.

1956. Lotka's 1925 work Elements Of Physical Biology gains a new audience when it is reissued as Elements of Mathematical Biology. This book contains the theoretical basis for much of modern ecology, as it covers issues such as evolutionary change, biogeochemical cycles, growth and reproduction, interspecies equilibrium, energy balance, the operations of the senses and the function of consciousness.

1957. Howard T. (Tom) Odum measures primary production in a number of freshwater spring communities of Florida. he characterizes the transfer of carbon between tropic levels with the goal of understanding how energy move through an ecosystem.

1958. Charles Elton publishes The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants, which becomes the classic text of invasion biology. he concludes that s

implified food webs such as monocultures seem to be more vulnerable to invaders than complex ones, probably because they offer greater opportunity to establish new niches. this implies that greater biodiversity tends to produce greater stability.

1958. the oceanographer Charles Keeling begins his decades-long record of earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, as measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii and other locations. he becomes the first to confirm definitively the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide by means of a data set now known as the "Keleling curve"