How does homeostasis relate to ecology?

Question

I think the relationship involves homeostatic mechanisms maintaining an organism's internal systems to ensure its survival in a changing environment but I was wondering if anyone had any other thoughts about the connection?

Answer 1

Homeostasis is one of the fundamental characteristics of living things. It refers to the maintenance of the internal environment within tolerable limits. All sorts of factors affect the suitability of our body fluids to sustain life; these include properties like temperature, salinity, acidity, and the concentrations of nutrients and wastes. Because these properties affect the chemical reactions that keep us alive, we have built-in physiological mechanisms to maintain them at desirable levels.
When a change occurs in the body, there are two general ways that the body can respond. In negative feedback, the body responds in such a way as to reverse the direction of change. Because this tends to keep things constant, it allows us to maintain homeostasis. On the other hand, positive feedback is also possible. This means that if a change occurs in some variable, the response is to change that variable even more in the same direction. This has a de-stabilizing effect, so it does not result in homeostasis. Positive feedback is used in certain situations where rapid change is desirable.

In disturbed ecosystems or sub-climax biological communities such as the island of Krakatoa, after its major erruption in 1883, the established stable homeostasis of the previous forest climax ecosystem was destroyed and all life eliminated from the island. Krakatoa, in the years after the erruption went through a sequence of ecological changes in which successive groups of new plant or animal species followed one another, leading to increasing biodiversity and eventually culminating in a re-established climax community. This ecological succession on Krakatoa occurred in a number of sereal stages, in which a sere is defined as "a stage in a sequence of events by which succession occurs". The complete chain of seres leading to a climax is called a prisere. In the case of Krakatoa, the island as reached its climax community with eight hundred different species being recorded in 1983, one hundred years after the erruption which cleared all life off the island. Evidence confirms that this number has been homeostatic for some time, with the introduction of new species rapidly leading to elimination of old ones.

The evidence of Krakatoa, and other disturbed or virgin ecosystems shows that the initial colonisation by pioneer or R strategy species occurs through positive feedback reproduction strategies, where species are weeds, producing huge numbers of possible offspring, but investing little in the success of any one. Rapid boom and bust plague or pest cycles are observed with such species. As an ecosystem starts to approach climax these species get replaced by more sophisticated climax species which through negative feedback, adapt themselves to specific environmental conditions. These species, closely controlled by carrying capacity, follow K strategies where species produce fewer numbers of potential offspring, but invest more heavily in securing the reproductive success of each one to the microenvironmental conditions of its specific ecological niche

Answer 2

Ecological Homeostasis

Answer 3

No not really every organism has to have some type of homeostasis. Other wise how does it regulate itself.