Final answer:
Ecology exemplifies the need for interdisciplinary research, requiring collaboration across fields like biology, chemistry, and geography. Human-animal scholarship and advanced interdisciplinary degree programs like Stanford's biomedical informatics also demonstrate how integrating different disciplines leads to a more comprehensive understanding of complex issues.
Step-by-step explanation:
Ecology is a field that inherently necessitates interdisciplinary collaboration, integrating various scientific disciplines to fully understand the interactions within ecosystems. For instance, when studying the impact of climate change on a particular habitat, ecologists may need insights from climatologists, oceanographers, biologists, chemists, and even geologists to piece together how changes in the environment are affecting the flora and fauna within that ecosystem.
Human-animal scholarship is another example that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries, incorporating insights from fields such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, biology, philosophy/ethics, and economics. Take therapy dogs used in populations with PTSD, for instance. This involves an understanding of animal behavior (biology), the psychological benefits to humans (psychology), and may even touch on ethical issues or the economic impacts of such therapy programs.
Lastly, the transdisciplinary approaches in higher education like the biomedical informatics program at Stanford demonstrate the practical applications of interdisciplinary studies. Graduates trained in anthropological holism, for example, are prepared to work effectively in teams across disciplines to address complex problems facing society, suggesting that interdisciplinarity is not only conceptual but has practical, real-world applications.