Successful Ecologist Bios

1
Successful Ecologist Bios Groups Oct 1
Ecosystem - Lubchenco Oct 8 Community-
Callaway Oct 15 Population - ? Oct 22
Organismal - ? Nov 3 Free agents M. Turner,
G. Daily, S. Brown, ?? Class Poll vs previous
years
2
How will you approach the ecological question
answered by your research? Pattern in nature/data
? Mechanism? (Bacon induction) Prediction from
theory or proposed mechanism ? Pattern (Popper
deduction) What are you doing or planning on
doing for your grad research? Which approach is
closer? Q. 1 Induction 18 (58), deduction 12
(39), Both -1 (last year, 54 - 46) Is this a
lab approach or do your lab-mates use either
approach?
3
Do you think most ecological studies
(experiments) oversimplify patterns in nature and
thus fail to reveal much about the natural world
that is valuable? Are most experiments too simple
and at too small of scale? Q2. Yes, too simple
21 (62), No 10 (29), Depends 3 (last year
67 - 33) If most experiments are too
simple/small scale to be useful, what is the
solution?
4
Why can't we just work together? Why does
everything have to be a debate?
Is the approach of being hyper-critical in public
good or counterproductive for Ecology? Q. 3 Good
20 (61), Bad 13 (39) (Last year
50-50) Comments Answer depends on if Public
Ecological community vs. Public taxpayer,
policy makers, etc Thoughts?
5
Balance of Nature vs. Non-equilibrium view
In Chemistry what is the difference between a
compound and a mixture?
Q. 4 Are natural ecosystems/communities more
like compounds or mixtures? Compounds 16,
Mixtures 15, Both/Neither -2 What is your
rationale?

• The properties of compounds are different from
  those of their constituent elements. This is one
  of the main criteria for distinguishing a
  compound from a mixture.

What is the term for this phenomenon in Ecology?
6

• Emergent properties in ecological systems can be
  defined by three main characteristics
• they do not exist on the level of isolated
  subsystems
• they emerge on higher levels as a result of
  interactions of the subsystems
• (3) new properties appear at one level of a
  system and are not deducible from the observation
  of the lower levels units or compartments of the
  system.
• - Nielsen and Muller (2000)

Do communities have emergent properties?
7
I couldn't even finish the 3 page Clements paper
because it was so dry and terrible I also can't
ever imagine having to read more than 5 pages of
this writing style. Good god, it's awful I
love, love, love these papers! I respect these
old-timers for their perception of the natural
world. They took the time to make careful,
well-thought observations Clements 1916 I
found this deterministic viewpoint very
appealing.  If I was a prospective ecology grad
student in 1916, I probably would have begged to
become his student. Not that I think his ideas
are absolutely correct or that I much care for
his writing style, but I am easily taken by grand
unifying explanations of seemingly disparate
natural phenomena. If Clements is deterministic
what is Gleason? Who would be the better
natural resource manager?
8
I really loved the discussion among Gleason,
Gleason, Jr. (Gleason's son?), Emerson and
MacGinitie, Steiger and Spieth at the end of
Gleason's piece. I also enjoyed the often
off-topic discussion section in the back of
Gleason's paper.  I liked that the field was
small enough that the reader is expected to know
who these contributors are and the fact that the
discussion was published despite the fact the
discussion was at times totally
off-topic. Contributed Paper Sessions at
meetings How do we do this today?