Ecology: Biology of Interaction. V-01. Environment and Ecological Surroundings
A frog sits on a riverbank. It is an open system continuously exchanging matter, energy, and information with its environment. Can we consider the frog separately from the environment? Only conditionally. Stopping this exchange would mean the frog’s rapid death.
"Quarter" Three. ORGANISMS IN THE ENVIRONMENT Chapter V. Autecology and Fundamentals of Environmental Science V-1. Environment and Ecological Environment Every ecologist must learn to see the world through the eyes of the creature they are studying. Michael Begon, John Harper, Colin Townsend When studying the mutual influence of an organism and its ecological environment, it is customary to separate them. Most often, the organism and the ecological environment are considered as something independent of each other. To prove that this is an oversimplification, let's consider a simple example. A frog sits on the riverbank (Fig. V-1.1). It is an open system that continuously exchanges matter, energy, and information with its environment. Can we consider the frog separately from the environment? Only conditionally. The cessation of exchange of matter, energy, and information between the frog and the external environment would mean its rapid death. But even if we move the frog to some other conditions, it will still maintain a connection with the environment to which it is adapted. The animal in question is adapted to the lifestyle of a coastal jumper into water. The structure of its limbs, torso, head, and sensory organs reflects the properties of the bank and water. The molecules that make up its body are built from atoms obtained from this environment and reflect its elemental and isotopic composition. The frog's life is organized in such a way that it can obtain the necessary resources, survive, and reproduce precisely in this environment, and not in any other. In this environment, it is purposeful; outside of it, it would appear as a senseless and non-viable degenerate... Fig. V-1.1. Lake frog in a lithograph from G. A. Boulenger's book (late 19th century). The caption reflects the views on frog systematics characteristic of that time. But can we consider the environment independently of the frog? Well, let's see... Sedges grow next to the frog. The frog and the sedge are in the same place, but they are influenced by different factors. Sunlight for the frog is a source of heat and light, necessary for finding prey and early detection of danger. For the sedge, light is a source of energy for photosynthesis, and therefore its spectral composition is very important for the plant. The soil for the frog is a support with which it exchanges heat and, partly, water. For the plant, the composition of the soil solution, which is its source of mineral nutrition, is extremely important. The same insect will be a predator for the sedge, which can eat its tissues, and for the frog - a potential prey. Even if the same environmental qualities are important for two different organisms, for one of them the environment will be too hot, and for the other - too cold, for one - dry, and for the other - humid, etc. Since the ecological environment is what affects organisms, and different qualities of the environment affect different organisms, different organisms are in different ecological environments! These, as well as many other considerations, give deep meaning to the principle of the inseparability and mutual influence of the organism and the environment, which was put forward in the 19th century by the physiologist Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov. Just as we cannot dismiss the influence of the environment on the organism, we must also consider the influence of the organism on the environment, because as a result of the exchange of matter and energy with the organism, the environment itself changes. The frog's respiration, feeding, excretion, and heat exchange continuously change the properties of the environment around it. However, understanding the inseparability of the connections between the organism and the environment, we will repeatedly break them, in accordance with the reductionist (dissecting) logic of studying complex systems (see section I-04). In autecology, it is customary to conditionally separate the object of study (organism) and the environment, considering a model called monocen (conditionally speaking, "a mouse in a landscape"). Are the concepts of "surroundings" (= "environment") and "ecological environment" identical? Defining ecology as a science, we said that it studies the interaction of organisms and supra-organismal systems with the environment. From this definition, it is clear that the main property of the ecological environment is not to surround, but to influence. To determine how the environment influences, one must establish whom or what it affects. In full accordance with the epigraph given in this section, the ecological environment can only be considered in relation to a specific organism or other biosystem. Therefore, the ecological environment is the totality of objects and processes that affect a specific studied biosystem. Can the environment be considered outside the context of a specific organism? In principle, yes, and this is done, for example, by geographers or environmental scientists (however, environmental scientists often call themselves "ecologists" because they try to appropriate a "brand" historically belonging to biologists who study interactions, see section I-1). But even in this approach, the consideration of properties characteristic of organisms is evident. For example, the temperature of the environment is much more important for organisms than neutrino fluxes (elementary particles emitted by the Sun, which interact very weakly with matter). Naturally, when describing any habitat, we will pay much less attention to this factor than, for example, to the temperature regime! Our attention to certain environmental features is due to the fact that we interact with it as organisms. In this case, the surroundings are the totality of objects and processes that can affect certain biosystems located in a specific area of space. By "removing" the organism from the environment for the purpose of description, "through the eyes of which" its researcher looks (see epigraph), one can proceed to a conditional dissection of the environment itself. To study the environment, it is conditionally divided into separate components - factors.