Other forms: ecologists
An ecologist is a scientist who studies living things and their surroundings. A marine ecologist, ask an ecologist, ecologists warn.
The job is about relationships rather than single species, so an ecologist counts what eats what. The word is also used loosely for a campaigner, which annoys the scientists.
1nounecologistA scientist who studies living things and their surroundings.
“An ecologist was called in before the drainage work began.”
ecologist is a scientist.
Eco- comes from Greek oikos, a house or household, so an ecologist studies the household of living things.
From eco + logist. The less common sense “environmentalist” might be from association with deep ecology, or influenced by Romance-language equivalents such as Spanish ecologista (“environmentalist”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA