations with the natural environment. For a Paleolithic man, the main causes of death were injuries received during hunting and in skirmishes with other people, and in second place was hunger, and his average life expectancy did not exceed 26 years. Lack of food limited the number of people living together. During the Neolithic period there was a transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and a sedentary lifestyle. A sedentary lifestyle contributed to the emergence of permanent settlements - villages, places of the most intense human impact on the environment and interaction between people. Food no longer limited the population and disease became the main regulating factor. The accumulation of a relatively large number of people in limited areas created conditions for the spread of various infectious diseases among them.

Health hygiene.

Sanitary examination of the quality of food products, water and household items. The modern branch of hygiene - valeology - “is the theory and practice of forming, preserving and strengthening the health of an individual using medical and paramedical technologies.”

The biosphere is a stable ecological system that has existed on Earth for about 4 billion years, but over the last hundred years, human impact on the biosphere has been increasing at a tremendous pace. Almost all anthropogenic impacts negatively affect nature, with the exception of those that contribute to the restoration of destroyed ecosystems.

The total anthropogenic activity can thus be called pollution of nature. Pollution is an unfavorable change in the environment that is the result of human activity and changes the distribution of incoming energy, radiation levels, physical and chemical properties of the environment and the conditions of existence of living beings.

Hydrosphere pollution.

The existence of the biosphere and the life of mankind has always been based on the use of water. Modern pollution of the hydrosphere consists of two components - pollution itself and depletion of fresh water. The main water pollutants are chemical, biological and physical pollutants.

Up to a certain limit, marine ecosystems can resist the harmful effects of toxic substances, using the accumulative, oxidative and mineralizing functions of aquatic organisms, but then the threshold is exceeded and poisoning of the environment begins.

Water depletion refers to their unacceptable reduction (groundwater) or decrease in flow (surface water). In almost all large cities, so-called depression funnels are formed - voids (up to 100 m deep) caused by intensive use of powerful water intakes, which threatens the city with soil subsidence. The withdrawal of large amounts of surface water for economic needs leads to regional crises. The dried bottom became a source of dust storms and salinization of the surrounding areas.

Lithosphere pollution.

Technogenic pollution affects such components of the lithosphere as soil, rocks and subsoil. Soil is the main link in the cycle of substances in ecosystems: here energy is released and nutrients accumulate.

Main soil problems:

1) erosion: destruction or removal of top layers of soil by wind (wind) or water (water) flows;

2) pollution with pesticides, mineral fertilizers, petroleum products, etc.;

3) soil salinization as a result of excessive watering;

4) desertification - an irreversible change in the soil, vegetation and all biota that occurs as a result of continuous soil erosion;

The subsoil is not only a source of resources and a waste disposal site, but also part of the habitat of humans and other living beings. Mining has a harmful effect on almost all components of terrestrial ecosystems.

Air pollution.

Population regulation.

Environmentally sound management of natural resources requires a comprehensive combination of work in five main areas:

1) greening technologies (environmentally friendly, waste-free);

2) development of an economic mechanism for environmental protection;

3) administrative and legal impact;

4) environmental education;

Environmental monitoring.

There are also comprehensive standards for environmental quality that do not lead to disruption of the stability of ecosystems; one of the main ones is the standards for permissible anthropogenic load (NDAN), which can be calculated both for a certain territory and for a specific industrial facility.

Protection of the hydrosphere.

Protection of the lithosphere.

To combat erosion, a set of measures is used: strip farming, soil-protective crop rotations, afforestation of ravines, etc. To prevent pollution by pesticides, environmental methods of plant protection are used; particularly persistent pesticides are not used.

At the end of the twentieth century. the concepts of resource-renewing technologies (RRT) emerged, practical solution which led to the creation of multi-industry plants capable of processing all types of anthropogenic waste.

Atmospheric protection.

Measures to protect the air basin are as follows:

1) greening of technological processes and reduction of emissions (continuous technological processes, preliminary purification of raw materials from impurities);

2) purification of gas emissions;

3) dispersion of gas emissions (due to high chimneys);

Biodiversity levels.

