We live on planet Earth, and our existence is interconnected with the environment around us. This interaction has allowed us to learn more about ourselves and the world we inhabit. Initially, our perspective was anthropocentric, meaning we focused solely on human interests. Over time, we began to recognize our existence within a broader context that includes both humans and non-human entities, leading to a biocentric view. Eventually, we came to understand that every part of the ecosystem holds value, marking the emergence of ecocentrism.
Today, we face numerous environmental challenges such as climate change, endangered species, and water pollution. These issues are being explored through the lens of ecocentrism. Since the Industrial Revolution, human activities have significantly impacted the planet, resulting in both damage and benefits. While we derive advantages from the environment, we are also an integral part of it, meaning our actions can have serious consequences for Earth’s systems.
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To help safeguard the planet, humans have developed models to understand Earth and its natural phenomena. Although these models are not entirely accurate, they are essential for grasping the complexities of our environment. Our system is then made up of biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living). We live together as different population from different species along with non-living things because nothing works in isolation.
In our planet, we have different ecosystems like the aquatic ecosystem which consists of lakes, rivers, coral reefs, marshes, ocean, and swamp, and these bodies are identified by salinity, water flow, and depth. As humans, we enjoy a lot of ecosystem services including clean air, water, sunlight and even land to plant. That said, amongst we living organisms, we need to survive and this is where the predator/prey relationship comes in. Food web and trophic pyramid helps us understand the predator/prey relationship. While there is this relationship between different species, we have competition that occurs between same species or different species.
These relationships are driving force for natural selection in different species. But still within different species, there is symbiosis and we can have parasitic relationships where one specie benefits at the detriment of the other, mutualism where both species benefit, and commensalism one specie benefit but the othet is not harmed.
These things I mentioned above are very important in how a population grows along side with reproduction rate, size, and specialization. With this factors mentioned, some species have become endangered and to be able to save these species, the endangered species act is being raised in different part of the world with different names and the purpose is to save the habitat and the organism because without their habitat, they might end up dead.
Read More
- https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/habitat/
- https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-habitat-definition-lesso
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbiology/symbiosis
- https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/what-is-natural-selection.html
- https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s12052-009-0128-1
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbiology/natural-selection