Guide to the study of animal ecology

by Charles C. Adams

To the physiologist, however, individual ecology tends to appeal most strongly, and he, perhaps on account of the preponderance of analytical methods in his work, feels that this is the safest and most important aspect. This statement is perhaps also true of most students of animal behavior. This is largely due to the great present need of analytical methods in these lines, and perhaps indicates a stage in the development of their science rather than a permanent condition. Later a synthetic development will probably become more prominent, and with it will come a change in estimating relative values. Generally physiologists allow for a greater influence of the environment than do many other students. They are impressed with the dependence of organisms upon their environment, and the study of their reactions only reinforces this conception.

The ecologist who studies the responses of animals cannot help being impressed with the processes of adjustment, and with adaptation as a process. It is adaptation as a process, rather than as a product, which perhaps interests him most, and emphasis needs to be placed upon this distinction. The problem of adaptation as a process may be a different and separate one from that of evolution, but individual animals must have shown adjustive adaptation, or there could have been no perpetuation to continue the struggle of adjustment. Ecological problems are likely to raise a question as to the relative importance of adaptation and evolution—if they are separate problems. The present generation has perhaps been more deeply impressed by evolution as a process, than by adaptation as a process.

The ecology of living animals is only the latest chapter in the volume on this subject; the preceding chapters will contain a history of the indefinitely long series of ecological responses which have taken place in the geologic past. Here is where the ecologist and paleontologist and geologist find common ground. The ecology of living animals must furnish us with whatever firm basis we have for the interpretation of the conditions of life in the past, upon which the paleontologist, stratigrapher, or paleogeographer must depend, at least in part, for his interpretations.

With still another training and interest, as in the case of those especially interested in human affairs, such as the sociologist, the physician, the sanitary expert, and the agriculturist, we may ultimately expect a greater appreciation for the associational aspect because of the social or associational character of human society. The associational is the phase of animal activity which may be considered as the form of animal behavior which has developed into the human social relations. It is a response to the complete organic and inorganic environment.

It is rather natural that in a relatively newly recognized subject like ecology this human aspect has not been very fully discussed. For practical reasons the ecology of man has been developed largely independent of that of animals; just as human physiology and psychology have been developed relatively independent of comparative or general physiological psychology. To the mutual advantage of these subjects they are now rapidly converging, and we may anticipate a similar relation between general animal ecology and the ecology of man. In a general treatise on animal ecology the human phase should not receive undue emphasis any more than it should in a general physiology of animals or in a comparative psychology. But, nevertheless, the relationships of man and his animal associates (slaves, domestic animals, rats, mice, parasites, etc.) form as truly an animal association as do those of the animals which live associated in some forest glade; and in all probability, before any approximately complete understanding can be had of the human associations, their roots and principles of activity must be known and understood in the less aristocratic portion of his animal relatives.

The recognition of the associational aspect of ecology, as well as that human ecology is a part of general animal ecology, is of recent origin. This is very well shown in the following quotation from Huxley (1854. On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences):

“Biology deals only with living beings as isolated things—treats only of the life of the individual: but there is a higher division of science still, which considers living beings as aggregates—which deals with the relation of living beings one to another—the science which observes men—whose experiments are made by nations one upon another, in battlefields—whose general propositions are embodied in history, morality, and religion—whose deductions lead to our happiness or our misery—and whose verifications so often come too late, and serve only

‘To point a moral, or adorn a tale’—

I mean the science of Society or Sociology.”

At a later date (1876. On the Study of Biology) Huxley says: “For whatever view we may entertain about the nature of man, one thing is perfectly certain, that he is a living creature. Hence, if our definition is to be interpreted strictly, we must include man and all his ways and works under the head of Biology; in which case, we should find that psychology, politics, and political economy would be absorbed into the province of Biology. In strict logic no one can object to this course.... The real fact is that we biologists are a self-sacrificing people ... [so that] we feel that we have more than sufficient territory.... But I should like you to recollect that that is a sacrifice, and that you should not be surprised if it occasionally happens that you see a biologist apparently trespassing in the region of philosophy or politics; or meddling with human education; because, after all, that is a part of his kingdom which he has only voluntarily forsaken.”