Learning About Life Around Us

May 15, 2015 By Tim Mitchell
Deepa Gopal's picture

Today, our planet is home to an absolutely amazing diversity of life.

There are giant sequoia trees that tower above most buildings. On the other end of the spectrum, there are trillions of tiny, microscopic, single-celled organisms living inside your body right now.  

There are many different ways organisms get their energy, many different ways organisms reproduce, and many different environments organisms call home.  And what’s truly remarkable about all this diversity?  It has a common origin.  

All life on earth is related to each other. Life began once, about 3.8 billion years ago, and it has changed through time into the myriad of organisms we see today.  Ecologists and evolutionary biologists are actively studying how these organisms came to be, and how they make their living.

What Do Evolutionary Biologists Do?

Evolutionary biologists, in particular, study how life changes through time. And it sure has changed a lot!

Ponder this for a moment: Did you know that every single one of your direct ancestors (parents, grandparents, etc.) successfully survived long enough to reproduce, and this fact holds true to the very beginning of life?! This means that, at one point, your ancestors had to worry about getting eaten by dinosaurs!

If you moved back in time and looked at your ancestors, you would see that the farther back you go, the less they look like you do today. Evolutionary biologists study a lot of different questions related to how and why populations of organisms changing through time.

Some questions that are actively being researched include: what is the evolutionary history of humans? How are all of the planet’s organisms related to each other? How do new species arise? How are bacteria and viruses evolving to counteract our immune system and medicine? And many, many others!

What Is Ecology?

Ecology is best defined as the study of the relationship between organisms and their environment.

An organism’s environment encompasses many things. Abiotic (non-living) aspects of the environment include things like temperature, chemicals, water, and shelter, for example. The biotic (living) environment includes things like predators and prey, competitors, parasites, and diseases.

Right now, ecologists all over the world are working to answer many different questions to learn more about the world around us and to help solve major problems.  Ecologists are working to answer questions such as: how is climate change affecting organisms? What happens when an invasive species moves into a new ecosystem? How do important nutrients move through an ecosystem? How many organisms can certain habitat support?  What services does the natural world provide for humans (like cleaning our drinking water)? This is just a tiny sample of some of the questions ecologists are working on today.

You can open a book, or take a course, and learn about many of the amazing and useful things ecologists and evolutionary biologists have learned about our planet. But you should also know that we are constantly learning more, and while it may seem like we know all there is to know, we definitely don’t.  And there are many important questions still being worked on actively by scientists all over the world today, and I love that I am one of them!  And someday, you could be at the forefront of science yourself!