Re: Nature magazine article- On niches and neutralities

[Dan Fiscus <***>]

Judith, John,

I have not read that Nature article yet, but I will. In the
meantime...

I can send some references to papers that deal with ecological
functions tomorrow. Also one that may be relevant as another
path by which evolution and ecology seem to be converging
these days - having to do with how rapid evolution drives or
determines ecological predator-prey interactions.

It seems like two threads heading the same way recently: 1) the
niche construction (aka ecosystem engineers) folks are helping
ecology and evolution converge by showing when and how
the alterations by organisms of their own environments can
feedback and they end up adapting to their own actions
(beavers and the new environments created by their dams,
animals that construct burrows, special environments inside
hives, etc. etc.) and 2) this other approach about rapid
evolution which also suggests convergence and feedbacks,
circularity, by saying rapid evolution (of microbes or very small
organisms) can alter outcomes of interactions like predation,
which we already know (ecology + evolution both have
studied) can influence evolution (arms races, predator
avoidance/defense abilities, etc. etc.).

On a "something completely different" topic (and Juidth I
don't remember that Monty Python episode...) I do not totally
get John's last point about solving evolutionary problems
functionally vs (what you may be saying) a case by case or
piecemeal (or mechanistic?) type of evolution. Can you say
more on this? It sounds interesting...

Dan
Judith Rosen wrote:

> > John Kineman wrote: Also, I would add that ecologists are
> > already thinking functionally out of necessity and have been for some
> > time.
>
> If that's true, it's a new development or else it's something that has been
> tacit without directly addressing the fact. In that case, I'm sure the very
> same ecologists may well deny till their dying breath that they are doing
> that. I would be interested in Dan Fiscus' perspective on that-- Dan, if you
> read this one, could you comment, please?
>
> > John K. wrote: But there hasn't been a fundamental theory of  > functions
> that they could refer to and say "we're doing that" as the
> > mechanists can by pointing to physics. You will find quite a lot
>
>
> > of Rosennean thinking in ecology, I've concluded, but it tends to go
> > unjustified on theoretical grounds, or there are very confused
> > attempts to justify it mechanistically. Hence it is why I think landscape
> > and ecosystems ecology are good domains to adavance Rosennean
> > theory I am familiar with.
>
> Agreed. The "Rosennean thinking" is mostly unconscious and unintended, as
> far as I can see. Which was my point with both the Neutralists and the
> Niche-based philosophies. They both have certain aspects of my father's view
> but they are not integrated and non-integrable unless both groups let go of
> the theoretical basis from which they are operating. That basis is the same
> one: Newtonian mechanics and Cartesian reductionism. So they wind up
> contradicting each other's results which they think contradicts each other's
> theoretical basis, not getting the fact that they're both operating from the
> SAME theoretical basis underneath-- and they have indeed contradicted it.