PARENT SESSION
Symposium #7: Paradigms lost: Theory change in ecology.
Organized by: K Cudddington and B Beisner
Monday, August 5. 1:00 PM to 3:45 PM. Leo Rich Theatre.
Graphical predation theory: Seed of a failed revolution or a delayed one?
ROSENZWEIG, MICHAEL*,1,2, 1 University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ2 Evolutionary Ecology, Ltd., Tucson, AZ
ABSTRACT- Graphical predation theory seems to concern itself strictly with dynamics. Indeed, it introduced ecology to isocline analysis and to linearized stability analysis. Nonlinear dynamic analysis in ecology began with Kolmogorov in the 1930s, but I would maintain that our theory was its practical start because it was accessible to those who read English but not Italian. In addition, its application to eutrophication and its extension to three dimensions also focused on predation dynamics. Nevertheless, it explicitly reached out to other areas, incorporating variable behavior (even adumbrating optimal foraging), coevolution, and introducing the distinction between the ecological timescale and the evolutionary timescale. Ecologists continue to produce ever more interesting results with such questions. But access to powerful, cheap computers has obscured the real reason that Robert MacArthur and I wrote our paper. We intended our theory to be a model of how ecologists might be able to do meaningful theory, i.e., theory as simple, robust and testable as possible. In contrast, it seems to me that most modern theory gets praised in proportion to its complexity, fragility, impenetrability and impracticality. Should ecologists build bigger and more complex computer experiments? Eventually, such a model will become as complex as nature itself. If it works, we will have proved that the world of nature works like the world of nature. Or should we -- recognizing the inherent simplification in any useful scientific theory -- build ever simpler theories that can motivate field studies?
KEY WORDS: isoclines, predation, stability, optimal foraging