Transcript Document

Successful Ecologist Bio’s
Groups:
Oct 1 – Ecosystem – Lubchenco 
Oct 8 –Community - Callaway
Oct 15 – Population – Ilkka Hanski
Oct 22 – Organismal – E. Mayr
Nov 3 – Free agents – M. Turner, G. Daily, S. Brown, Mary
Power, Martin Wikelski
Journal Review system:
Depends on “impact factor and prestige of journal… (acceptance rate
can vary from 10% to 75% - ultimately)
Most journals - 2 anonymous reviews and an associate editor to
mediate/decide
Reviews take from 1 week (bad news if Science/Nature) to 6 months!
High profile – initial, very harsh pre-screening prior to full review
If the 2 reviews are split, often a revision goes to a 3rd reviewer…
Few (no) double blind reviews in Ecological Journals
Very few papers are accepted without revision and re-review
There is an appeal system… usually not successful (Unless
Hutchinson writes for you!)
So, does this mean that if the referees for one of my articles
don't like my ideas, in order to get published all I have to do
is butter up to one of the bigwigs and they will get my paper
in?
Does having “Bigwigs” in your corner help? – Yes! But even
without them, you can learn a lot from how the editor was dealt
with…
The rejection –
1.
2.
3.
4.
Not enough data given the speculation
Sample size of 1!!! (The audacity to generalize!!)
“Desk produced” = Arm chair ecology
Premature…
Hutchinson’s strategy –
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Sympathy for the editor – no blame cast…
Some of the ideas are mine, so it partially my fault…
Lindeman is young and needs a job…
Disagreement is not sufficient grounds for rejection…see my earlier reviews
Sample size of 1 is a plus – such detailed information is necessary…
Lack of data is a plus – it will spur others to fill in the gaps…
New and wonderful data will result from this paper – even if the ideas are wrong
Outcome –
1. Still no strong support for the revision…
2. Editor: Time is the great sifter in these matters and it alone will judge the question.
I only hope that when I submit my paper in to be published
some day that I get a warmer response from the referees.
A phenotype all publishing scientists must have:
Thick skin…
Today:
Community Ecology
• Overview
• Brief history
• Selective examples
• Background for papers
Ecological Hierarchy
• Organismal ecology = autecology:
Evolutionary ecology, Behavior, physiology, morphological
adaptations of individuals.
• Population: group of conspecific individuals:
Population regulation, intraspecific interactions.
• Community: multiple species in same area.
Interplay of multiple species, interspecific interactions.
• Ecosystem: biotic and abiotic factors in a bounded but open system.
Energy flow, recycling.
• Landscape, Global, Macroecology…
Class Poll?
Community Ecology is the quintessential study of
ecology…
It is the proprietary domain of ecologists… (very little sharing
or co-option by other sciences or managers)
Traditional Ecological Hierarchy
• Organismal ecology – strong links to physiology, evolution, systematics…
(Endangered Species Act)
• Population – strong management implications…Resource management
• Community – the how and why of plants, animals and microbes in space
and time, and their interactions (biotic and abiotic)…not very “applied”
• Ecosystem – Interdisciplinary combining geology, soils, atmospheric
studies…also strong management links…Ecosystem services, Ecosystem
management…
Within vs. Among Trophic Level Approaches…
Focus on the biota….
In Ecological hierarchy, typically mechanistic explanations
come from below…
Genetics, Ecophysiology, Demography used to explain
community patterns…
“Hierarchical one-upmanship” = One scientist’s
mechanism is another’s pattern….
But – community structure has often been ignored in
Ecosystem Studies – the black box approach
Only recently, have the consequences of altered
community composition on ecosystem structure and
function been emphasized…
Community Ecology
Roots are:
Pattern  Mechanism
Observation  Theory
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Focus is on “interactions”….
Ghosts of paradigms past - The degree of interaction among species
and populations in communities differentiates the more Holistic
perspectives of communities from the more Individualistic perspective
(think Clements vs. Gleason).
Community: An association of interacting populations, usually defined
by the nature of their interaction and the place in which they live.
A community is "an assemblage of species populations which occur
together in space and time"
(Begon, Harper & Townsend).
(Community + environment = 'Ecosystem')
Most ecologists today are between these two extremes.
Largest subdiscipline of Ecology at ESA is community
ecology (data source: me!)
Interests and domain:
Historically: Succession, Niche and niche partitioning,
community and diversity patterns, Island
biogeography…temporal & spatial aspects of community
dynamics…
Today:
Community assembly rules/restoration ecology
Trophic interactions
Invasive species
Biodiversity and ecosystem stability and function
Mechanisms of species coexistence in communities
Impacts of species loss….conservation issues
Interesting & long history…
1898 - Frederick Clements publishes "The Phytogeography of Nebraska",
first American "ecology" book
1899 - Henry Chandler Cowles - studies dune succession and develops
“dynamic ecology”, U. of Chicago School
1900-1930 - Clements, with support of the Carnegie Institute publishes
numerous volumes on succession, research methods in ecology,
phytogeography
Early 1900s William Skinner Cooper - a student of Cowles at Chicago,
Ph.D. thesis on forests of Isle Royal; studied succession in Glacier Bay;
joined University of Minnesota; Rexford Daubenmire was student
1913 - Victor Shelford publishes book on Animal Communities of the
Chicago area, Shelford is first president of Ecological Society of America
(1915) “Shelford’s law of tolerance”
1926 Henry Allan Gleason - publishes on individualistic hypothesis in
ecology
1927 Charles Elton, famous British animal ecologist - refines
concepts of ecological niche, proposes negative relationship
between diversity and invasion…
1940-78 G.E. Hutchinson - limnologist and zoologist, publishes many
influential books and papers, wrote on niche, Ph.D. advisor for Robert
MacArthur (Yale School)
1940s-50s John Curtis - developed concept of importance values,
strong inductive approaches to vegetation analysis (Wisconsin school)
1956 R.H. Whittaker publishes ordination study of Great Smoky
Mountains; becomes major influence in ordination, gradient analysis
and succession
1950s- 1960s Robert MacArthur, mathematical/theoretical ecologist,
developed island biogeography theory, Ph.D. student of Hutchinson.
