Ecology 

(from Ancient Greek οἶκος (oîkos) 'house', and -λογία (-logía) 'study of')[A] is the study of the

relationships among living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology
considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level.
Ecology overlaps with the closely related sciences of biogeography, evolutionary
biology, genetics, ethology, and natural history. Ecology is a branch of biology, and it is not
synonymous with environmentalism.
Among other things, ecology is the study of:

 The abundance, biomass, and distribution of organisms in the context of the

environment
 Life processes, interactions, and adaptations
 The movement of materials and energy through living communities
 The successional development of ecosystems
 Cooperation, competition, and predation within and between species
 Patterns of biodiversity and its effect on ecosystem processes
Ecology has practical applications in conservation biology, wetland management, natural resource
management (agroecology, agriculture, forestry, agroforestry, fisheries, mining, tourism), urban
planning (urban ecology), community health, economics, basic and applied science, and human
social interaction (human ecology).
The word ecology (German: Ökologie) was coined in 1866 by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel.
The science of ecology as we know it today began with a group of American botanists in the 1890s.
[1]
 Evolutionary concepts relating to adaptation and natural selection are cornerstones of
modern ecological theory.
Ecosystems are dynamically interacting systems of organisms, the communities they make up, and
the non-living (abiotic) components of their environment. Ecosystem processes, such as primary
production, nutrient cycling, and niche construction, regulate the flux of energy and matter through
an environment. Ecosystems have biophysical feedback mechanisms that moderate processes
acting on living (biotic) and abiotic components of the planet. Ecosystems sustain life-supporting
functions and provide ecosystem services like biomass production (food, fuel, fiber, and medicine),
the regulation of climate, global biogeochemical cycles, water filtration, soil
formation, erosion control, flood protection, and many other natural features of scientific, historical,
economic, or intrinsic value.

Levels, scope, and scale of organization[edit]

Main article: Outline of ecology
The scope of ecology contains a wide array of interacting levels of organization spanning micro-level
(e.g., cells) to a planetary scale (e.g., biosphere) phenomena. Ecosystems, for example, contain
abiotic resources and interacting life forms (i.e., individual organisms that aggregate
into populations which aggregate into distinct ecological communities). Ecosystems are dynamic,
they do not always follow a linear successional path, but they are always changing, sometimes
rapidly and sometimes so slowly that it can take thousands of years for ecological processes to bring
about certain successional stages of a forest. An ecosystem's area can vary greatly, from tiny to
vast. A single tree is of little consequence to the classification of a forest ecosystem, but is critically
relevant to organisms living in and on it.[2] Several generations of an aphid population can exist over
the lifespan of a single leaf. Each of those aphids, in turn, supports diverse bacterial communities.
[3]
 The nature of connections in ecological communities cannot be explained by knowing the details of
each species in isolation, because the emergent pattern is neither revealed nor predicted until the
ecosystem is studied as an integrated whole.[4] Some ecological principles, however, do exhibit
collective properties where the sum of the components explain the properties of the whole, such as
birth rates of a population being equal to the sum of individual births over a designated time frame.[5]
The main subdisciplines of ecology, population (or community) ecology and ecosystem ecology,
exhibit a difference not only in scale but also in two contrasting paradigms in the field. The former
focuses on organisms' distribution and abundance, while the latter focuses on materials and energy
fluxes.[6]

Hierarchy