Ecology is a branch of biology that studies the relations between living beings it's the environment where they live, as well as the influence that each exerts over the other.
The word "Ökologie" is derived from the addition of the Greek terms “oikos”, which means “home” and “logos”, which means “study”. It was created by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel to designate the science that studies the relationships between living beings and the environment. At first a scientific term of restricted use, it fell into common language in the 1960s, with the movements of an environmentalist character.
The main fields of study and research into which Ecology is divided are: Autoecology, Demoecology (Dynamics of Populations), Synecology (Community Ecology), Agroecology, Ecophysiology (Environmental Ecology) and Macroecology.
The concept of Human Ecology designates the scientific study of the relationship between men and the environment, including natural conditions, interactions and economic, psychological, social and cultural.
The preservation and conservation of the natural environment of different species are concepts of great importance when it comes to the relationship between man and the biosphere.
ecological interactions
In the Ecology course, the processes, dynamics and interactions between all living beings in an ecosystem are studied. Ecological interactions are characterized by the benefit of both living beings (harmonics) or by the harm of a of them (disharmonious) and can occur between beings of the same species (intraspecific) or different species (interspecific).
Harmonic intraspecific relationships: society (organization of individuals of the same species) and colony (grouping of individuals of the same species with degrees of dependence on each other);
Disharmonic intraspecific relationships: cannibalism and intra- and interspecific competitions (natural selection). They are relationships between equal species, but there is damage to at least one of the sides.
Harmonic interspecific relationships: mutualism (or symbiosis), protocooperation, teninism (or epibiosis) and commensalism;
Disharmonious interspecific relationships: amensalism (or antibiosis), herbivory, predatism, parasitism and intra- and interspecific slavery.
