The Interplay of the Organism and the Environment - The concept of the interplay of organism and environment states that all living things are influenced by their environment. This relationship is reciprocal, so the environment is also affected by living things.
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| Orginism and the environment |
Organisms interact with the environment at all biological levels. For example, at the cellular level, in the cellular environment, the parts of a cell interact with the cell as a whole. The individual cell is acted on by adjacent cells, and it acts on them in turn. At the organismic level, the individual exists in an environment and is acted on by both living and nonliving factors of that environment.
For instance, at this moment, as I write, it is raining outside, and this environmental factor affects me and other living and nonliving entities. The low barometric pressure may make my bones ache, the water may nourish my garden, and the runoff will carry some of the topsoil from my yard into the street.
However, there are no single-sided events in the complex relationships between life forms and their environment. As a result, the rain will also be affected. The heat of my cement driveway will cause some raindrops to evaporate. Some of the oil that dripped from my car's leaky oil pan onto the concrete will float away with the water into the street.
The concept of the reciprocity, or interplay, between the organism and the environment is known as ecology. Ecology is much more than cleaning up the environment and recycling beer cans. It is the scientific study of the interaction of the organism and its environment. Many of humankind's environmental problems are vivid examples of this interaction. Our unthinking abuse of the earth has resulted in many of the problems humans and their living neighbors now faceacid rain, pollution, the greenhouse effect, poisons of all types, resource or ozone depletion, the premature extinction of species. These and many other careless acts have taken place either with no understanding of how human beings and the environment interact or with a total disregard for the place of humans in nature
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