Definition of "autecology" []

• The branch of ecology that deals with the biological relationship between an individual organism or an individual species and its environment. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Accelerating research on the sustainability of forestry operations in the basin (including autecology – the characteristics of individual species, the life history of commercial species, regeneration dynamics)."
• "On the life history and autecology of North Atlantic rorquals."
• "The term for what he favors is autecology, embracing an imperative to learn the ways of the creature itself, and the immediate relationships that connect it to its place, before drawing conclusions about the overall structure of the community to which the creature belongs."