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Changes to other subjects intended to make them more popular with girls have
seen little in the way of improving the long-term gender balance.
3 Elements of the Ecological Method
Townsend, Harper and Begon [20] suggest that two key biological principles exem-
plify the concepts of ecology:
Organisms behave in ways that optimise the balance between their energy
expenditure and the satisfaction they obtain.
Organisms operate within a competitive environment that ensures only the
most efficient of them will survive [3].
Using the principles of ecology to analyse complex situations means more than just
trying to find a correspondence or a metaphor between the situation and the ecologi-
cal entity. In ecology it has been found useful to make distinctions between organ-
isms, resources and the environment in which these organisms must prosper or die,
and there are simple principles that underlie the success or failure of organisms
within an environment. Habitat, ecological niches, the exploitation of resources in
predator-prey interactions, competition, and multi-species communities [21, 22] are
all important considerations in ecology [3]. These principles, however, are also
found to be useful in analysing other complex situations that do not necessarily
involve biological entities. The first step in an ecological analysis requires us to
identify several different entities:
Those things that cannot be changed by the organisms (actors) we will call the
environment .
Those things that are consumed by the organisms but are unable to influence
these organisms, except by their consumption, we will call resources .
Those things that are able to consume resources and interact with each other,
and which may prosper or die over time we will call the organisms .
When seeking to explain the success or failure of an organism we will look for inter-
actions between the organism, its environment and the resources available. There are
several principles found in biologically ecologies that are common to other complex
situations:
Organisms can prosper if they find a niche in the environment that particularly
suits them.
Organisms prosper when they use the least energy to obtain the greatest
response.
Organisms can prosper by being cooperative with other organisms in the envi-
ronment.
Organisms can prosper through competitive behaviour with other organisms
and environments.
An ecosystem is a highly complex entity due to the large number of living things
inhabiting it, and to the variety of interactions possible between each of these [15].
We will look for these ecological principles within the history of our case.
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