Howard Thomas
(H.T.) Odum
Community Ecology from the
System’s Perspective
Ben Branoff
BIO 7083
4/31/2012
Biography
– Born, 1924: Chapel Hill, N.C.
– Father: Howard W. Odum,
sociologist
• father "encouraged his sons to
go into science and to develop
new techniques to contribute
to social progress”.
– Brother: Eugene Odum, ecologist
– Founded the Wetlands Center at
the University of Florida – 1973
• First of its kind to focus on
wetlands
– Howard Odum, either alone or
with his brother Eugene,
received essentially all of the
international prizes awarded to
ecologists.
– Died, 2002: Gainesville, FL
Academia
1947 - B.Sc. Zoology, UNC Chapel Hill
• Main interest was ornithology
1950 - Ph.D. Zoology, Yale University
• G.E. Hutchinson
• Began to take an interest in System’s Ecology
– The Biogeochemistry of Strontium: With Discussion on the Ecological
Integration of Elements
• Began collaboration with brother
– Co-wrote “Fundamentals of Ecology” in 1953
• Introduced the language of “energese” describing the flow of energy
in an ecosystem.
1956 – Professor, University of Texas
1963 – Professor, UNC Chapel Hill
1970 – Professor, University of Florida
• Founded the Center for Wetlands, UF
• Founded and directed the Center for Environmental Policy, UF
1996 – Retired
• 49 years in academia
Impact
Search:
Papers:
Citations:
H-index:
Citations Author
1613
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1061
862
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57
Title
Environmental accounting: emergy and
environmental decision making
Environment, power and society.
Systems Ecology; an introduction
Primary production in flowing waters
Self-organization, transformity, and
information
Trophic structure and productivity of Silver
Springs, Florida
Trophic structure and productivity of a
windward coral reef community on
Eniwetok Atoll
Energy basis for man and nature
Time's speed regulator: the optimum
efficiency for maximum power output in
physical and biological systems
Ecological and general systems: an
introduction to systems ecology
Years:
Cites/year:
Cites/paper:
papers/year:
66
263
25
10
Date Journal
1996
1971
1983
1956
book
book
book
Limnology and oceanography
1988
Science
1957
Ecological monographs
1955
1976
Ecological Monographs
1955
American Scientist
1994
Impact
One of the first to publish in the
following areas:
• Ecological modeling (Odum
1960)
• Ecological engineering (Odum et
al. 1963)
• Ecological economics (Odum
1971)
• Estuarine ecology (Odum and
Hoskins 1958)
• Tropical ecosystems
ecology (Odum and Pidgeon
1970)
• General systems theory.
• Pioneered the use of microcosms
• Influenced the construction of
Biosphere 2
• Influential in space systems life
support
• Introduced Ecological Engineering
• Ecosystem modeling
• Ecosystem design
• Energetics
• Rigorously applied energy
concepts to ecosystems
• Introduced “Energese”, the
energy system’s language
Systems Ecology
“…seeks a holistic view of the interactions and transactions
within and between biological and ecological systems.”
- R.L Kitching
Odum believed energy was the primary controlling
mechanism of an ecosystem, determining predictive
ecological characteristics such as community
assemblages, productivity and function.
Energese
• A language of
ecological energy
• Founded on the
principles of electrical
circuits.
• Used modules or
classes of symbols to
represent unique
ecological
components
Energese
• A simple, generalized language provides a
common reference for ecological
comparisons
Energese
• Simple or complex….
• Provide a conceptual
framework for ecosystem
function.
• Qualitative Inferences can
be made on these alone.
• Quantitative analyses can
be done by assigning real
numbers for diagram
components.
Energese
Generalized River System
Energese
Pesticide effects on aquatic ecosystems
Why Energy?
• Energy is the fundamental unit of work in the
universe.
• Nothing can be done or undone without energy.
• Therefore, any observations, at any level, can be
traced back to fundamental laws of energy.
• Psychology  Human behavior  Biology 
Chemistry  Physics  Energy
• Ecological Function  Biology  Chemistry 
Physics  Energy
Why Energy?