Biodiversity has three components:

1) genetic diversity of individuals;

2) species diversity;

At the ecosystem level - disruption of energy flows (as a result of changes and simplification of trophic chains), changes in biogeochemical cycles, reduction in the number of species, decreased stability of ecosystems, death.

Ecological consciousness.

Philosophy of the 20th century. represented, first of all, by existentialism, she called for abandoning the aggressiveness inherent in the new European culture and came to understand the critical importance of the natural environment for the existence and development of humanity.

One of the founders of the ecological worldview can be called A. Schweitzer with his concept of “reverence for life.” We can also talk about environmental philosophy itself as a direction of research with the concept of “deep ecology” characterizing it. The terms ecosophy, noosophy, vitosophy, etc. are proposed; Based on philosophical grounds, environmental philosophers are trying to formulate certain “rules of life” as a set of environmental commandments.

Historically, the first branch of spiritual culture was invisible culture - mysticism. The danger of an environmental catastrophe, which has become actualized in the modern environmental situation, has contributed to the revival of mystical views. The very appearance of mythology was explained by the desire of man, at least in an ideal form, to return to the original unity with nature, thus, mythology is essentially environmentally friendly. Likewise, all ancient religions are based on the deification of natural phenomena.

Ecological science and the technology based on it can be understood in two senses: firstly, in terms of the priority given to the study of the patterns of interaction between man and nature, and, Secondly, in terms of restructuring all science and technology as a knowledge system.

Greening of upbringing and education, according to N.F. Reimers, is achieved by creating a complex of environmental and environmental education. The main postulates of the ecological worldview are as follows:

- every life is valuable in itself, unique and inimitable, a person is responsible for all living things;

- nature has always been and will be stronger than man;

- the biosphere remains stable as long as it is diverse;

If everything is left as it is, “the Earth will respond to stupefied humanity with an irresistible blow of destruction” (Reimers);

- the choice to “have” or “be” is the reality of our time.

Sustainable development is the development of humanity that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

It includes two main concepts:

The concept of needs, in particular the subsistence needs of the poorest sections of the population, which should be given the highest priority;

Planet Earth is a small blue pearl, lost in the endless cold worlds of outer space and which has become home to billions of living beings. Literally the entire space of our world is permeated with life: water, land, air.

And all this diversity of living forms, starting with the simplest microorganisms and ending with the pinnacle of evolution - Homo sapiens - can have the most direct impact on the life of the planet. Ecology is a science that studies the interaction of all living organisms inhabiting the Earth, as well as their numerous communities, both among themselves and with their environment.

A little history

Many modern people do not know that ecology began to develop as a separate branch of science only in the middle of the 20th century. Until this time, it was only a part of biology. And the founder of ecology was an ardent adherent and supporter of Darwin's theory, a talented naturalist and biologist - the German E. Haeckel.

The formation of ecology as a separate science was influenced by: on the one hand, the strengthening of scientific and technological progress in the 20th century, and on the other, fast growth population of our planet. The development of technology and industry has led to a manifold increase in the consumption of natural resources, which, in turn, has had a detrimental effect on the environment.

While the number of people was rapidly increasing, the number of other living beings began to steadily decrease. NTP allowed people to make their stay on the planet as comfortable as possible, but at the same time it served as a disastrous factor for nature. There is an urgent need for operational study and research of the habitat. The connection between ecology and other sciences has become inevitable.

Fundamentals of ecology science

The fundamentals of ecology include the study of the interaction with the environment of objects organized at the species, biosphere, organismal and biocentric levels. Thus, we can distinguish several main sections that general ecology includes:

Autecology, or the ecology of organisms, is a section that deals with the study of individual connections with the environment of both each individual species and organisms included in the general species group.
Demecology, or ecology of populations. The objectives of this section are to study the natural mechanisms responsible for regulating the number of different living organisms, their optimal density, as well as identifying acceptable limits for the removal of various species and populations.
Synecology, or community ecology, studies in detail the interaction of ecosystems and populations with the natural environment, as well as the mechanisms and structure of biogeocenoses.

