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From General Ecology to Bionomics

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Environmental Alteration Leads to Human Disease

Part of the book series: Sustainable Development Goals Series ((SDGS))

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Abstract

Background: The necessity to follow a new scientific paradigm (shifting from reductionism to systemic complexity) leads to the emergence of a new concept of life, not centered on the organism, but on the entire “biological spectrum.” Limits to traditional ecology have emerged yet, and the aim of this chapter is mainly to present an upgrading ecological discipline.

Theory and Method: Bio-hierarchical systems interact and govern Culture, but men do not respect nature. This violence against nature damages human health, so biologists must upgrade traditional ecology to rehabilitate our environment following the System Theory. Thus, Ingegnoli proposed the Bionomics discipline and the Landscape Bionomics or biological-integrated Landscape Ecology. A synthesis of the main concepts is presented: the complete Biological Spectrum, Structures, and State Functions, Diagnostic Evaluation, Vegetation Science and Agroecology, Territorial Governance, and Planning and role of Urban and suburban Parks.

Findings: Observe that epigenetics confirms bionomics principles, allowing a crucial linkage between genomic scale and environment, enhancing the interrelations among space-time-information scales and the possibility to deepen the relationships between environmental health and human health. The etiology due to environmental stress assumes vast importance.

Discussion and Conclusion: Landscape syndromes damage human health independently from pollution, and this changes the relations between Bionomics/Ecology and Medicine. Even medicine doctors should have a formation on landscape bionomics, at least who is interested in Public Health and Planetary Health.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    BTC = Biological Territorial Capacity of vegetation. See Sect. 3.3.1

  2. 2.

    Going on within the chapter, the old reductionist term “territory” will be substituted by the upgraded concept of “landscape,” to be intended as the real living complex system at the Spatio-temporal scale of the territory.

  3. 3.

    Remember that the ecocoenotope is a multifunctional entity in a definite geographic locality: it is the “tessera” of the underlying mosaic of an ecotissue.

  4. 4.

    Ecoregions and ecocoenotopes, definitions in (Giglio 2011, 2015)

  5. 5.

    Excellent: about three times the minimum value of significance for a sample of 45 elements.

  6. 6.

    For the articulation of landscape pathologies, see (Ingegnoli 2015), Sec. 4.5, pp. 100–110.

  7. 7.

    Remembering the well-known relationships among gross productivity, net productivity, and respiration in vegetation systems, the development of a vegetation community may be synthesized in (a) the growing phases from young-adult to maturity, expressed by an exponential process; (b) the growing phase from maturity toward old age, expressed by a logarithmic process (Ingegnoli 2002, 2011a, 2015).

  8. 8.

    Efficiency relates the maturity level (MtL) of a vegetation coenosis and its bionomic quality (bQ). It is fundamental for the comparison among different types of vegetation.

  9. 9.

    A more in-depth discussion in (Ingegnoli 2015, Chap. 10)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Vittorio Ingegnoli

  2. PHA (Planetary Health Alliance, member of), Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Vittorio Ingegnoli & Elena Giglio

  3. SIPNEI (It. Soc. of Psycho-Neuro-Endocrine-Immunology), Rome, Italy

    Vittorio Ingegnoli

  4. Environmental Science: man and the environment in the Appennine, PhD, Teacher of Geography at High School, Milan, Italy

    Elena Giglio

Authors
  1. Vittorio Ingegnoli
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  2. Elena Giglio
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Correspondence to Vittorio Ingegnoli .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Science & Policy, University of Milan, Milano, Milano, Italy

    Vittorio Ingegnoli

  2. Department of Experimental Medicine “Sapienza”, Laboratory of Seminology, Bank of Semen “Loredana Gandini”, University of Roma, Roma, Roma, Italy

    Francesco Lombardo

  3. Public Health and Infectious Diseases, Sapienza University of Rome, Roma, Roma, Italy

    Giuseppe La Torre

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Ingegnoli, V., Giglio, E. (2022). From General Ecology to Bionomics. In: Ingegnoli, V., Lombardo, F., La Torre, G. (eds) Environmental Alteration Leads to Human Disease . Sustainable Development Goals Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83160-8_3

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