Inspired by this comic, here are the number of search results returned by Google for various ecology-related search terms.
Levels of organization
(search term: number of results in millions)
individual ecology: 26.5 million
population ecology: 20.6
community ecology: 28.9
ecosystem ecology: 4.98
Kinds of organisms:
plant ecology: 21.1
animal ecology: 23.1
microbial ecology: 6.01 (little things may run the world, but they’re losing the intertubes)
Habitats:
terrestrial ecology: 10.4
aquatic ecology: 6.39
marine ecology: 16.2
Subfields:
landscape ecology: 8.68
behavioral ecology: 8.79
physiological ecology: 4.88
functional ecology: 9.62
theoretical ecology: 17.2
paleoecology: 0.569
evolutionary ecology: 4.2
macroecology: 0.155 (sorry Brian)
microcosm ecology: 0.34 (sorry self)
Ecology vs. other fields:
ecology: 64.2
evolution: 633 (yes, almost 10x as many as for ecology)
natural history: 329 (who says natural history is dead?)
Ecology journals vs. blogs:
ecology journals: 11.1
ecology blogs: 18.5
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil:
good ecology: 54.3
bad ecology: 9.89
You may commence over-interpretation…now! 🙂
Dynamic Ecology 
Hi Jeremy!
I know that you will not answer comments during the first 24 hours following your post, but I would like to know how you proceeded exactly, as I find different results from you.
I used http://www.google.com and searched for the same terms as you with and without quotation marks (did you use them?). For instance, for natural history, I found 630 million results and for “natural history”, 34.7 millions.
There’s nothing I don’t get here!
Thanks
Vincent
I used google.ca (Google automatically kicks me to that URL b/c I’m in Canada).
I didn’t use quotation marks.
A while ago I tried redoing another PhDcomics idea (results from google autofill)), and ended up with this when typing “ecologists are “:
Ok, image didn’t work. Here is a screenshot with the suggestions from google: http://screencast.com/t/V21xO3yL
Ecologists are:
ecologists are male chauvinist pigs
are ecologists in demand
are ecologists scientists
are ecologists well-paid
Oh my! I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.
Remember that Google personalizes its autocomplete suggestions. It could be that it’s just Tobias who wonders if ecologists are scientists. 😉
EDIT: But having just tried it myself, I get the same autocomplete suggestions…
Jeremy, this was indeed done in Google SSL to avoid such problems. I always use this to bypass some of googles annoying features.
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