There is often much confusion when it comes to describing things associated with our natural surroundings. The words Ecology, Ecosystem and Environment are often used in the wrong context.

The word Ecology comes from the Greek:
'oikos' = house
'logos' = study of

Ecology is the study of the interrelationships of plants, animals, and the environment. Sometimes the word ecology has been misused as a synonym for environment. The word ecology is believed to have been used and defined by Ernst Haeckel, in 1869. The roots of ecology are not only in natural history, but also physiology, oceanography, and evolution as well. Ecology is divided into terrestrial ecology, fresh-water ecology (limnology), and marine ecology, or into population ecology, community ecology, and ecosystem ecology.

The Environment is all the external conditions and factors, living and nonliving (chemicals and energy), that affect an organism or other specified system during its lifetime. An Ecosystem is a community of different species interacting with the chemical and physical factors making up its nonliving environment.

Organisms are classified according to their function in the environment. Autotrophs (self-nourishers, also called producers), are green plants, which manufacture their own food from carbon dioxide, water, minerals, and sunlight. Heterotrophs (a wide assortment of organisms) cant synthesize their own food and must obtain it from other sources. Herbivores eat plants, and carnivores (predators) eat animals. Omnivores, eat both plants and animals. Scavengers, eat large dead organisms. Decomposers, such as bacteria and fungi, feed on dead organisms. Parasites eat living organisms, but, unlike predators, do not devour them at one time. Parasites include forms such as ticks and fleas, which live on their hosts, and others, such as tapeworms, roundworms, and bacteria, which live within their hosts.

Organisms live together in assemblages called communities. Some communities are small, such as invertebrates and decomposers living within a rotting log. Others may be as large as an entire forest. The most extensive communities, called Biomes, occupy wide geographic areas. The major biomes are arctic tundras, northern coniferous forests, deciduous forests, grasslands, deserts, and tropical jungles and rainforests.Chapparals (shrubby forests) and coniferous rain forests are sometimes also considered biomes. The distinctive appearance of each biome is generally determined by the predominance of characteristic plant species, but the animals that are characteristically associated with it also contribute to its distinctiveness.

Nature is not only more complex than we think, but more complex than we can ever think.