Ecology

Ecology (from Greek: οἶκος, oikos, "house, household, housekeeping, or living relations" ; -λογία, -logia, "study of") is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the interactions between organisms and the interactions of these organisms with their environment.[1]

Like many of the natural sciences, however, a conceptual understanding of ecology is found in the broader details of study, including:

life processes explaining adaptations
distribution and abundance of organisms
the flux of materials and energy through living communities
the successional development of ecosystems, and
the abundance and distribution of biodiversity in context of the environment.[1][2][3]
Ecology is concerned with the web or network of relations among organisms at different scales of organization. Ecology is also distinguished from natural history, which deals primarily with the descriptive study of organisms. Ecologists are scientists that study ecosystems. Ecosystems are real places (a pond, field, forest, etc.) or they can be conceptually abstract schemes showing the direction and quantified amounts of energy and resources flowing through a system or network of relations.[4][5]

Ecology has many practical applications in conservation biology, wetland management, natural resource management (agriculture, forestry , fisheries), city planning (urban ecology), community health, economics, basic & applied science and it provides a conceptual framework for understanding and researching human social interaction (human ecology).[6][7][8][9] Ecosystems also provide a host of goods and services often without market value[10]. Broad examples include:

regulating (climate, floods, nutrient balance, water filtration)
provisioning (food, medicine, fur)
cultural (science, spiritual, ceremonial, recreation, aesthetic)
supporting (nutrient cycling, phyosynthesis, soil formation).[11][2]
Ecology is often misused as a synonym for environment, but it differs from environmental studies, for example, because it is one of the few academic disciplines dedicated to holism.[12] The environment describes all factors and scales of study that are external to an organism, including abiotic factors such as temperature, radiation, light, chemistry, climate and geology, and biotic factors, including genes, cells, organisms, members of the same species (conspecifics) and other species that share a habitat.[13]