The following abstract was retrieved from the above mentioned reference:Ecology is the study of animals and plants in their relations to each other and to their environment. The term oekologie (ecology) was coined in 1866 by the German biologist, Ernst Haeckel from the Greek oikos meaning "house" or "dwelling", and logos meaning "science" or "study"—thus, ecology is the "study of the household of nature”. Ecology is regarded as multidisciplinary so broad is its potential scope. But we need not, in defining it, get caught up in its ultimate complexity. Ecology incorporates and overlaps with many other disciplines in both the biological and physical sciences. Certainly on one level, there is no information about the natural environment that does not have some applicability to ecology. Ecology is both a biological and an environmental science, something that should certainly be evident from the definition provided above. Many environmental sciences are minimally concerned with biology (meteorology, for example) and others (environmental toxicology, for example) necessarily combine physical and biological sciences.