Lecture 3. Autecology. Appearance of life of land.

1.Chemical and biological evolution.

2.Ecological factors definition and classification of environmental factors (A. S. Classification Monchadskii, vitality, signal factors, TV).

 

1.Autecology (ancient Greek αὐτός -. «Himself") - section ecology, studies the relationship with the environment. In contrast, population ecology and synecology focused on the study of the relationship with the environment and ecosystems, consisting of a variety of organisms, explores individual organisms at the junction with the physiology. This term is now considered obsolete (Odum, 1959), and the section object believed to be indistinguishable from that of population ecology. This is due to the fact that the level of organization of the living, which is possible to study the interaction with inert medium, according to a specific population of species of organisms.

Autecology, also called Species Ecology, the study of the interactions of an individual organism or a single species with the living and nonliving factors of its environment. Autecology is primarily experimental and deals with easily measured variables such as light, humidity, and available nutrients in an effort to understand the needs, life history, and behaviour of the organism or species. Compare synecology.

This timeline of evolution of life represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth. In biology, evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organization, from kingdoms tospecies, and individual organisms and molecules, such as DNA and proteins. The similarities between all present day organisms indicate the presence of a common ancestor from which all known species, living and extinct, have diverged through the process of evolution. More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described

"Chemical evolution" is a misnomer referring to the origin of life. The idea is that non-living chemicals somehow "evolved" into the first living organism, but that is a misapplication of the word "evolve" when it comes to biology. Evolution deals with biological change, and requires that life already exist. "Chemical complexification" would be a better term than "chemical evolution". Anyway, today, the proper scientific term for "chemical evolution" is abiogenesis.

According to this theory life originated on early earth through physico-chemical processes of atoms combining to form molecules, molecules in turn reacting to produce inorganic and organic compounds.

Organic compounds interacting to produce all types of macromolecules which organised to form the first living system or cells.

Thus according to this theory ‘life’ originated upon our earth spontaneously from non-living matter. First inorganic compounds and then organic compounds were formed in accordance with ever-changing environmental conditions. This is called chemical evolution which cannot occur under present environmental conditions upon earth. Conditions suitable for origin of life existed only upon primitive earth.

Environmental factor or ecological factor or ecofactor is any factor, abiotic or biotic, that influences living organisms. Abiotic factors include ambient temperature, amount ofsunlight, and pH of the water soil in which an organism lives. Biotic factors would include the availability of food organisms and the presence of conspecifics, competitors,predators, and parasites.

An organism's genotype (e.g., in the zygote) is translated into the adult phenotype through development during an organism's ontogeny, and subject to influences by many environmental effects. In this context, a phenotype (or phenotypic trait) can be viewed as any definable and measurable characteristic of an organism, such as its body mass or skin color.

Apart from the true monogenic genetic disorders, environmental factors may determine the development of disease in those genetically predisposed to a particular condition. Stress, physical and mental abuse, diet, exposure to toxins, pathogens, radiation and chemicals found in almost all personal-care products and household cleaners are common environmental factors that determine a large segment of non-hereditary disease.

If a disease process is concluded to be the result of a combination of genetic and environmental factor influences, its etiological origin can be referred to as having a multifactorial pattern

In biology and ecology, abiotic components or abiotic factors are non-living chemical and physical parts of the environment that affect living organisms and the functioning ofecosystems. Abiotic factors and phenomena associated with them underpin all biology.

Abiotic components include physical conditions and non-living resources that affect living organisms in terms of growth, maintenance, and reproduction. Resources are distinguished as substances or objects in the environment required by one organism and consumed or otherwise made unavailable for use by other organisms.

Component degradation of a substance by chemical or physical processes, e.g. hydrolysis. All non-living components of an ecosystem is called abiotic components to make it more easy you could just say that abiotic is non-living factors such as the atmosphere or water is a non-living substance.

In biology, abiotic factors can include water, light, radiation, temperature, humidity, atmosphere, and soil. The macroscopic climate often influences each of the above. Pressure and sound waves may also be considered in the context of marine or sub-terrestrial environments.

For example, there is a significant difference in access to water as well as humidity between temperate rain forests and deserts. This difference in water access causes a diversity in the types of plants and animals that grow in these areas.

 

Lecture 4. Concepts of Biosphere.

 

1.V. I. Vernadsky – the founder of the doctrine about biosphere.

2. About biosphere and noosphere of Vernadsky doctrine, the concept of living matter.

The biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. The two joined words are "bio" and "sphere". It can also be termed as the zone of life on Earth, a closed system (apart from solar and cosmic radiation and heat from the interior of the Earth), and largely self-regulating. By the most general biophysiological definition, the biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, including their interaction with the elements of the lithosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. The biosphere is postulated to haveevolved, beginning with a process of biopoesis (life created naturally from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds) or biogenesis (life created from living matter), at least some 3.5 billion years ago. The earliest evidence for life on Earth includes biogenic graphite found in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks fromWestern Greenland and microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone from Western Australia. More recently, in 2015, "remains of biotic life" were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. According to one of the researchers, "If life arose relatively quickly on Earth... then it could be common in theuniverse."

