<P> Elaborate sexual displays and posturing are encountered in the behavioural ecology of animals . The birds - of - paradise, for example, sing and display elaborate ornaments during courtship . These displays serve a dual purpose of signalling healthy or well - adapted individuals and desirable genes . The displays are driven by sexual selection as an advertisement of quality of traits among suitors . </P> <P> Cognitive ecology integrates theory and observations from evolutionary ecology and neurobiology, primarily cognitive science, in order to understand the effect that animal interaction with their habitat has on their cognitive systems and how those systems restrict behavior within an ecological and evolutionary framework . "Until recently, however, cognitive scientists have not paid sufficient attention to the fundamental fact that cognitive traits evolved under particular natural settings . With consideration of the selection pressure on cognition, cognitive ecology can contribute intellectual coherence to the multidisciplinary study of cognition ." As a study involving the' coupling' or interactions between organism and environment, cognitive ecology is closely related to enactivism, a field based upon the view that "...we must see the organism and environment as bound together in reciprocal specification and selection ...". </P> <P> Social ecological behaviours are notable in the social insects, slime moulds, social spiders, human society, and naked mole - rats where eusocialism has evolved . Social behaviours include reciprocally beneficial behaviours among kin and nest mates and evolve from kin and group selection . Kin selection explains altruism through genetic relationships, whereby an altruistic behaviour leading to death is rewarded by the survival of genetic copies distributed among surviving relatives . The social insects, including ants, bees, and wasps are most famously studied for this type of relationship because the male drones are clones that share the same genetic make - up as every other male in the colony . In contrast, group selectionists find examples of altruism among non-genetic relatives and explain this through selection acting on the group; whereby, it becomes selectively advantageous for groups if their members express altruistic behaviours to one another . Groups with predominantly altruistic members beat groups with predominantly selfish members . </P> <P> Ecological interactions can be classified broadly into a host and an associate relationship . A host is any entity that harbours another that is called the associate . Relationships within a species that are mutually or reciprocally beneficial are called mutualisms . Examples of mutualism include fungus - growing ants employing agricultural symbiosis, bacteria living in the guts of insects and other organisms, the fig wasp and yucca moth pollination complex, lichens with fungi and photosynthetic algae, and corals with photosynthetic algae . If there is a physical connection between host and associate, the relationship is called symbiosis . Approximately 60% of all plants, for example, have a symbiotic relationship with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi living in their roots forming an exchange network of carbohydrates for mineral nutrients . </P>

Who gave the word ecology its current broad meaning