Levin, 1992. The Problem of Pattern and Scale in Ecology: Robert H.
MacArthur Award Lecture
• “One of the most
natural ways to describe
a community or an
ecosystem is in terms of
the trophic
relationships among
species, and the tangled
web that results.
(…;Odum, 1983;…)
Why Energy?
Reiss, Brown and Lane, 2009. Characteristic community structure of Florida’s
subtropical wetlands…
• …developed a Florida
wetland condition index
(FWCI) composed of
indicators of community
structure in the diatom,
macrophyte, and
macroinvertebrate
assemblages…
• The landscape development
intensity index (LDI) was
used to quantify the human
disturbance gradient
Why Energy?
Reiss, Brown and Lane, 2009. Characteristic community structure of Florida’s
subtropical wetlands…
• The underlying concept behind calculating
the LDI index, which quantifies the
nonrenewable energy use per unit area in
the surrounding landscape, stems from
earlier works by Odum (1996).”
• Changes in community structure can be
detected along a gradient of human land
use activities adjacent to wetland
ecosystems.
• Results suggested that the LDI index was
able to couple the disparate effects of
human landscape modification, such as
altered hydrology… or trampling/selective
herbivory …, into a single value, which was
assumed to be manifested by changes in
community composition.
Why Energy?
Odum, 2002. Explanations of ecological relationships with energy systems
concepts.
Lotka-Volterra predator
prey
Donalson and Nisbet
(1999) found interesting
time series when the
Lotka/Volterra
prey/predator model was
simulated with stochastic
births and deaths and a
spatial dimension.
Why Energy?
Odum, 2002. Explanations of ecological relationships with energy systems
concepts.
Lotka-Volterra predator prey
“However, models with
mean intrinsic rate of
reproduction constant are
models with unlimited
energy not valid in nature.
Adding stochastic variation
as if there is inherent
randomness is not realistic
either, if variation in the real
world comes from energy
constrained oscillations of
the smaller scale.”
Why Energy?
Odum, 2002. Explanations of ecological relationships with energy systems
concepts.
Species diversity with
latitude
“Some empirical equations
for the change in species
number with latitude and
with area were combined
by Lyons and Willig (2000)
and compared with
biogeographic data on
ranges of marsupials and
bats.”
Why Energy?
Odum, 2002. Explanations of ecological relationships with energy systems
concepts.
Species diversity with
latitude
less energy is available for
the mechanisms of species
interaction and niche
separation necessary to
prevent competitive
elimination.
The energy systems theory
finds the increase of energy
needed to support species
rising in proportion to the
inter-species interactions
(Odum and Pigeon, 1970;
Odum, 1971).
Why Energy?
Odum, 2002. Explanations of ecological relationships with energy systems
concepts.
Deer mice selective feeding
Morris and Davidson (2000)
tested three aspects of deer
mice behavior to see if their
feeding choices were
beneficial to reproductive
success
The mice chose areas with
more forest cover from
carnivores and minimized
their time and feeding effort
in less secure areas.
Why Energy?
Odum, 2002. Explanations of ecological relationships with energy systems
concepts.
Deer mice selective
feeding
An energy systems view
expects appropriate
populations of plant
food, prey, and predator
populations that keep
the whole system at
maximum performance.
Why Energy?
Odum, 2002. Explanations of ecological relationships with energy systems
concepts.
Galapagos Finches and El
Niño
Grant et al. (2000) showed
Galapagos finches adapting
their breeding efforts,
populations, and control of
arthropods, increasing in
years when higher sea
temperature produces higher
atmospheric vapor pressures,
cloud cover shading, lower
temperatures, and rain.
Why Energy?
Odum, 2002. Explanations of ecological relationships with energy systems
concepts.
Galapagos Finches and El
Niño
With the pulsing that favors
maximum power provided by
El Nino, the finch populations
contribute to ecosystem
performance by adjusting
their load and their services
to the cycle without
developing a destructive
prey/predator cycle.
Conclusions
• Odum saw energy as the primary control of ecological
function.
