There is a very good answer to a similar question given by another Blurter - you can find it here. Especially, ecology is a very important subject in our times because it helps us to understand the effect that our actions can have on our environment and what steps we can take to preserve it - something we badly need to know.
Ecology is a branch of environmental science. It is a fairly new science that has developed since the term ecology was first coined by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel in the 1860s.
The word actually means 'understanding home' and the science seeks to study and understand how living organisms live and relate to their physical surroundings. These surroundings include other members of the same species, organisms from different species and also the non-living, physical components such as rocks and water.
Ecologists study how animals and plants live together and how they adapt to changes in their natural surroundings. An example of a relatively simple ecological study would be monitoring changes in a garden pond over the course of a year, through the different seasons. An ecologist would look at how the main animal and plant species interacted and how they lived and survived the changes in temperature and water level as the year went on.
Ecology is the study of the interactions between organisms and their environment. The term oekologie was coined in 1866 by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel; and the word is derived from Greek.
Ecology is usually considered a branch of biology, the general science that studies living organisms. The word 'ecology' is often used in common parlance as a synonym for the natural environment or environmentalism.
Ecologists are people that study the interactions between organisms and their environment within food webs or other ecological relationships.
Ecology is a broad discipline comprised of many sub-disciplines. There are several branches to ecology such as physiological ecology, population ecology, community ecology, ecosystem ecology, landscape ecology, etc.
Various different species living in the same place, interacting amongst themselves and with their environment together form an ecosystem. Within an ecosystem there are several food webs. A food web is an overview of which species in an environment consume which species. A healthy ecosystem has a variety of organisms that play different roles in various food chains. If the ecosystem loses one of its members, it can be crippled.