Methods of environmental research

uses a variety of methods to conduct research. However, all of them can be divided into two categories: field methods and laboratory methods.

From the names themselves, you can understand that all field research work is carried out directly in the natural environment. They, in turn, can be divided into:

Stationary. These studies include both long-term observation of natural objects and measurements, detailed descriptions, as well as an instrumental report.
Route. Direct observations of the object are carried out, its condition is assessed, measurements and descriptions are made, maps and diagrams are drawn up.
Descriptive - during initial acquaintance with the object of research.
Experimental. The main thing here is experience and experiment, various chemical analyzes, quantitative assessment, etc.

Laboratory methods are based on conducting research in laboratory conditions. Since ecology is a science that studies the combination of a huge number of factors, a special place in the practical study of biological objects is given to the modeling method.

Living environment of living organisms

In order to more accurately understand how certain environmental factors influence different living species, it is necessary to first understand the relationship between the habitat and the life of various objects. The diverse natural conditions that occur on our Earth - water, land-air, soil, organisms - provide a living environment for a wide variety of plant and animal species. It is from the environment that all living things receive the substances necessary for life. And the metabolic products of living organisms return there.

Thus, it was the difference in living conditions in different environments that made it possible for different organisms to develop a set of specific physiological, morphological, behavioral and other various properties that help them adapt as much as possible to difficult living conditions.

Environmental factors

The fundamentals of ecology as a science attach great importance to individual environmental factors. The latter should be understood as any elements or environmental conditions that force certain organisms to adapt to them and adapt. There are only three groups of environmental factors:

biotic;
abiotic;
anthropogenic.

Biotic factors include various properties of living nature. They are capable of causing adaptive reactions in both plants (phytogenic), animals (zoogenic) and fungi (mycogenic).

Abiotic, on the contrary, are components of inanimate nature: geological (glacial movements, volcanic activity, radiation, etc.), climatic (temperature, light, wind, humidity, pressure, etc.), soil (structure, density and composition of the soil) , as well as hydrological factors (water, pressure, salinity, current).

Anthropogenic environmental factors relate to human activity. It must be said that it is man who causes very serious shifts in biogeocenoses. Moreover, for some species this becomes favorable, but for others it does not.

Environmental problems of our time

Today's problems are mainly related to the anthropogenic impact on nature. The global environment heralds the following serious dangers: depletion of the ozone layer, Greenhouse effect, pollution of the environment and the problem of disposal of human waste, soil degradation and erosion, desertification, widespread extinction of animals, climate change, general weakening of human immunity, depletion of resources (water, gas, oil, other natural resources), photochemical smog and other fatal changes.

All this is largely provoked by the active intervention of people in natural processes, as well as the unreasonable implementation of recreational, military, economic and other plans that change the natural habitat.

Environmental pollution

Ecology is a science that studies, among other things, (the biosphere). In this case, pollution is understood as the active entry into the biosphere of energy or substances, the quantity, location or properties of which can negatively affect the habitat of various living species.

Industrial development and global urbanization lead to pollution of the surrounding space not only with solid, liquid and gaseous substances and microorganisms, but also with various energies (sounds, noise, radiation), which adversely affect various ecosystems of the planet.

There are two types of biosphere pollution, differing in origin: natural (natural) - occurs without the participation of people, and anthropogenic. The latter is much more dangerous, since man has not yet learned to restore his habitat.

Nowadays, pollution is occurring at a monstrous pace and concerns atmospheric air, underground and surface water sources, and soil. Humanity has polluted even near-Earth space. All this does not add optimism to people and can provoke a worldwide The rapid development of ecology as a science gives humanity a chance to avoid the threat.

Soil pollution

As a result of careless, unreasonable human activity, the soil around large cities and territories where large industrial metallurgical enterprises, thermal power plants, and mechanical engineering enterprises are located has become contaminated over vast distances.

Heavy metals, petroleum products, sulfur and lead compounds together with household waste - this is what the modern habitat of a civilized person is saturated with. Any ecology institute will confirm that, along with the above substances, the soil contains in abundance various carcinogenic substances that have the ability to cause terrible diseases in people.

