[Demography and human ecology].

At the end of the 19th century the German biologist Ernest Haekel was the first scientist to use the term ecology, which was defined as the study of relationships of organisms or groups of organisms with the environment and indicated the interdependence of the living world, including plants, animals, and humans. This concept also indicates a continuous process of adaptation of organisms to their external environment. The basic concepts of scientific ecology, which developed at the end of the 19th century, can be attributed to Darwin: the relationships between living beings and the notion of the process of adaptation to their environment. The term human ecology appeared in the early 1920s. Human ecology embodies fundamental ideas: biotype, habitat, community, biocenosis, ecosystem, biomass, interchange and equilibrium, and circulation of energy. The accumulated knowledge about human ecology is broken down using the criteria of topography (ecology of humid forests, deserts, lakes, etc.); followed by the appearance of species; and the variants of classical division: auto ecology (influence of external factors on living beings) and sinecology (the study of groups of associated organisms, i.e., natural, animal, and vegetation communities). The species are considered on the basis of equality or sinecology (all of them have the same interests), while in human ecology a species is determined by its relation to a reference group--autoecology or anthropocentric ecology. In 1911, J. Thompson bridged the gap between biological knowledge and social sciences; in 1921, H. Barrows identified human ecology as a component of geography; in 1925, L. Bernard presented the classification of ecosystems; and in 1936, Ezra Park published his work, Human Ecology, followed in 1945 by the emergence of the Chicago school. Demography and human ecology are intimately connected because population is the result of natural and migratory movements, therefore the two sciences require a methodology that integrates the dynamics of biocultural interactions.