Neobiology

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The branch of biology that studies organisms that are new to an environment or have been recently created by human intervention
2. A field of science concerned with life forms that have recently arrived in a region or have been artificially engineered
3. The study of novel living organisms, including species introduced to new habitats and organisms produced through modern genetic design

Etymology: Neobiology is a modern coinage, and the most useful fact about it is how recent and how deliberate it is. It is built from "neo-", the Greek prefix meaning "new," attached to "biology," the study of living things, itself formed from Greek "bios" (life) and "-logia" (the study of). Together they give a plain meaning: the study of new arrivals in living systems. The term belongs to the vocabulary of invasion ecology, the field that studies species moved by people into places they did not naturally reach. Its specific sense, the biology of newcomers, describes the behaviour, spread, and effects of such species once they establish themselves. Because it is a technical formation from classical roots, it was assembled to name a specific research focus rather than inherited from an older tradition, and it has no ancient usage behind it.