The land that feeds us is not only subject to erosion and pollution by harmful chemical elements, but also becomes swamped, salinized, and taken away for the construction of various structures. And if the natural destruction of the surface fertile layer can occur very slowly, then erosion caused by anthropogenic activity is striking in its accelerated pace.

Agriculture with abundant use of pesticides is becoming a real scourge for humanity. The greatest danger in this case is stable connections chlorine, which can remain in the soil for many years and accumulate in it.

Air pollution

The next major environmental threat is air pollution. Again, it can also be caused by natural factors, for example, volcanic activity, flowering plants, smoke from burning forests or wind erosion. But anthropogenic impact causes much more harm to the atmosphere.

Anthropogenic or technogenic air pollution occurs due to the release of large amounts of certain harmful substances into the atmosphere. The chemical industry causes particular harm in this regard. Thanks to it, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen sulfide, hydrocarbons, halogens and other substances are released into the air. By entering into chemical reactions with each other, they are capable of forming very dangerous, highly toxic compounds.

The situation is aggravated by car exhaust. In most large cities, photochemical smog has become common in calm weather.

Pollution of the planet's water supplies

Life on the planet is impossible without water, but in our time, environmental studies have forced scientists to come to the bitter conclusion: anthropological activities have a detrimental effect on the Earth's hydrosphere. Natural reserves of fresh water are declining, and even the vast World Ocean is today undergoing global changes in its ecosystem, and therefore many marine inhabitants are doomed to extinction.

Particularly alarming is the fact that not only surface waters are polluted, but also underground waters, the condition of which is affected not only by waste industrial enterprises, but also numerous city landfills, sewage drains, waste from livestock complexes, fertilizer and chemical storage facilities. On top of everything else, civilization cannot do without major accidents. Emergency discharges of waste into water bodies are not such a rare occurrence.

Relationship between ecology and other sciences

First of all, ecology is a science that studies environmental problems, and it alone cannot correct the current situation. Now that it has become clear how alarming the situation is in different ecosystems, it becomes even clearer how important the connection between ecology and other sciences is. Without close interaction with medicine, biology, chemistry, physics and some other scientific fields, it will simply be impossible to actively solve environmental problems.

Scientists will have to make joint efforts to try to minimize the harm that humans cause to nature. Scientists from different countries are urgently looking for safe energy sources. In some countries, the share of vehicles powered by electricity has already increased significantly. Much depends on the efforts of chemists; in the new century they will have to radically solve the problem of minimizing the harm of industrial waste. In the decision common problems All areas of ecology must be involved.

Environmental situation in Russia

Unfortunately, Russia's ecology is far from being in the best condition. According to authoritative ecologists, our country is one of the three states that most actively pollute the planet’s ecosystem. In addition to Russia, the shameful list also includes China and the United States.

The situation is further aggravated by the fact that while the most developed European countries spend annually up to 6% of their budget on environmental protection measures; in Russia these costs do not even reach 1%. The authorities stubbornly refuse to respond to attempts by environmentalists to draw their attention to the deplorable state of affairs in this area.

Meanwhile, the ecology of Russia is causing concern to the entire world community, since the territories it occupies are truly huge, there are a lot of industrial enterprises, waste is not processed or disposed of properly, and against the backdrop of the economic crisis, all this looks simply threatening.

The influence of ecology on human health

It has already been said above how harmful environmental factors adversely affect human health. First of all, this, of course, concerns children, because this is our future. But what will this future be like if a little person from the cradle has to breathe polluted air, eat foods that contain harmful chemical preservatives, drink water only from plastic bottles, etc.?

In recent years, doctors have been emphasizing that the incidence of bronchopulmonary diseases is becoming higher and higher. The number of allergy sufferers is growing, and most of them, again, are children. All over the world there is an increase in diseases associated with immunodeficiency conditions. It can be assumed that if humanity does not come to its senses in the near future and does not try to enter into a peaceful harmonious union with Mother Nature, then in the not too distant future we may suffer the fate of many extinct species. It must be remembered that they are inextricably linked.

