Ecology is a systematic study of interactions between organisms and their environments. This scientific study could be carried out using three approaches. They are:
• Observation: It involves asking investigative questions. Such questions could be simple or complex. This approach serves as the primary source of information and also a pre-design for the experiment.
• Experimentation: Ecologists may perform experiments to study ecological interactions. Such experiments can be performed inside laboratory as controlled experiments or as the field study (uncontrolled experiments).
• Modeling: Some ecological events occur at fast pace, whereas some may even take decades. Unless a model is prepared of the available data, it is difficult to understand the pattern of the raw information. Models help in easy interpretation of the information.