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Ecology overlaps with the closely related sciences of biogeography, evolutionary biology, genetics, ethology, and natural history. Ecology is a branch of biology, and is the study of abundance, biomass, and distribution of organisms in the context of the environment.
Ecology and Evolutionary biology in North America is based on research impact determined by the top 10% of ecology programs. The interactive web of organisms and environment are all part of what the field of Ecology explores. There have been studies in evolution that have worked to prove that "modern organisms have developed from ancestral ones."
To answer questions about niche differentiation, it is necessary for ecologists to be able to detect, measure, and quantify the niches of different coexisting and competing species. This is often done through a combination of detailed ecological studies, controlled experiments (to determine the strength of competition), and mathematical models .
Behavioral ecology, also spelled behavioural ecology, is the study of the evolutionary basis for animal behavior due to ecological pressures. Behavioral ecology emerged from ethology after Niko Tinbergen outlined four questions to address when studying animal behaviors: What are the proximate causes, ontogeny, survival value, and phylogeny of a behavior?
A common thread in many definitions of natural history is the inclusion of a descriptive component, as seen in a recent definition by H.W. Greene: "Descriptive ecology and ethology". [11] Several authors have argued for a more expansive view of natural history, including S. Herman, who defines the field as "the scientific study of plants and ...
Subadult male lion and female spotted hyena in the Masai Mara.The two species share the same ecological niche, and are thus in competition with each other. Interspecific competition, in ecology, is a form of competition in which individuals of different species compete for the same resources in an ecosystem (e.g. food or living space).
Ecosystem ecology is the integrated study of living and non-living components of ecosystems and their interactions within an ecosystem framework. This science examines how ecosystems work and relates this to their components such as chemicals , bedrock , soil , plants , and animals .
In evolutionary ecology, an ecotype, [note 1] sometimes called ecospecies, describes a genetically distinct geographic variety, population, or race within a species, which is genotypically adapted to specific environmental conditions.