2014 is the year of ecology

Every year, many events are held in our country dedicated to educational activities on environmental issues. And 2014 was no exception. Thus, since the beginning of the year, a large-scale competition “National Environmental Award “ERAECO” has been held in Russia. As part of this event, films on environmental topics are shown in different cities of Russia, festivals and lectures are held.

There will also be presentations on eco-building and demonstrations of the capabilities of ecological farms in Moscow and the Moscow region. Eco-lessons were held in schools, during which children were told about environmental problems and various environmental issues were discussed in detail.

The organizers of "ERAECO" are planning to open a mobile ecological mini-laboratory, with the help of which it will be possible to carry out express analyzes of samples taken from water, air and soil. The experts of the laboratory, with the support of environmental specialists, will be schoolchildren of different ages and students.

“Eco-patrol” units will be formed, which will continue their activities not only during the competition, but also after its end. Children of primary school age will also be able to join in many interesting activities, and after that they will be asked to create a visual report in drawings.

International cooperation in environmental protection

Our planet is one, and despite the fact that people have divided it into many different countries and states, solving pressing environmental issues requires unification. Such cooperation is carried out within the framework international programs organizations such as UNESCO and the UN, and is regulated by interstate agreements.

Principles of environmental cooperation were developed. One of them states that the environmental well-being of any state should not be ensured without taking into account the interests of other countries or at their expense. For example, it is unacceptable for stronger countries to use the natural resources of underdeveloped world regions.

Another principle proclaims that mandatory control over threatening changes in the environment must be established at all levels and all states are obliged to provide every possible assistance to each other in complex environmental problems and emergency situations.

It is important to realize that only by uniting will humanity be able to save the Earth from the impending ecological collapse. From now on, every citizen of the planet must understand this.

Problems and exercises for the school course in general ecology

(Printed with abbreviations)

Part 1. GENERAL ECOLOGY

Introduction. Ecology as a science

1. Ecology is:

a) the science of human relationships with the environment;
b) the science of the relationship of living organisms with the environment;
c) nature;
d) protection and rational use of natural resources.

(Answer: b . )

a) C. Darwin;
b) A. Tansley;
c) E. Haeckel;
d) K. Linnaeus.

(Answer: V . )

3. Based on the definition of ecology, determine which statements are correct:

a) “Our area has a bad environment”;
b) “The ecology in our places is spoiled”;
c) “The environment must be protected”;
d) “Ecology is the basis of environmental management”;
e) “Ecology – human health”;
f) “Our environment has become worse”;
g) “Ecology is a science.”

(Answer: g and f . )

Chapter 1. Organism and environment.
Potential reproduction capabilities of organisms

1. Arrange the named tree species in increasing order of the number of seeds they produce per year: pedunculate oak, silver birch, coconut palm. How does the size of the seeds (fruits) change in the row of trees you lined up?
(Answer: coconut palm --> pedunculate oak --> silver birch. The larger the seeds, the less the tree produces per unit of time.)

2. Arrange the named animal species in order of increasing fertility: chimpanzee, pig, common pike, lake frog. Explain why females of some species bring 1–2 cubs at a time, while others bring several hundred thousand.
(Answer: chimpanzee --> pig --> lake frog --> common pike. Species in which females bear relatively fewer offspring at a time exhibit greater parental care and lower offspring mortality.)

4*. Bacteria can multiply very quickly. Every half hour, two cells are formed by division from one cell. If one bacterium is placed in ideal conditions with an abundance of food, then per day its offspring should amount to 248 = 281474976710 700 cells. This amount of bacteria will fill a 0.25-liter glass. How long does it take for bacteria to occupy a volume of 0.5 liters?

a) one day;
b) two days;
c) one hour;
d) half an hour.

(Answer: G . )

5*. Plot a graph of the increase in the number of house mice over 8 months in one barn. The initial number was two individuals (male and female). It is known that, under favorable conditions, a pair of mice gives birth to 6 mice every 2 months. Two months after birth, the pups become sexually mature and begin to reproduce. The ratio of males and females in the offspring is 1:1.
(Answer: if we plot the time in months along the X axis, and the number of individuals along the Y axis, then the coordinates are (x, y), etc. consecutive points on the graph will be: (0, 2), (1, 8), (2, 14), (3, 38), (4, 80).)

