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Observational articles: a tool to reconstruct ecological history based on chronicling unusual events

Natural history is based on observations, whereas modern ecology is mostly based on experiments aimed at testing hypotheses, either in the field or in a computer. Furthermore, experiments often reveal generalities that are taken as norms. Ecology, however, is a historical discipline and history is d...

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Autor principal: Boero, Ferdinando
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: F1000Research 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3782345/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24555082
http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.2-168.v1
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author Boero, Ferdinando
author_facet Boero, Ferdinando
author_sort Boero, Ferdinando
collection PubMed
description Natural history is based on observations, whereas modern ecology is mostly based on experiments aimed at testing hypotheses, either in the field or in a computer. Furthermore, experiments often reveal generalities that are taken as norms. Ecology, however, is a historical discipline and history is driven by both regularities (deriving from norms) and irregularities, or contingencies, which occur when norms are broken. If only norms occured, there would be no history. The current disregard for the importance of contingencies and anecdotes is preventing us from understanding ecological history. We need rules and norms, but we also need records about apparently irrelevant things that, in non-linear systems like ecological ones, might become the drivers of change and, thus, the determinants of history. The same arguments also hold in the field of evolutionary biology, with natural selection being the ecological driver of evolutionary change. It is important that scientists are able to publish potentially important observations, particularly those that are unrelated to their current projects that have no sufficient grounds to be framed into a classical eco-evolutionary paper, and could feasibly impact on the history of the systems in which they occurred. A report on any deviation from the norm would be welcome, from the disappearance of species to their sudden appearance in great quantities. Any event that an “expert eye” (i.e. the eye of a naturalist) might judge as potentially important is worth being reported.
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spelling pubmed-37823452013-12-27 Observational articles: a tool to reconstruct ecological history based on chronicling unusual events Boero, Ferdinando F1000Res Opinion Article Natural history is based on observations, whereas modern ecology is mostly based on experiments aimed at testing hypotheses, either in the field or in a computer. Furthermore, experiments often reveal generalities that are taken as norms. Ecology, however, is a historical discipline and history is driven by both regularities (deriving from norms) and irregularities, or contingencies, which occur when norms are broken. If only norms occured, there would be no history. The current disregard for the importance of contingencies and anecdotes is preventing us from understanding ecological history. We need rules and norms, but we also need records about apparently irrelevant things that, in non-linear systems like ecological ones, might become the drivers of change and, thus, the determinants of history. The same arguments also hold in the field of evolutionary biology, with natural selection being the ecological driver of evolutionary change. It is important that scientists are able to publish potentially important observations, particularly those that are unrelated to their current projects that have no sufficient grounds to be framed into a classical eco-evolutionary paper, and could feasibly impact on the history of the systems in which they occurred. A report on any deviation from the norm would be welcome, from the disappearance of species to their sudden appearance in great quantities. Any event that an “expert eye” (i.e. the eye of a naturalist) might judge as potentially important is worth being reported. F1000Research 2013-08-09 /pmc/articles/PMC3782345/ /pubmed/24555082 http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.2-168.v1 Text en Copyright: © 2013 Boero F http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Opinion Article
Boero, Ferdinando
Observational articles: a tool to reconstruct ecological history based on chronicling unusual events
title Observational articles: a tool to reconstruct ecological history based on chronicling unusual events
title_full Observational articles: a tool to reconstruct ecological history based on chronicling unusual events
title_fullStr Observational articles: a tool to reconstruct ecological history based on chronicling unusual events
title_full_unstemmed Observational articles: a tool to reconstruct ecological history based on chronicling unusual events
title_short Observational articles: a tool to reconstruct ecological history based on chronicling unusual events
title_sort observational articles: a tool to reconstruct ecological history based on chronicling unusual events
topic Opinion Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3782345/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24555082
http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.2-168.v1
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