Ecology is the study of the relationship between organisms and their environment.
Ecology includes or is a blending of a number of disciplines and philosophies, which are not always in agreement with each other, including physiology, genetics, chemistry, physics, climatology, geology, geography, sociology, economics, and evolution and speciation. The modern study of biology began with naturalists like Linnaeus and Darwin who observed the world around them and recorded what they saw. Initially, plant and animal ecology each went their own ways, often ignoring or even disagreeing with each other. In 1914, Victor Shelford, who studied animal ecology, was the first person to stress the importance of the relationships between plants and animals and the idea of ecology as a study of communities of organisms. A. G. Tansley took Shelford's ideas one step farther when he said that plants and animals are components of a system that also includes physical factors that affect or shape the system.