A community usually refers to all the organisms within an area. We can also talk about a community of some type of organism, such as the community of rodents in a field in West Tennessee. We will look at factors affecting the numbers of species in communities later in this course. An ecosystem refers to all the organisms within an area and the abiotic factors that affect it. The final aspect of the definition of ecology that we started with is that ecology is a scientific study.
Scientific study means using the scientific method, which is discussed below.
It is important to consider this with regard to ecology because we get a lot of information about organisms and their environments in ways that are NOT scientific. For example, I like birds, and I like to go out birding to see how many different species I can observe in some area or time. An hypothesis is a plausible, testable explanation for some phenomenon observed in the natural world. It must be consistent with what is already known about the world, and it must be possible to take data in a repeatable, objective manner to test the hypothesis. These data must be taken in a repeatable way.