Biological Science: Branches of Study and Educational Approaches

Biological science, or biology, encompasses all scientific studies that somehow involve life and living things, present and past. It includes all the different kinds of creatures, like birds (ornithology), bees and other insects (entomology), fish (ichthyology), mammals (mammalogy), and reptiles (herpetology). It has a field for animals in general (zoology), as well as plants (botany), fungi (mycology), and bacteria and other microbes (microbiology). It includes studies of how individual organisms tick - anatomy and physiology, cell biology, molecular biology. There's how they reproduce - genetics, developmental biology. There's how they interact with each other - ecology, evolution. There are branches of biological science that cross with the other four branches of natural science - biochemistry, biophysics, paleontology, and astrobiology - and medicine.

In the articles below, learn about biological science in general, the individual branches of biology, approaches in scientific study and education, and more.