Mastering nature's harmony: Stephen Forbes and the roots of American ecology

As the founding director of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History, Stephen Alfred Forbes has long been recognized as a pivotal figure in ecology during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He has become renowned for his early articulation of animal interactions and the community concept. His 1887 essay, "The Lake as a Microcosm," has become a classic in the literature of ecology. His book, The Fishes of Illinois, stood as a standard reference in ichthyology for over 70 years. Moreover, his system-wide studies of the Illinois River laid the foundation for long-term ecological research on Illinois' principal stream.;Forbes's research forays into the diverse disciplines of ornithology, entomology, limnology, and ichthyology, may appear somewhat eclectic and unfocused. His food studies provide the unifying theme. Forbes's studies on the food relations of birds, insects, and fishes stimulated him to consider how organisms and population groups interact, a subject that had not received much attention prior to his work.;This dissertation illustrates how Forbes's food studies became the principal thread in his ecological research--research that began to draw notice in the 1870s, when his first food studies were published, and research that culminated with his twentieth-century work on ecology and pollution in the Illinois River.;Forbes's food studies emerged from his committee work in the state's horticultural society. His early attention on this committee to the "bird question" launched a research program that would expand to include community interactions among aquatic organisms, as well as theoretical inquiries in ecology and evolution. The food studies show how Forbes was able to cast applied-science problems into a more general pure-science framework. He often extended the results of his applied research on parochial problems in agriculture, for example, to their implications for larger questions in biology, such as evolutionary concerns. On the other hand, he consistently looked for ways in which theoretical biology might serve agriculture.;Organized as a scientific biography, this dissertation explores the development of Stephen Forbes's philosophy of nature, his institutional foundation, and his most significant contributions to the burgeoning discipline ecology.