6*. Read the following descriptions of the breeding habits of some fish species of approximately the same size. Based on these data, make a conclusion about the fertility of each species and compare the names of the species with the number of eggs laid by fish: 10,000,000, 500,000, 3,000, 300, 20, 10. Why is there a decline in fertility in the series of fish species you have lined up?

Far Eastern salmon chum salmon lays relatively large eggs in a specially dug hole at the bottom of the river and covers it with pebbles. Fertilization in these fish is external.
Cod lays small eggs floating in the water column. This kind of caviar is called pelagic. Fertilization in cod is external.
African tilapia (from perciformes) they collect laid and fertilized eggs into the oral cavity, in which they incubate them until the young hatch. The fish do not feed at this time. Fertilization in tilapia is external.
In small cat sharks Fertilization is internal; they lay large eggs, covered with a horny capsule and rich in yolk. Sharks camouflage them in secluded places and protect them for some time.
U Katranov , or spiny sharks living in the Black Sea also undergo internal fertilization, but their embryos develop not in water, but in the reproductive tract of females. Development occurs due to the nutritional reserves of the egg. Katrans give birth to mature cubs capable of independent life.
Common pike lays small eggs on aquatic plants. Fertilization in pikes is external.

(Answer: 10,000,000 – cod, 500,000 – common pike, 3,000 – chum salmon, 300 – tilapia, 20 – cat shark, 10 – katran. The fertility of a species depends on the mortality rate of the individuals that make up this species. The higher the mortality rate, the higher the fertility, as a rule. In those species that care little about the survival of their descendants, the mortality rate is quite high. And as compensation, fertility increases. An increase in the degree of care for offspring leads to a relative decrease in the fertility of the species.)

7*. Why does man primarily breed only representatives of the order Galliformes and Anseriformes from birds? It is known that in terms of the quality of meat, growth rate, size, and degree of adaptation to humans, they are not inferior to bustards, little bustards, waders, or pigeons.
(Answer: Representatives of Galliformes and, to a lesser extent, Anseriformes have very high fertility. On average, a clutch of chicken birds contains 10–12, and in some species (quail) up to 20 eggs. The clutch of different species of Anseriformes contains an average of 6–8 eggs. At the same time, pigeons and bustards have no more than 2 eggs in their clutch, and waders have no more than 4 eggs.)

8*. If any species is capable of unlimited growth in numbers, why do rare and endangered organisms exist?

(Answer: Limiting factors are to blame for this. Their action overrides the species’ ability to restore and increase its numbers. Man, through his activities, favors the strengthening of various limiting factors that reduce the number of species.)

General laws of dependence of organisms on environmental factors

2. Choose the correct definition of the limiting factor law:

a) the optimal value of the factor is most important for the body;
b) of all the factors acting on the body, the most important is the one whose value deviates the most from the optimal;
c) of all the factors acting on the body, the most important is the one whose value deviates least from the optimal one.

(Answer: b . )

3. Select a factor that can be considered limiting in the proposed conditions.

1. For plants in the ocean at a depth of 6000 m: water, temperature, carbon dioxide, water salinity, light.
2. For plants in the desert in summer: temperature, light, water.
3. For a starling in winter in a forest near Moscow: temperature, food, oxygen, air humidity, light.
4. For river pike in the Black Sea: temperature, light, food, water salinity, oxygen.
5. For wild boar in winter in the northern taiga: temperature; light; oxygen; air humidity; snow depth.

(Answer: 1 – light; 2 – water; 3 – food; 4 – water salinity; 5 – depth of snow cover.)

4. Of the listed substances, it is most likely to limit the growth of wheat in the field:

a) carbon dioxide;
b) oxygen;
c) helium;
d) potassium ions;
e) nitrogen gas.

(Answer: G . )

5*. Can one factor completely compensate for the effect of another factor?

(Answer: completely never, partially maybe.)

