Hydrobiology

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hydrobiology (from ancient Greek ὕδωρ hydor , 'water', 'water', + biology ) is the science of the organisms ( living beings ) that live in water , especially as far as their specific biological adaptations are characterized by adaptation to the water environment . For example, the adaptation of plankton organisms to floating in open water as well as the adaptation of aquatic organisms to the food spectrum or the substrate conditions in the respective water body are contents of hydrobiology. But also methodological and technical aspects of the ecology of aquatic organisms, e.g. B. in the context of wastewater treatment , are described under the term. Most of the time, the term exclusively includes the biology of organisms from inland waters ( limnological organisms ) and only rarely that of marine organisms ( maritime organisms ).

Concept development

The term hydrobiology was used both scientifically and colloquially in the 20th century , but has always been defined differently narrowly or broadly. As a technical term , it is on the wane today. Textbooks with “hydrobiology” in their title mostly convey knowledge that falls within the scope of today's limnology , or else they focus on a special field (e.g. technical hydrobiology).

Typical and (formerly) widespread textbooks and method books included a. those by Ernst Hentschel (1923), Sergej Sernov (1958), Arno Wetzel (1969), Otto Klee (1985), Dietrich Uhlmann (1988) and Jürgen Schwoerbel (1994).

Current status

The content of hydrobiology in its current scientific form - which in many cases particularly emphasizes the ecosystem approach of the biology of water systems - is largely represented by the field of limnology , although some authors continue to emphasize semantic differences between the two terms and use the term hydrobiology (possibly still ) specifically.
An example of the said term change is the renaming founded in 1906 international scientific journal Archives of Hydrobiology in Fundamental and Applied Limnology ( Engl. , Literally, Fundamental and Applied Limnology ') as of 1 January 2007 ( E. Schweizerbart'sche Publishing house , Stuttgart).

Classical textbooks and method books in hydrobiology