In a general sense, biospheres are any closed, self-regulating systems containing ecosystems. This includes artificial biospheres such as Biosphere 2 and BIOS-3, and potentially ones on other planets or moons.

The term "biosphere" was coined by geologist Eduard Suess in 1875, which he defined as the place on Earth's surface where life dwells.^[10]

While the concept has a geological origin, it is an indication of the effect of both Charles Darwin and Matthew F. Maury on the Earth sciences. The biosphere's ecological context comes from the 1920s (see Vladimir I. Vernadsky), preceding the 1935 introduction of the term "ecosystem" by Sir Arthur Tansley (see ecology history). Vernadsky defined ecology as the science of the biosphere. It is aninterdisciplinary concept for integrating astronomy, geophysics, meteorology, biogeography, evolution, geology, geochemistry, hydrologyand, generally speaking, all life and Earth sciences.

Extent of Earth's biosphere

Water covers 71% of the Earth's surface. Image is the Blue Marblephotographed from Apollo 17.

Every part of the planet, from the polar ice caps to the equator, features life of some kind. Recent advances in microbiology have demonstrated that microbes live deep beneath the Earth's terrestrial surface, and that the total mass of microbial life in so-called "uninhabitable zones" may, in biomass, exceed all animal and plant life on the surface. The actual thickness of the biosphere on earth is difficult to measure. Birds typically fly at altitudes as high as 1,800 m (5,900 ft; 1.1 mi) and fish live as much as 8,372 m (27,467 ft; 5.202 mi) underwater in the Puerto Rico Trench.

There are more extreme examples for life on the planet: Rüppell's vulture has been found at altitudes of 11,300 m (37,100 ft; 7.0 mi); bar-headed geese migrate at altitudes of at least 8,300 m (27,200 ft; 5.2 mi); yaks live at elevations as high as 5,400 m (17,700 ft; 3.4 mi) above sea level; mountain goats live up to 3,050 m (10,010 ft; 1.90 mi). Herbivorous animals at these elevations depend on lichens, grasses, and herbs.

Microscopic organisms live in every part of the biosphere, including soil, hot springs, "seven miles deep" in the ocean, "40 miles high" in the atmosphere and inside rocks far down within the Earth's crust (see alsoendolith). Microorganisms, under certain test conditions, have been observed to thrive in the vacuum of outer space. The total amount of soil and subsurface bacterial carbon is estimated as 5 x 10¹⁷ g, or the "weight of the United Kingdom".The mass of prokaryote microorganisms — which includes bacteria and archaea, but not the nucleated eukaryote microorganisms — may be as much as 0.8 trillion tons of carbon (of the total biosphere mass, estimated at between 1 and 4 trillion tons). Barophilic marine microbes have been found at more than a depth of 10,000 m (33,000 ft; 6.2 mi) in theMariana Trench, the deepest spot in the Earth's oceans. In fact, single-celled life forms have been found in the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, by the Challenger Deep, at depths of 11,034 m (36,201 ft; 6.856 mi). Other researchers reported related studies that microorganisms thrive inside rocks up to 580 m (1,900 ft; 0.36 mi) below the sea floor under 2,590 m (8,500 ft; 1.61 mi) of ocean off the coast of the northwestern United States, as well as 2,400 m (7,900 ft; 1.5 mi) beneath the seabed off Japan. Culturable thermophilic microbes have been extracted from cores drilled more than 5,000 m (16,000 ft; 3.1 mi) into the Earth's crust in Sweden, from rocks between 65–75 °C (149–167 °F). Temperature increases with increasing depth into the Earth's crust. The rate at which the temperature increases depends on many factors, including type of crust (continental vs. oceanic), rock type, geographic location, etc. The greatest known temperature at which microbial life can exist is 122 °C (252 °F) (Methanopyrus kandleri Strain 116), and it is likely that the limit of life in the "deep biosphere" is defined by temperature rather than absolute depth. On 20 August 2014, scientists confirmed the existence of microorganisms living 800 m (2,600 ft; 0.50 mi) below the ice of Antarctica. According to one researcher, "You can find microbes everywhere — they're extremely adaptable to conditions, and survive wherever they are."

Our biosphere is divided into a number of biomes, inhabited by fairly similar flora and fauna. On land, biomes are separated primarily by latitude. Terrestrial biomes lying within the Arctic and Antarctic Circles are relatively barren of plant and animal life, while most of the more populous biomes lie near the equator.

1. The concept of the biosphere, according to V. Vernadsky was formulated JB Lamarck in the early XIX century (without the use of the concept). The term biosphere introduced Austrian geologist E. Suess (1873 p.). A broad interpretation of the teachings of biosphere owned VI Vernadsky.