The main ways of adaptation of organisms to the environment

1. Three main ways organisms adapt to unfavorable environmental conditions: submission, resistance and avoidance of these conditions. Which method can be classified as:

a) autumn migrations of birds from northern nesting areas to southern wintering areas;
b) winter hibernation of brown bears;
c) the active life of polar owls in winter at a temperature of minus 40 ° C;
d) the transition of bacteria into a state of spores when the temperature decreases;
e) heating the camel's body during the day from 37 °C to 41 °C and cooling it down to 35 °C by morning;
f) a person is in a bathhouse at a temperature of 100 °C, while his internal temperature remains the same - 36.6 °C;
g) cacti surviving heat of 80 °C in the desert;
h) does hazel grouse survive severe frosts in thick snow?

(Answer: avoidance – a, h; submission – b, d, d; resistance - c, e, g.)

2. How do warm-blooded (homeothermic) organisms differ from cold-blooded (poikilothermic) organisms?
(Answer: Warm-blooded organisms differ from cold-blooded organisms in that they have a high (usually above 34 ° C) and constant (usually fluctuating within one or two degrees) body temperature.)

3. Of the listed organisms, homeothermic ones include:

a) river perch;
b) lake frog;
c) common dolphin;
d) freshwater hydra;
e) Scots pine;
f) city swallow;
g) ciliate-slipper;
h) red clover;
i) honey bee;
j) boletus mushroom.

(Answer: c, e . )

4. What is the advantage of homeothermy over poikilothermy?
(Answer: constant internal body temperature allows animals not to depend on the ambient temperature; creates conditions for all biochemical reactions to occur in cells; allows biochemical reactions to occur at high speed, which increases the activity of organisms.)

5. What are the disadvantages of homeothermy compared to poikilothermy?
(Answer: Homeothermic animals have greater needs for food and water compared to poikilothermic animals.)

6. The body temperature of the arctic fox remains constant (38.6 °C) when the ambient temperature fluctuates in the range from –80 °C to +50 °C. List the devices that help the Arctic fox maintain a constant body temperature.
(Answer: coat, subcutaneous fat, evaporation of water from the surface of the tongue (to cool the body), expansion and contraction of the lumens of skin vessels - physical thermoregulation. Behavior that helps change the temperature conditions of the environment is behavioral thermoregulation. Developed regulation of cellular chemical reactions that produce heat, which occurs on command from a special thermal center in the diencephalon - chemical thermoregulation.)

7. Can bacteria that constantly live in hot springs of geysers at a temperature of 70 ° C and are not able to survive if the temperature of their cells changes by just a few degrees be called warm-blooded organisms?
(Answer: it is impossible, since warm-blooded animals maintain a constantly high internal temperature thanks to the internal heat generated by the body itself. Bacteria living in hot springs use external heat, but since their temperature is always high and constant, they are called false myothermic.)

8. Crossbills build nests and hatch chicks in winter (February). This happens because:

a) crossbills have special adaptations that help them withstand low temperatures;
b) at this time there is a lot of food that adult birds and chicks eat;
c) they need to have time to hatch the chicks before the arrival of their main competitors - birds from the southern regions.
(Answer: b. The main food of crossbills is seeds coniferous species. They ripen in late winter - early spring.)

9*. What birds a few decades ago from the middle and northern latitudes flew south in the fall, and now live all year round in large cities. Explain why this is happening.
(Answer: rooks, mallard ducks. This is due to the fact that the amount of available food in winter has increased: the number of garbage dumps and landfills has increased, and non-freezing reservoirs have appeared.)

10*. Why can dark-colored reptiles be found more often in cold parts of their range than in warm parts? For example, vipers living in the Arctic Circle are predominantly melanistic (black), while in the south they are light-colored.
(Answer: Black absorbs heat to a greater extent than any other color. Dark-colored reptiles heat up faster.)

11. During summer cold snaps, swifts abandon their nests and move south, sometimes hundreds of kilometers. The chicks fall into torpor and are able to remain in this state, without food, for several days. When the weather gets warmer, the parents return. Explain what causes migrations.
(Answer: When it gets colder, the number of flying insects that swifts feed on sharply decreases. The torpor of swift chicks is an adaptation to life in northern countries, where summer cold snaps are observed quite often.)

