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Barriers to adaptive reasoning in community ecology

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Athol McLachlan

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Abstract

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.

Publication metadata

Author(s): McLachlan AJ, Ladle RJ

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Biological Reviews

Year: 2011

Volume: 86

Issue: 3

Pages: 543-548

Print publication date: 18/10/2010

ISSN (print): 1464-7931

ISSN (electronic): 1469-185X

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-185X.2010.00159.x

DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-185X.2010.00159.x

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