Biosphere - the totality of all living organisms on Earth.

Vernadsky, who studied the interaction between living and nonliving systems, reinterpreted the concept of the biosphere. He understood the scope of the unity of the biosphere as living and nonliving. According to Vernadsky, the biosphere substance consists of:

• living matter - modern biomass of living organisms;

• nutrients - all forms of detritus and peat, coal, oil and gas biogenic origin;

• inert substance - mixtures of nutrients from mineral rocks nebiohennoho origin (soil, mud, natural water, gas and oil shale, tar sands, of sedimentary carbonates;

• inert matter - rocks, minerals, deposits not affected by direct biochemical influence organisms.

Recent studies have made changes in the understanding of the structure of the biosphere. The concept of biosphere should include only those elements and characteristics that are controlled biota, and do not include the nature of the components related to the geological past. Thus, biosphere refers to the totality of all living organisms and substances that are controlled consumption, transformation and production of living organisms.

Modern biosphere is the result of a long historical development of the whole organic world in its interaction with inanimate nature. The interaction of biotic and abiotic factors biosphere is in constant motion and development.

The totality of living organisms plays a leading role in the development of the biosphere. The main functions of the biota are:

E nergy, performed primarily by plants during photosynthesis that accumulate solar energy in a variety of organic compounds. Inside of ecosystem this energy in the form of food distributed among animals. Part of the energy is dissipated, partly accumulates in dead organic matter. It formed deposits of peat, coal, oil and other fossil fuels;

D estructive, is the decomposition, mineralization of dead organic matter, chemical decomposition of rocks, bringing minerals that formed in the cycle. Dead organic matter decomposes into simple inorganic compounds (carbon dioxide, water *, hydrogen sulfide, methane, ammonia, etc.), again using the link in the initial cycle. This is a special group of organisms - decomposers (destructors);

C oncentration is in the electoral accumulation in living organisms substances atoms scattered in nature. The ability to concentrate dilute solutions of elements - a characteristic of living matter. The most active hubs of many elements are micro-organisms;

2. The noosphere (/ˈnoʊ.əsfɪər/; sometimes noösphere) is the sphere of human thought. The word derives from the Greek νοῦς (nous "mind") and σφαῖρα (sphaira "sphere"), in lexical analogy to "atmosphere" and "biosphere". It was introduced by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in 1922^[4] in his Cosmogenesis. Another possibility is the first use of the term by Édouard Le Roy (1870–1954), who together with Teilhard was listening to lectures of Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky at the Sorbonne. In 1936, Vernadsky accepted the idea of the noosphere in a letter to Boris Leonidovich Lichkov (though he states that the concept derives from Le Roy). Citing the work of Teilhard's biographer Rene Cuenot

History of concept

In the theory of Vernadsky, the noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere(biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere. In contrast to the conceptions of the Gaia theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace, Vernadsky's noosphere emerges at the point where humankind, through the mastery of nuclear processes, begins to create resources through the transmutation of elements.

Teilhard perceived a directionality in evolution along an axis of increasing Complexity/Consciousness. For Teilhard, the noosphere is the sphere of thought encircling the earth that has emerged through evolution as a consequence of this growth in complexity / consciousness. The noosphere is therefore as much part of nature as the barysphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. As a result, Teilhard sees the "social phenomenon the culmination of and not the attenuation of the biological phenomenon." These social phenomena are part of the noosphere and include, for example, legal, educational, religious, research, industrial and technological systems. In this sense, the noosphere emerges through and is constituted by the interaction of human minds. The noosphere thus grows in step with the organization of the human mass in relation to itself as it populates the earth. Teilhard argued the noosphere evolves towards ever greater personalisation, individuation and unification of its elements. He saw the Christian notion of love as being the principal driver of noogenesis. Evolution would culminate in the Omega Point an apex of thought/consciousness which he identified with the eschatological return of Christ.

One of the original aspects of the noosphere concept deals with evolution. Henri Bergson, with his L'évolution créatrice (1907), was one of the first to propose evolution is "creative" and cannot necessarily be explained solely by Darwinian natural selection. L'évolution créatrice is upheld, according to Bergson, by a constant vital forcewhich animates life and fundamentally connects mind and body, an idea opposing the dualism of René Descartes. In 1923, C. Lloyd Morgan took this work further, elaborating on an "emergent evolution" which could explain increasing complexity (including the evolution of mind). Morgan found many of the most interesting changes in living things have been largely discontinuous with past evolution. Therefore, these living things did not necessarily evolve through a gradual process of natural selection. Rather, he posited, the process of evolution experiences jumps in complexity (such as the emergence of a self-reflective universe, or noosphere). Finally, the complexification of human cultures, particularly language, facilitated a quickening of evolution in which cultural evolution occurs more rapidly than biological evolution. Recent understanding of human ecosystems and of human impact on the biosphere have led to a link between the notion of sustainability with the "co-evolution" and harmonization of cultural and biological evolution.