Barriers to adaptive reasoning in community ecology
Recent high‐profile calls for a more trait‐focused approach to community ecology have the potential to open up novel research areas, generate new insights and to transform community ecology into a more predictive science. However, a renewed emphasis on function and phenotype also requires a fundamen...
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Published in | Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society Vol. 86; no. 3; pp. 543 - 548 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Oxford, UK
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
01.08.2011
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
ISSN | 1464-7931 1469-185X 1469-185X |
DOI | 10.1111/j.1469-185X.2010.00159.x |
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Summary: | Recent high‐profile calls for a more trait‐focused approach to community ecology have the potential to open up novel research areas, generate new insights and to transform community ecology into a more predictive science. However, a renewed emphasis on function and phenotype also requires a fundamental shift in approach and research philosophy within community ecology to more fully embrace evolutionary reasoning. Such a subject‐wise transformation will be difficult due to at least four factors: (1) the historical development of the academic discipline of ecology and its roots as a descriptive science; (2) the dominating role of the ecosystem concept in the driving of contemporary ecological thought; (3) the practical difficulties associated with defining and identifying (phenotypic) adaptations, and; (4) scaling effects in ecology; the difficulty of teasing apart the overlapping and shifting hierarchical processes that generate the observed environment‐trait correlations in nature. We argue that the ability to predict future ecological conditions through a sufficient understanding of ecological processes will not be achieved without the placement of the concept of adaptation at the centre of ecology, with influence radiating outwards through all the related (and rapidly specializing) sub‐disciplines. |
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Bibliography: | ark:/67375/WNG-BSX6HK3S-X istex:A4B4E0CF735B8F92F880874BC6741BA8ADAE3348 ArticleID:BRV159 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 14 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 ObjectType-Review-3 |
ISSN: | 1464-7931 1469-185X 1469-185X |
DOI: | 10.1111/j.1469-185X.2010.00159.x |