Organisms Reproductive and Population

Organisms Reproductive and Population

The word ‘ecology’ is derived from the Greek  term  ‘oikos’,  meaning  ‘house’ and logos, meaning ‘study’. Thus, the study of  the  environmental  ‘house’  includes  all the organisms in it and all the functional processes that make the house habitable.

The study of ecology encompasses different levels-organism, population, community, ecosystem, etc., In ecology, the term population, originally coined to denote a group of people is broadened to include groups of individuals of any one kind of organism. Community in the ecological sense (designated as ‘biotic community’) includes all the populations occupying a given area. The community (Biotic) and the non-living environment (Abiotic) function together as an ecological system (or) ecosystem. Biome is a term in wide use for a large regional or sub continental system characterized by a major vegetation type. The largest and most nearly self-sufficient biological system is often designated as the Ecosphere, which includes all the living organisms of the Earth, interacting with the physical environment to regulate their distribution, abundance, production and evolution.