Charles Sutherland Elton

Charles Sutherland Elton (29 March 1900 – 1 May 1991) was an English zoologist and animal ecologist. His name is associated with the establishment of modern population and community ecology, including studies of invasive organisms.

Life and career

Charles Elton was born in Manchester as son of the literary scholar Oliver Elton and children's writer Letitia Maynard Elton (née MacColl). He was educated at Liverpool College and Oxford University, from which he graduated in zoology in 1922, and where he subsequently had his entire academic career. Elton's professional goal was to turn natural history into the science of ecology by applying the scientific method to study the lives of animals in their natural habitats and their interactions with the environment. In 1921, while still an undergraduate, he was assistant to Julian Huxley on an expedition to Spitsbergen. Here, he made an ecological survey of Arctic vertebrates, a project he continued on three subsequent Arctic expeditions in 1923, 1924, and 1930. His Arctic experience led to a consultancy with the Hudson's Bay Company, 1926-1931, which enabled him to study fluctuations in the populations of animal species of interest to the fur trade. Later, he undertook similar studies on British mouse and vole populations. In 1932, Elton established the Bureau of Animal Population at Oxford, which became a centre for the collection of data on fluctuations in animal populations. In the same year, the Journal of Animal Ecology was founded and Elton became its first editor. In 1936, he was appointed reader in animal ecology at the Oxford University and Corpus Christi College elected him a senior research fellow. During the Second World War the Bureau of Animal Population was given the task to find efficient methods for the control of rats, mice and rabbits by the Agricultural Research Council. After the Second World War, Elton started a 20-year survey of animals and their interrelationships on Oxford University's Wytham estate, including animals in meadows, woods and water. After his retirement, he did some studies in tropical America. He held a great interest in nature conservation and problems in management of nature reserves and he was instrumental in establishing the Nature Conservancy Council in 1949. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1953 and received the society’s Darwin Medal in 1970.

Intellectual heritage

In 1927, Elton published his now classic book Animal Ecology. This book outlines the important principles of ecological studies of animal behaviour and life history, such as food chains, the size of food items, the ecological niche and the concept of a pyramid of numbers as a method of representing the structure of an ecosystem in terms of feeding relationships. In later works on the niche theory, Elton’s definition – the Eltonian niche – in terms of functional attributes of organisms (or its position in the trophic net), has been viewed by some authors as opposed to Joseph Grinnell’s earlier definition emphasizing states of the environment suitable for the species. However, others have argued that there are more similarieties than dissimilarities between the two versions of the niche concept.

After the Second World War, Elton became much concerned with the impact of invasive species on natural ecosystems. His 1958 book The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants founded invasion ecology as a separate sub-discipline.

Bibliography

• Animal Ecology – 1st edn 1927, Sidgwick and Jackson, London. Reprinted several times, e.g. 2001 by The University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-20639-4

2nd edn The ecology of animals, 1946, Methuen, London.

• The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants - 1958, Methuen, London. Reprinted 2000 by The University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-20638-6
• The Pattern of Animal Communities – 1st edn 1966, Methuen, London. 2nd edn 1979, Chapman & Hall, London. ISBN 0-412-21880-1

References

Links

• Fifty years of invasion ecology – the legacy of Charles Elton, Special Issue from Diversity and Distribution, Published March 2008.
• Fifty years of invasion ecology – the legacy of Charles Elton, Symposium 12 - 14 November 2008, hosted by DST-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.