Against nature ? Why ecologists should not diverge from natural history

Description

A sort of dichotomy pervaded ecological studies in the last decades. On the onehand, an important part of ecologists had the diffuse perception that the observational approachof natural history had to fade away in favour of more formal experimental or modellingapproaches. Others, on the other hand, had an increasing perception that these formal approacheswere dismissing important cultural components of natural history that fed ecology since itsvery beginning. We provide here a reconstruction of ecological thinking from natural historyarguing that the above mentioned schism between 'schools of thinking' should be reconciled.Modern ecology and natural history deserve reciprocal scientific respect and both seek understandingnature, its components at different hierarchical levels (from species to ecosystems andbeyond) and the way it works. Ecology needs natural history to figure out meaningful scenarios,select relevant variables and conceive meaningful hypotheses based on sound knowledge ofspecies up to ecosystems. Similarly, natural history needs more structured ecological thinkingfor selecting appropriate experimental and/or quantitative approaches to ultimately move fromfield insight to hypothesis testing.

Abstract

International audience

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