section_path: Relation to evolution/Cognitive ecology
section_name: Cognitive ecology
paragraph_text: Cognitive ecology
  
  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...".