[Coral-List] reef resilience, hypothesis testing, and the need to know one's animals

[Alec Scott]

Hi all,

I just wanted to add to this conversation an article about the decline of
natural history training in ecology that was recently brought to my
attention by a former professor who studies grassland ecology (just to
highlight that this is happening across the whole field):

Scientific American write-up:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/80-percent-of-young-environmental-scientists-could-use-more-natural-history-training/

Original article:
http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/04/08/biosci.biw043.full

Cheers,
Alec



On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 4:28 PM, Douglas Fenner <
douglasfennertassi at gmail.com> wrote:

> Peter,
>     Your views on the field biologists and the lab scientists has a
> parallel in an old article by Chuck Birkeland, which supports what you say.
>
> Birkeland, C.  2009.  Important roles of natural history in ecology.
> Galaxea, Journal of Coral Reef Studies 11: 59-66.
>
>     As Chuck points out, if you don't know the natural history of what the
> organisms are doing, you can get the interpretation of the fancy technical
> data wrong.
>
> Cheers,  Doug
>
>
>
> On Sun, May 22, 2016 at 3:47 PM, Peter Sale <sale at uwindsor.ca> wrote:
>
> > Hi Listers,
> > A couple of weeks ago, Joe Pawlik drew attention to a new paper of his in
> > BioScience.  I read it, read a little bit further, and was prompted to
> put
> > some thoughts on my blog, mainly about how we have to know our study
> > organisms or ecosystems well if we are to be able to generate, and then
> > test hypotheses about them.  I think Pawlik's paper, and the 2012 one by
> > Roff and Mumby make clear that we still have numerous competing
> hypotheses
> > to account for the failures of reef resilience following disturbances
> that
> > lead to loss of coral cover, and far more variation from place to place
> > than would ever be apparent when reading accounts of what I call the
> > herbivore-mediated hypothesis of coral dominance.
> >
> > I fear, rightly or wrongly, that our ability to generate and test
> > hypotheses about coral reefs is getting weaker, at the very time we need
> it
> > to be getting stronger, because of the general down-grading of field time
> > in undergraduate and graduate education, plus an appalling erosion of
> basic
> > biological knowledge because that is considered old-fashioned and
> > unnecessary.  (I also admit I learned some new things (for me) about
> > sponges after reading the Pawlik paper!)
> >
> > Anyhow, my thoughts are here: http://www.petersalebooks.com/?p=2237
> > I hope this does not annoy, because I do not want to have to wear a
> > bullet-proof vest under my aloha shirt in Honolulu next month.  I'll be
> > very interested to talk to people about this topic, and also about your
> > views on the fate of coral reefs over the next few decades during ICRS.
> >
> > Note that my blog post includes the statement that it is precisely
> because
> > coral reef ecology is relatively strong as ecology goes that I feel free
> to
> > demand it get stronger.  As I conclude at the end, careful, detailed
> > monitoring of the gradual loss of coral cover across the reefs of the
> > world, without any success in building understanding of why and how,
> would
> > simply be a time-consuming effort to document the demise of one part of
> > Earth's biodiversity, a description of a part of the sixth extinction.
> Not
> > of any great value once the extinction is over!
> >
> > Peter Sale
> >
> > Distinguished University Professor (Emeritus)
> > University of Windsor
> >
> > e-mail:                  sale at uwindsor.ca<mailto:sale at uwindsor.ca>
> > web:                      www.petersalebooks.com<
> > http://www.petersalebooks.com/>
> > Twitter:                @PeterSale3
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
>
>
> --
> Douglas Fenner
> Contractor for NOAA NMFS, and consultant
> "have regulator, will travel"
> PO Box 7390
> Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA
>
> phone 1 684 622-7084
>
> Join the International Society for Reef Studies.  Membership includes a
> subscription to the journal Coral Reefs, and there are discounts for pdf
> subscriptions and developing countries.  Check it out!  www.fit.edu/isrs/
>
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>
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>
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