At the organism
level, biology has partially explained phenomena such as birth, growth, aging, death and decay of living organisms, similarities between offspring and their
parents (heredity)
and flowering of plants which have puzzled humanity throughout
history. Other phenomena, such as lactation, metamorphosis, egg-hatching, healing,
and tropism have been addressed. On a wider scale of time and space,
biologists have studied domestication of animals and plants, the wide variety of living organisms (biodiversity),
changes in living organisms over many generations (evolution), extinction, speciation, social
behaviour among animals, etc.
While botany encompasses the study of plants, zoology is the branch of science that is concerned about the study of
animals and anthropology is the branch of biology which studies human beings. However, at
the molecular scale, life is studied in the disciplines of molecular
biology, biochemistry,
and molecular
genetics. More fundamental than these fields is biophysics
which deals with energy within biological systems. At the next
level, that of the cell,
it is studied in cell
biology. At the multicellular scale, it is examined in physiology, anatomy,
and histology. Developmental
biology studies life at the level of an individual organism's
development or ontogeny.
Moving up the scale towards more than one organism, genetics considers how heredity works between parent and offspring. Ethology considers the behaviour of organisms in their natural environment. Population
genetics looks at the level of an entire population,
and systematics considers the multi-species scale of lineages.
Interdependent populations and their habitats are examined in ecology and evolutionary
biology. A speculative new field is astrobiology (or xenobiology), which examines the possibility of life beyond
the Earth. Biology -
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