Organisms in relation to each other and to their environment.
13 topics · 15 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
Biodiversity
E. O. Wilson & Frances M. Peter · 1988
Proceedings of the National Forum on BioDiversity arguing that species loss is accelerating past any prior era, and coining 'biodiversity' as the…
+1 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Animal Ecology
Charles Elton · 1927
Introduces the food chain, the food cycle and the pyramid of numbers as the organising structure of animal communities.
+2 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
Plant Succession: An Analysis of the Development of Vegetation
Frederic E. Clements · 1916
Argues plant communities develop through a fixed, predictable sequence of stages toward a single stable climax determined by climate, an idea later…
+9 more at this level
12 of 15 works
E. O. Wilson & Frances M. Peter
Proceedings of the National Forum on BioDiversity arguing that species loss is accelerating past any prior era, and coining 'biodiversity' as the term for what is at stake.
link checked 17 Sept 2026IPBES
The global scientific assessment finds invasive alien species have contributed to sixty percent of recorded extinctions and cost the world economy hundreds of billions annually.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Charles Elton
Introduces the food chain, the food cycle and the pyramid of numbers as the organising structure of animal communities.
link failing as of 17 Sept 2026Monica G. Turner
Argues landscape pattern and ecological process are inseparable, and lays out how spatial heterogeneity should be measured and modelled rather than averaged away.
Peter M. Vitousek et al.
Argues human activity has roughly doubled the rate of fixed nitrogen entering the terrestrial cycle, with ecological consequences that outlast the fertiliser and fuel that caused them.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Frederic E. Clements
Argues plant communities develop through a fixed, predictable sequence of stages toward a single stable climax determined by climate, an idea later challenged by more individualistic accounts of vegetation change.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Raymond Pearl & Lowell J. Reed
Fits US census data to a logistic curve, arguing population growth follows a predictable S-shaped saturation rather than unchecked exponential increase.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Alfred J. Lotka
Treats populations, predation and competition as a system of differential equations, founding mathematical population dynamics as its own discipline.
460 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026G. F. Gause
Laboratory competition experiments with Paramecium and yeast show that two species competing for one resource cannot coexist indefinitely, establishing the competitive exclusion principle.
163 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026A. G. Tansley
Argues ecologists should treat the ecosystem -- organisms and their physical environment together -- as the basic unit of study, coining the term itself.
Raymond L. Lindeman
Recasts the food web as a series of energy transfers between trophic levels, each one losing most of the energy it receives to respiration.
Robert T. Paine
A field removal experiment shows that eliminating one predatory starfish collapses local species diversity, showing predation can control how many species a community holds.
link checked 17 Sept 2026