Ecology (disciplines)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ecology is a broad biological science and can thus be divided into many sub-disciplines using various criteria. For example, one such categorization, based on overall complexity (from the least complex to the most), is:

• Behavioral ecology, which studies the ecological and evolutionary basis for animal behavior, focusing largely at the level of the individual;
• Population ecology (or autecology), which deals with the dynamics of populations within species, and the interactions of these populations with environmental factors;
• Community ecology (or synecology) which studies the interactions between species within an ecological community;
• Ecosystem ecology, which studies how flows of energy and matter interact with biotic elements of ecosystems;

Ecology can also be classified on the basis of:

• the primary kinds of organism under study, e.g. animal ecology, plant ecology, insect ecology;

• the biomes principally studied, e.g. forest ecology, grassland ecology, desert ecology, benthic ecology;

• the geographic or climatic area, e.g. arctic ecology, tropical ecology

• the spatial scale under consideration, e.g. molecular ecology, macroecology, landscape ecology;

Specialized branches of ecology include, among others:

• applied ecology, the practice of employing ecological principles and understanding to solve real world problems (includes agroecology and conservation biology);
• biogeochemistry, effect of biota on global chemistry, and the cycles of matter and energy that transport the Earth's chemical components in time and space.
• biogeography, the study of the geographic distributions of species ;
• chemical ecology, which deals with the ecological role of biological chemicals used in a wide range of areas including defense against predators and attraction of mates;
• conservation ecology, which studies how to reduce the risk of species extinction;
• ecological succession, which focuses on understanding directed vegetation change;
• ecophysiology which studies the interaction of physiological traits with the abiotic environment;
• ecotoxicology, which looks at the ecological role of toxic chemicals (often pollutants, but also naturally occurring compounds);
• evolutionary ecology or ecoevolution which looks at evolutionary changes in the context of the populations and communities in which the organisms exist;
• fire ecology, which looks at the role of fire in the environment of plants and animals and its effect on ecological communities;
• functional ecology, the study of the roles, or functions, that certain species (or groups thereof) play in an ecosystem;
• global ecology, which examines ecological phenomena at the largest possible scale, addressing macroecological questions;
• landscape ecology, which studies the interactions between discrete elements of a landscape;
• macroecology, the study of large scale phenomena;
• marine ecology, and aquatic ecology, where the dominant environmental milieu is water;
• microbial ecology, the ecology of micro-organisms;
• microecology, the study of small scale phenomena;
• paleoecology, which seeks to understand the relationships between species in fossil assemblages;
• restoration ecology, which attempts to understand the ecological basis needed to restore impaired or damaged ecosystems;
• soil ecology, the ecology of the pedosphere;
• theoretical ecology, the development of ecological theory, usually with mathematical, statistical and/or computer modeling tools;
• urban ecology, the study of ecosystems in urban areas.

Ecology also plays important roles in many inter-disciplinary fields:

• ecological design and ecological engineering.
• ecological economics.
• festive ecology.
• human ecology and ecological anthropology.
• social ecology, ecological health and environmental psychology.

Finally, ecology has also inspired (and lent its name to) other non-biological disciplines such as

• industrial ecology.
• software ecology and information ecology.