2 NATURE AND RELATIONS OF BIO-ECOLOGY 



to emphasize the proper synthetic approach and to maintain the ideal 

 constantly before specialized workers, the term bio-ecology appears 

 to be well warranted. It possesses the further great merit of being 

 immediately understood, a quality certainly not exhibited at present 

 by ecology with its various uses. This advantage will be correspond- 

 ingly enhanced, as the field becomes on the one hand more analytic, 

 on the other more synthetic. However, it must be admitted that, in 

 respect to terminology especially, habit and point of view will con- 

 tinue to rule for many workers, in spite of the benefits to be procured 

 from uniformity and consistency. 



SCOPE AND SIGNIFICANCE 



As indicated previously, bio-ecology is considered to be ecology 

 in the widest sense, but with the recognition that the inclusion of 

 human ecology will be delayed until the feeling for synthesis and 

 experiment becomes more general. In consequence, the application of 

 the term will for the present be largely restricted to the study of 

 biotic communities or microcosms, in which man regularly assumes 

 roles of varying importance. Moreover, it is inevitable that the term 

 ecology will continue to be applied to the study of plant or animal 

 communities separately, as a matter of habit or training, or of predi- 

 lection. Nevertheless, the fragmentation of animal communities on 

 the basis of taxonomic groups is greatly to be deplored, since it 

 destroys the last semblance of unity. Unfortunately, this is such a 

 common practice as to be a matter of much concern to the future 

 of both animal ecology and bio-ecology. This condition can hardly be 

 remedied except by replacing the present highly specialized training 

 with synthetic instruction to a considerable degree. 



In view of the great diversity of interests and hence of ai)proaches 

 to this vast field, the word ecology will continue to have a number of 

 rivals, in spite of its unique fitness. In accordance with the empha- 

 sis, these range from biology, biogeography, and geobotany to sociol- 

 ogy, biocenology, and biocenotics, and the more specialized limnology, 

 hydrobiology and oceanography. This condition will exist as long as 

 investigators are specialists; it is perhaps less to be deplored since 

 each brings a different point of view to the larger field, and this is 

 probably true likewise of the various efforts at a subdivision of the 

 field. However, the very essence of ecology is the synthesis derived 

 from the exhaustive analysis of the community and its habitat, and 

 bio-ecology must rest upon this principle as its secure foundation. 

 The advent of bio-ecology having been delayed by the separation of 