12*. Why do birds and mammals tolerate low external temperatures more easily than high ones?
(Answer: There are many ways to reduce heat loss, but increasing heat transfer is much more difficult. The main way for this is the evaporation of water from the body. However, in places where high (more than 35 °C) air temperatures are often observed, there is usually a moisture deficit.)

13*. Explain why plants that are predominantly green in color live near the surface of water bodies, and red in color at great depths of the sea.
(Answer: Only short-wave rays: blue and violet penetrate to a depth of several tens and hundreds of meters. To absorb them (with subsequent transfer of energy to chlorophyll molecules), algae have a significant amount of red and yellow pigments. They mask the green color of the chlorophyll, making the plants appear red.)

Basic living environments

1. The fastest moving animals live in the environment:

a) ground-air;
b) underground (soil);
c) water;
d) in living organisms.

2. Name the largest animal that has ever existed (and currently exists) on Earth. What environment does it live in? Why can’t such large animals arise and exist in other habitats?
(Answer: blue whale. In an aquatic environment, the buoyant (Archimedean) force can significantly compensate for the force of gravity.)

3. Explain why in ancient times warriors determined the approach of enemy cavalry by placing their ears to the ground.
(Answer: The conductivity of sound in a dense medium (soil, earth) is higher than in air.)

4. Ichthyologists face significant challenges in preserving deep-sea fish for museums. Raised on the deck of the ship, they literally explode. Explain why this happens.
(Answer: At great ocean depths, colossal pressure is created. To avoid being crushed, organisms living in these conditions must have the same pressure inside their body. When quickly rising to the surface of the ocean, they find themselves “crushed from the inside” . )

5. Explain why deep-sea fish have either reduced or hypertrophied (enlarged) eyes.
(Answer: Very little light penetrates to great depths. Under these conditions, the visual analyzer must either be very sensitive, or it becomes unnecessary - then vision is compensated by other senses: smell, touch, etc.)

6. If you mix water, sand, inorganic and organic fertilizers, will the mixture be soil?
(Answer: no, because the soil must have a certain structure and must contain living things.)

7. Fill in the gaps by choosing one word from the pair in brackets.

(Answer: not threatening, weak, aggressive, have, don't have, don't have, don't have, big.)

8*. In what habitats do animals have the simplest structure of the hearing organ (it is necessary to compare closely related groups of animals)? Why? Does this prove that animals have difficulty hearing in these environments?
(Answer: in soil and water. This is due to the fact that sound conductivity in these dense media is the best. The simple organization of the hearing organs of these animals does not prove that they have poor hearing. Better propagation of a sound wave in a dense environment can compensate for the poor organization of the hearing organs.)

9. Explain why permanently aquatic mammals (whales, dolphins) have much more powerful thermal insulation (subcutaneous fat) than land animals living in harsh and cold conditions. For comparison, the temperature of salt water does not fall below -1.3 ° C, and on the land surface it can drop to -70 ° C.)
(Answer: Water has a significantly higher thermal conductivity and heat capacity than air. A warm object in water will cool (give off heat) much faster than in air.)

10*. In the spring, many people burn last year's withered grass, arguing that fresh grass will grow better. Environmentalists, on the contrary, argue that this cannot be done. Why?
(Answer: The opinion that new grass grows better after it has fallen is due to the fact that young seedlings seem more friendly and green against the black background of the ashes than among withered grass. However, this is nothing more than an illusion. In fact, during the fall, many shoots of young plants become charred and their growth slows down. The fire kills millions of insects and other invertebrates living in the litter and herbaceous layer, and destroys the clutches of birds nesting on the ground. Normally, the organic matter that makes up the withered grass decomposes and gradually passes into the soil. During a fire, they burn and turn into gases that enter the atmosphere. All this disrupts the cycle of elements in a given ecosystem, its natural balance. In addition, burning last year's grass regularly leads to fires: forests, wooden buildings, power and communication line poles burn.)

To be continued

*Tasks of increased complexity, cognitive and problematic in nature.