BIO-ECOLOGY 



CHAPTER 1 

 NATURE AND RELATIONS OF BIO-ECOLOGY 



Significance of the Name. The term bio-ecology has been proposed 

 primarily for the sake of emphasis, but partly also for greater clarity 

 and definiteness (Clements, 1922). Although the field is here re- 

 garded as coextensive with ecology, the meaning and content of that 

 term still vary too widely in use to permit employing the two as exact 

 synonyms at present. This conclusion gains force from the fact that 

 the term ecology is itself not infrequently replaced by biology, sociol- 

 ogy, geography, or geobotany, and that its synthetic nature is too 

 often obscured by such subdivisions as autecology, synecology, insect 

 ecology, and human ecology. 



To those who regard the cause-and-effect relation as the very es- 

 sence of ecology, the study of man and of human society is obviously 

 a division of the latter, but it is clear that man's importance to him- 

 self will for some time tend to maintain and even emphasize the exist- 

 ing specialization into sociology, economics, behaviorism, psychology, 

 and other fields. This is indicated in particular by the rise of behavior- 

 ism, which had its origin essentially in animal ecology, but has taken 

 its own course with diminishing interest in ecological concepts and 

 methods. The consequent loss of focus and of synthesis has been re- 

 flected in a generally hostile or indifferent attitude to an approach vital 

 to the ecological study of man. 



As matters stand, it appears that the word ecology will come to 

 be applied to the fields that touch man immediately only as the feel- 

 ing for synthesis grows. The natural procedure will be for its out- 

 look and methods to be adopted gradually by the human sciences 

 and for the use of the term to lag far behind, as is the fate of terms in 

 general (cf. Smuts, 1926; Wells, 1931). Moreover, students of ecology 

 will continue to be trained primarily as botanists, zoologists, sociolo- 

 gists, or economists for some time to come — probably indeed as long 

 as university departments are organized on the present basis. Hence, 



