RESEARCH METHODS IN ECOLOGY 
CHAPTER I. THE FOUNDATION OF ECOLOGY 
THE NEED OF A SYSTEM 
1. The scope of ecology. The clue to the field of ecology is found in 
the Greek word, oikos, home. The point of view in the following treatise 
is constantly that which is inherent in the term itself. Ecology is therefore 
considered the dominant theme in the study of plants, indeed, as the central 
and vital part of botany. This statement may at first appear startling, if 
not unfounded, but mature reflection will show that all the questions of 
botanical science lead sooner or later to the two ultimate facts: plant and 
habitat. The essential truth of this has been much obscured by detached 
methods of study in physiology, morphology, and histology, which are too 
often treated as independent fields. These have suffered incomplete and 
unsymmetric development in consequence of extreme specialistic tendencies. 
Analytic methods have dominated research to the exclusion of synthetic 
ones, which, in a greatly diversified field, must be final, if botanical knowl- 
edge is something to be systematized and not merely catalogued. Physiol- 
ogy in particular has suffered at the hands of detached specialists. Orig- 
inally conceived as an inquiry into the origin and nature of plants, it has 
been developed strictly as a study of plant activities. It all but ignores the 
physical factors that control function, and the organs and tissues that 
reflect it. 3 
2. Ecology and physiology. There can be little question in regard to the 
essential identity of physiology and ecology. This is evident when it is 
clearly seen that the present difference between the two fields is superficial. 
Ecology has been largely the descriptive study of vegetation; physiology 
has concerned itself with function; but, when carefully analyzed, both are 
. seen to rest upon the same foundation. In each, the development is incom- 
plete: ecology has so far been merely superficial, physiology too highly spe- 
cialized. The one is chaotic and unsystematized, the other too often a 
minute study of function under abnormal circumstances. The greatest need 
of the former is the introduction of method and system, of the latter, a 
broadening of scope and new objectives. The growing recognition of the 
identity of the two makes it desirable to anticipate their final merging, and 
