Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-c9gpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T10:27:35.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Making empirical progress in observational ecology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2008

M. AARON MACNEIL
M. AARON MACNEIL*
Affiliation:
National Research Council, NOAA Panama City Laboratory, 3500 Delwood Beach Road, Panama City Beach, FL, 32408, USA
*
*Correspondence: Dr Aaron MacNeil Tel: +1 850 234 6541 ext. 257 Fax: +1 850 235 3559 e-mail: macneil@glau.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Epistemology, the theory of how knowledge arises, is an issue that ecologists and environmental scientists may not often consider in their work. However, beliefs about epistemology play a direct role in how they conduct research and, consciously or not, the conclusions made through analysis reflect some form of epistemology. I argue that the Popperian epistemology by which most environmental scientists are trained is generally incompatible with research on observational data and that observation-based studies can be improved by modifying Popper's notion of falsification.

Type
EC Perspectives
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , September 2008 , pp. 193 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Almany, G. (2003) Priority effects in coral reef fish communities. Ecology 84 (7): 1920–1935.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bellwood, D., Hughes, T., Folke, C. & Nyström, M. (2004) Confronting the coral reef crisis. Nature 429: 827–833.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Belovsky, G., Botkin, D., Crowl, T., Cummins, K., Franklin, J., Hunter Jr, M., Joern, A., Lindenmayer, D., MacMahon, J., Margules, C. & Scott, J. (2004) Ten suggestions to strengthen the science of ecology. BioScience 54 (4): 345–351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burnham, K. & Anderson, D. (2002) Model Selection and Multimodel Inference: a Practial Information-theoretic Approach. Second edition. New York, NY, USA: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Carpenter, S. (1990) Large-scale perturbations: opportunities for innovation. Ecology 71 (6): 2038–2043.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, S. (2002) Ecological futures: building an ecology of the long now. Ecology 83 (8): 2069–2083.Google Scholar
Doherty, P. (2002) Coral Reef Fishes. Dynamics and Diversity in a Complex Ecosystem. San Diego, CA, USA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Doherty, P. & Fowler, T. (1994) An empirical test of recruitment limitation in a coral reef fish. Science 263 (5149): 935–939.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feynman, R. (1985) Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman. New York, NY, USA: W.W. Norton and Sons.Google Scholar
Fisher, R. (1925) Statistical Methods for Research Workers. London, UK: Oliver and Boyd.Google Scholar
Fukami, T. & Wardle, D. (2005) Long-term ecological dynamics: reciprocal insights from natural and anthropogenic gradients. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 272: 2105–2115.Google ScholarPubMed
Galzin, R. (1987) Structure of fish communities of French Polynesian coral reefs. II. Temporal scales. Marine Ecology – Progress Series 41: 137–145.Google Scholar
Gelman, A., Carlin, J., Stern, H. & Rubin, D. (2004) Bayesian Data Analysis. Second edition. New York, NY, USA: Chapman and Hall.Google Scholar
Grace, J. (2006) Structural Equation Modelling and Natural Systems. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hilborn, R. & Ludwig, D. (1993) The limits of applied ecological research. Ecological Applications 3 (4): 550–552.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hilborn, R. & Mangel, M. (1997) The Ecological Detective. Monographs in Population Biology, no. 28. Princeton, USA: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hixon, M. (1991) Predation as a process structuring coral reef fish communities. In: The Ecology of Fishes on Coral Reefs, ed. Sale, P., pp. 475–508. San Diego, CA, USA: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobbs, N. & Hilborn, R. (2006) Alternatives to statistical hypothesis testing in ecology: a guide to self teaching. Ecological Applications 16 (1): 5–19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hurlbert, S. (1984) Pseudoreplication and the design of ecological field experiments. Ecological Monographs 54 (2): 187–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, M., Armsworth, P., Mason, L. & Bode, L. (2002) The structure of reef fish metapopulations: modelling larval dispersal and retention patterns. Proceedings of the Royal Socitey of London B 269: 2079–2086.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Loehle, C. (1990) Philosophical tools: reply to Shrader-Frechette and McCoy. Oikos 58 (1):115–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, D., Nichols, J., Royle, J., Pollock, K., Hines, J. & Bailey, L. (2006) Occupancy Estimation and Modeling: Inferring Patterns and Dynamics of Species Occurrence. San Diego, CA, USA: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Popper, K. (1934) Logik der Forschung. Vienna, Austria: Mohr Siebeck.Google Scholar
Quinn, J. & Dunham, A. (1983) On hypothesis testing in ecology and evolution. The American Naturalist 122 (5): 602–617.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schrader-Frechette, K. & McCoy, E. (1994) What can ecology do for environmental management. Journal of Environmental Management 41: 293–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shima, J. (1999) Variability in relative importance of determinants of reef fish recruitment. Ecology Letters 2: 304–310.Google Scholar
Simberloff, D. (1983) Competition theory, hypothesis-testing, and other community ecological buzzwords. The American Naturalist 122 (5): 626–635.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simberloff, D. & Wilson, E. (1969) Experimental zoogeography of islands: the colonisation of empty islands. Ecology 50 (2): 278–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Underwood, A. (2000) Observations in ecology: you can't make progress on processes without understanding the patterns. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 250: 97–115.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vucetich, J., Peterson, R. & Schaefer, C. (2002) The effect of prey and predator densities on wolf predation. Ecology 83 (11): 3003–3012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willis, T. & Anderson, M. (2003) Structure of cryptic reef fish assemblages: relationships with habitat characteristics and predator density. Marine Ecology - Progress Series 257: 209–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, S., Graham, N., Pratchett, M., Jones, G. & Polunin, N. (2006) Multiple disturbances and the global degradation of coral reefs: are reef fishes at risk or resilient? Global Change Biology 12: 2220–2234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar