18 Viewpoint of Modern Eeologij 



ent and to a greater or lesser extent, the organisms affect the environ- 

 ment. The accompanying terms were proposed by Clements to de- 

 scribe the several aspects of the foregoing relationships. 



"Action" = habitat -^ organism 

 "Reaction" = organism —> physical factors 

 "Co-action" = organism -^ organism 



The community, which Sears (1950) aptly refers to as "the living 

 landscape," maintains itself as a working unit with all the necessary 

 exchanges going on, more or less in balance, but in a dynamic and not 

 a static balance. The functional concept of the community and of 

 the two-way reaction between the environment and its inhabitants 

 carries us far beyond the descriptive view. The improvement gained 

 from this modern approach in ecology is analogous to the better 

 understanding of the conditions inside an individual animal or plant 

 that is obtained when the physiologist's viewpoint and technique are 

 added to those of the anatomist. Modern ecology might thus be 

 thought of as the "physiology" of the ecological complex in the sense 

 that it deals with the functional aspects of the interactions, exchanges, 

 and adjustments of the members of the community and of their 

 environment. 



THE SCOPE OF ECOLOGY 



Taylor (1936) has said "Ecology is the science of all the relations 

 of all the organisms to all their environment." Since the plant and 

 animal inhabitants may be very abundant and diverse, and since en- 

 vironmental conditions are extremely variable, the possible scope of 

 ecology becomes very great. The central task of ecology, however, 

 is to delineate the general principles under which the natural com- 

 munity and its component parts operate. These may then be applied 

 to the interpretation of the activities of the particular plants and ani- 

 mals present under the existing specific conditions of a given stiuation. 



Although the fauna and flora of an area must be identified and 

 enumerated, and although the physical forces at work in the area must 

 be recognized, neither an account of the biota, nor a description of 

 the habitat constitutes an ecological investigation. Similarly, if a man 

 arises at daybreak and makes a list of the birds he sees without any 

 consideration of the relation of the occurrence of these species to 

 other factors, he is not an ecologist. Modern ecology is concerned 

 with the functional interdependencies between living things and their 



