Abstract
If the basilar concept of Ecology is the “Ecosystem” is this a desecrating title? The answer depends on considerations related to the challenges come up by Reality, which is complex, creative and needing freedom: these questions brought Galilean scientific method and Science to crisis and drove them towards a change of its fundamental principles, therefore to new scientific paradigms. That’s the reason of new biological disciplines, more available to study complex systems, e.g. epigenetics, agroecology, systemic medicine, bionomics, and environmental health. All of them, especially bionomics, underline the limits of ecology in studying complex systems: here the ambiguity of the concept of ecosystem, a reinterpretation of biodiversity and resilience and the completion of the Spectrum of Biological Organization on Earth are briefly enlightened.
Well, what’s Bionomics? It’s the new discipline investigating the Laws of Life on Earth as a hierarchical organization of complex systems, acting as living entities: so, it transforms many principles of traditional Ecology and confirms the preeminent importance of the systemic approach to correctly evaluate and care the Planetary Health, to which it gives a wide theoretical corpus. A short synthesis of some of the main aspects of Bionomics and Landscape Bionomics is given.
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- 1.
The ecocoenotope is the ecobiota, composed by the community, the ecosystem and the microchore (i.e. the spatial contiguity characters, sensu Zonneveld (1995: 51–59)).
- 2.
The landscape is a complex system of interacting ecocoenotopes (the “green row” in Fig. 6).
- 3.
Ecoregions and ecocoenotopes, definitions in Giglio (2002: 323–333).
- 4.
See also: E. Del Giudice, A. Tedeschi, Lo sviluppo spontaneo della conoscenza negli organismi viventi. Unità di funzione e struttura, “Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica”, CVI, pp. 537–544.
- 5.
In function of the minimum edible Kcal/day per capita [1/2 (male + female diet)]; the productive capacity (PRD) of the minimum field available to satisfy this energy for 1 year, taking into account the production of major agricultural crops; an appropriate safety factor for current disturbances; the need for natural and/or semi-natural protective vegetation for the cultivated patches (Ingegnoli 2015: 61–64).
- 6.
In the case of human populations (idem), we will have a SHHH, that is a SH referred to the human habitat (HH): SHHH = (HGL + PRD + RES + SBS + PRT)/N° of peoples [m2/inhabitant].
- 7.
Their metabolic data (biomass, gross primary production, respiration, B, R/GP, R/B) in Ingegnoli, 2002: 113.
- 8.
(About three times the minimum value of significance.)
- 9.
For the articulation of landscape pathologies, see (Ingegnoli 2015, Sect. 4.5:100–110).
- 10.
The landscape dysfunctions are correlated with the increase of mortality rate MR, independently from pollution. All the environmental alterations are registered as ‘stressors’ by a basilar ethological alarm process. So, bionomic landscape dysfunctions may attempt our health reducing our body defences. The risk factor in premature death can be elevated (Ingegnoli 2015: 110–115).
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Ingegnoli, V. (2019). Is Present Ecology a Systemic Discipline? New Scientific Paradigms Lead to Bionomics. In: Urbani Ulivi, L. (eds) The Systemic Turn in Human and Natural Sciences. Contemporary Systems Thinking. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00725-6_4
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