ETHOLOGY. ETHOLOGY is a term used to describe a branch of biology particularly concerned with the interactions among evolution, environment, and behavior. The seminal work in this area was done at the Max Planck Institute in the 1950s. But the word ETHOLOGY was not used to describe this area until some time later. It is interesting to wonder how an IR system might nevertheless be able to retrieve these old documents in response to a query for ETHOLOGY.