Ecological organisation refers to the structured relations through which organisms and environments mutually shape the conditions required for biological persistence.
In APS, organisms are not understood as isolated entities existing independently of their environments. Biological systems persist only through ongoing interaction with ecological conditions that support metabolism, regulation, development, behaviour, reproduction, and adaptation.
Ecological organisation therefore concerns the organised coupling between biological systems and the wider processes in which they participate. These relations may include nutrient flows, symbiosis, predation, competition, developmental environments, environmental modification, and niche construction.
APS treats these relations as constitutive rather than merely external. Ecological conditions do not simply influence already-complete organisms from the outside. They participate in shaping the viability conditions under which biological organisation is maintained across time.
Ecological organisation also operates across multiple scales. Individual organisms, populations, species, communities, and ecosystems may all contribute to sustaining or transforming the conditions of persistence for other biological systems.
For this reason, ecological explanation in APS is not reducible either to isolated organisms or to abstract environmental pressures alone. It concerns the organised relations through which living systems and ecological processes mutually constrain and sustain one another.