- Humans have always had an interest in other organisms and their environment - Biopics factors are all of the organisms in the area and the living component of the environment - abiotic factors are the environments no living components - include chemical and physical factors such as temperature, light, water, minerals, and air - habitat: the specific environment an organism lives in - organismal ecology - population ecology - addresses populations groups of individuals living within the same geographic environment - community ecology - concerned with communities all the organisms the inhabit a particular area - focuses on the interactions between specifies and how that affects the community’s structure and organization - ecosystem - is concerned with ecosystems all the abiotic factors in addition to the community of species within a geographic area - biosphere - all the living organisms and their environment, the global ecosystem which is the sum of all the planets ecosystems and where life is and how it lives - biome - a major terrestrial and aquatic life source and environmetn - aquatic biome - freshwater biome - marine biomes - terrestrial biome -