disciplines of ecology

Ecology is a broad discipline comprising many sub-disciplines. A common, broad classification, moving from lowest to highest complexity, where complexity is defined as the number of entities and processes in the system under study, is:

• ecophysiology and Behavioral ecology examine adaptations of the individual to its environment.
• autecology studies the dynamics of populations of a single species.
• community ecology (or synecology) focuses on the interactions between species within an ecological community.
• ecosystem ecology studies the flows of energy and matter through the biotic and abiotic components of ecosystems.
• landscape ecology examines processes and relationship across multiple ecosystems or very large geographic areas.

Ecology can also be sub-divided according to the species of interest into fields such as animal ecology, plant ecology, insect ecology, and so on. Another frequent method of subdivision is by biome studied, e.g., Arctic ecology (or polar ecology), tropical ecology, desert ecology, etc. The primary technique used for investigation is often used to subdivide the discipline into groups such as chemical ecology, genetic ecology, field ecology, statistical ecology, theoretical ecology, and so forth. These fields are not mutually exclusive; one could be a theoretical plant community ecologist, or a polar ecologist interested in animal genetics.

This article is based on a GNU FDL Ecology Wikia article: Ecology

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