Thus, major scientists in this subdiscipline of ecology:
Historically-F. Clements
H. Gleason
G.E. Hutchinson
E. Lucy Braun (1st female ESA president and award named after her)
R. MacArthur
R. Whittaker
More contemporary--Connell (Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis)
Paine (Food webs and Keystone Species concept)
Grime (Species trade-offs and coexistence)
Tilman (Resource ratio hypothesis for species coexistence and
Biodiversity-Ecosystem function studies)
Hubble – Neutral Theory
Historically: Strong interest in describing and categorizing communities
GRADIENT ANALYSIS (Wisconsin School and Whittaker)
Gradient analysis - the portrayal and interpretation of the abundances
of species along environmental gradients of physical conditions.
Examples of environmental gradients:
plants:
•soil nitrogen
•soil temperature
•soil moisture
•soil depth
•annual precipitation
animals:
•prey availability
•soil texture (for burrowing animals)
•height above low tide (for intertidal
organisms).
Classification and Ordination: Objective ways to seek trends and
patterns in community data.
Classification is the allocation of species to groups so that members
of the same group share many species in common, and members of
different groups share relatively few species. This assumes species
can be grouped into relatively distinct groups (communities have
abrupt boundaries).
Ordination is an alternative approach to analysis and is based on the
idea that the environment, and therefore species composition, changes
gradually, rather than abruptly. Ordination describe gradients in species
composition and often relate these to known or suspected environmental
gradients.
Ordination of plant communities of the Jackson Purchase
Region of Kentucky: A. Bottomland Hardwoods; B. Swamps;
C1. Flatwoods-Wet Phase; C2. Flatwoods-Dry Phase; D. OakHickory (Open or Savanna-Like); E. Oak-Hickory (White Oak
and/or Black Oak); F. Mixed Mesophytic; G. Transitional
(disturbed or successional); H. Former Barrens.
The purpose of
ordination is to assist
one in uncovering
pattern in data sets
that are otherwise too
complicated to
interpret. Ordination
should identify the
most important
dimensions in a data
set, and minimize the
"noise", in order to
show these patterns.
However, ordination
techniques are meant
primarily as
exploratory tools,not
for testing hypotheses.
Concepts of Community Ecologists:
CENTRAL CONCEPT Niche: An organism’s place in the community and what environmental
factors limit it to that space (Grinnell) – environmental emphasis
An organism's role in its community (Elton) – species emphasis
An organism's "ecological position in the world" (Vandermeer 1972).
Today: environmental requirements for species as well as the impact of
a species on other organisms in the community (Leibold 1995
Ecology)
As always seems to be the case…
Despite its strong synthetic role and its crucial importance
in community theory, the niche concept remains unclear:
"most [ecologists] would agree that niche is a central
concept of ecology, even though we do not know exactly
what it means" (Real and Levin 1991).
The word niche is a pseudocognate. A "pseudocognate" is
a term in which each individual who uses it feels that all
readers share his/her own intuitive definition, but in reality
each individual has their own distinct definition.
A long running major interest: explaining why so many
species co-exist and patterns of species diversity
Many concepts based on the Equilibrium paradigm…
Gause – competitive exclusion principle - two species cannot
coexist if they share the same resource (Gause 1934)
resource partitioning…
Hutchinson – niche (multi-dimensional) can be defined and
quantified
Principle of limiting similarity -how different do the niches of
two species have to be in order for them to coexist? (1.3 ratio?)
niche partitioning…
Equilibrium paradigm
MacArthur & Wilson – Species area and island biogeography
Paine – Keystone species
Tilman – Resource ratio hypothesis
Non-equilibrium components creep in…
Connell – Disturbance regimes
Ricklefs – Regional vs. local processes and history
Keystone species concept
Keystone species is one whose impacts on its community or ecosystem
are large and greater than would be expected from its relative
abundance or total biomass
In contrast, dominant species (foundational species)- trees, giant kelp,
prairie grasses, and reef-building corals all have impacts that are large
but not disproportionate to their total biomass, and therefore they are not
keystone species
Keystone species can
reduce or increase
diversity
Problem with concept:
Difficult to quantify
Few actual comparative studies
Concept important because it
convinced managers and
conservationists alike that the
ecological impact of single species
matters. To manage, understand, and
restore ecological assemblages, the
roles of individual species have to be
understood and considered