Ecology
Ecology (from Greek oîkos, "house"; -λογία, -
logos, study of) is the interdisciplinary sci-
entific study of the distribution and abund-
ance of organisms and their interactions with
their environment.[1] The environment of an
organism includes all external factors, includ-
ing abiotic ones such as climate and geology,
and biotic factors, including members of the
same species (conspecifics) and other species
that share a habitat.[2] If the general life sci-
ence of biology is viewed as a hierarchy of
levels of organization, from molecular pro-
cesses, to cells, tissues and organs, and fi-
nally to the individual, the population and the
ecosystem, then the study of the latter three
levels belongs within the purview of ecology.
Examples of objects of ecological study in-
clude: Population processes, including repro-
ductive behavior, mortality, bioenergetics
and migrations,
interspecific
interactions
such as predation, competition, parasitism
and mutualism, plant and animal community
structures and their function and resilience,
and biogeochemical cycling. Because of its
vast scope, ecological science is often closely
related to other disciplines. Thus, molecular
ecology addresses ecological questions using
tools from genetics, paleoecology uses tools
from archeology, and theoretical ecologists
use often highly complex mathematical mod-
els to explore how ecosystems and their ele-
ments function.
Aside from pure scientific inquiry, ecology
is also a highly applied science. Much of nat-
ural resource management, such as forestry,
fisheries, wildlife management and habitat
conservation is directly related to ecological
sciences and many problems in agriculture,
urban development and public health are in-
formed by ecological considerations.
The term "ecology" has also been appro-
priated for philosophical ideologies like social
ecology and deep ecology and is sometimes
used as a synonym for the natural environ-
ment or environmentalism. Likewise "ecolo-
gical" is often taken in the sense of environ-
mentally