Population Growth Background Information Ecology is a branch of scientific study that investigates the complex series of actions and interactions that take place between organisms and their environment. Even with modern high speed super computers, and a simple ecosystem, it is almost impossible to unravel all the millions of possible interactions between each individual creature, each other individual creature and each element in their environment.
Ecosystems contain to many entities and interactions for easy study.
Within ecosystems, however, it is possible to recognize simpler levels of organization. Communities consist of the members of two or more species of organisms, living in the same geographic area and somehow overlapping with one another. For example, squirrels live near trees. In a northern hardwood forest squirrels live in and on oak trees where they build their nests and collect acorns. The squirrel and the oak tree have a relationship.