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Ecology is the study of plants and animals at home, that is to say, in their natural environment (from the Greek word oikos, a house). Evolutionary ecology is the branch of this subject that considers how organisms have evolved to become adapted to their environment, including in this term their interactions with members of their own and other species (the biotic environment) as well as the physical environment; it examines the selective pressures imposed by the environment and the evolutionary response to these pressures. Darwin (1859) proposed natural selection as a unifying principle to explain two things: the transmutation of species and the adaptation of organisms to their environment. Evolutionary ecology takes the second of these as its field of study. Its aim is to explain, in the light of current knowledge, 'how the innumerable species inhabiting this world have been modified, so as to acquire that perfection of structure and coadaptation that most justly excites our admiration.'- Michael Bulmer -
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