– All processes can be thought of as their role in the energy budget of a
system.
• "A whole generation of citizens thought that the carrying capacity of the earth
was proportional to the amount of land under cultivation and that higher
efficiencies in using the energy of the sun had arrived. This is a sad hoax, for
industrial man no longer eats potatoes made from solar energy, now he eats
potatoes partly made of oil.“ – H.T. Odum
• He presented novel ideas to the study of ecology.
– Many of these are controversial
• "I have played many roles sometimes with the majority, but more often
attempting to shock the scientific establishment into a better view.“
– H.T. Odum
– Many of them have been used with great success in applied ecology.
• "Nature has all the answers, so what is your question?“ – H.T. Odum
Why Energy?
Taylor, 1988. Technocratic Optimism, H.T. Odum and the Partial
Transformation of Ecological Metaphor after World War II.
“…Odum advanced
several suggestive
hypotheses about
biological communities
and the partitioning
of energy; for
example, that the
ratio of total
community production
to total community
respiration determined
the character of the
biological community.”
Why Energy?
Schneider and Kay, 1994. Complexity and Thermodynamics, Towards a New
Ecology
•
•
“One might think that ecologists study
ecosystems, but most scientists who call
themselves ecologists are students of
genetics, organisms, populations and
communities.”
“For instance, fisheries ecologists have
focused their research for years on
predator-prey interactions and only
recently have they attempted to integrate
parameters such as nutrients, water
temperature and regional oceanography
into their biologic models. It is a rare
ecologist who studies the function and
structure of whole ecosystems.”
•
However, our research and that of others
suggest that the search for simple causal
rules of ecosystem behaviour is futile. The
diversity-stability hypothesis of ecology is a
classic example of the kind of simple rule
that environmental managers seek. The
diversity-stability hypothesis arose from a
paper of MacArthur in which he proposed
that the diversity of a food web was a
measure of community stability.
•
Goodman” wrote a paper which
systematicatty examined the literature and
demonstrated clearly that there was no
scientific basis for the diversity-stability
hypothesis. However, it is still widely
believed that preserving species diversity is
crucial to maintaining the health of
ecosystems.3
Why Energy?
Patten, Straškraba and Jørgensen, 2011. Ecosystems Emerging. 5: Constraints.
Diversity
Behavior
“There is in ecological growth a paradox of constraint in
which components diversify but behavior narrows under
diminishing resource availability with maturation.”
Resources
Resources
Why Energy?
Patten, Straškraba and Jørgensen, 2011. Ecosystems Emerging. 5: Constraints.
“There is in ecological growth a paradox of constraint in
which components diversify but behavior narrows under
diminishing resource availability with maturation.”
“Eutrophic, resource-rich systems of early succession are
nutritionally less constrained and display correspondingly
less competition. In these, biodiversity is low (the
paradox).”
Why Energy?
Patten, Straškraba and Jørgensen, 2011. Ecosystems Emerging. 5: Constraints.
“There is in ecological growth a paradox of constraint in
which components diversify but behavior narrows under
diminishing resource availability with maturation.”
“Oligotrophic, resource-poor systems are nutrient
impoverished due to primary scarcity, fuller utilization,
sequestration, and other limiting processes. Constraint and
competition are high, and increased biodiversity reflects
increasing need to specialize. Examples include tropical
forests and coral reefs. Classic r- and K-selection of
population and community ecology capture these
observations...”
Why Energy?
Odum, 2002. Explanations of ecological relationships with energy systems
concepts.
Bird fleas
Tripet and Richner (1999)
found intra-specific
competition regulating
the concentrations of
bird fleas developing on
host birds (blue tits).
Why Energy?
Odum, 2002. Explanations of ecological relationships with energy systems
concepts.
Bird fleas
A stable parasite population did not
overload the birds physiology and
helped sustain the host
population’s role in the ecosystem.
However, larval fleas can be
considered virulent, in the sense
that increases in their population
density, growth rate, or efficiency
may reduce fitness components of
hosts, because larvae require
resources that only adults can
provide via feeding on host blood